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You have reached the time of life when you are the provider. You have to take second seat to the family for a while, this phase will pass and you will be proud of all you have done but it takes years. School was years but you survived and flourished, you can do it and you know you can. Select the job that provides but hang on to your dreams.
Critical friend.
Or change tact and get a job in the theatre, still working with audio etc but different and capped hours.
Searching for jobs with audio in reveals loads of careers I'd never imagined. Eg police audio unit field engineer sounds kind of interesting. Searching on keywords yields interesting new lines of enquiry.
Anyway, not helping you ..... I agree with others on making time for your family. My kids are all pretty grown up now (well, youngest still 14), but I greatly cherish all those different ages/phases. Wonderful times and they grow out of some of the best bits so soon. I'd also agree with try and ditch the booze. My oldest son drank a lot, worried me to be honest, but his girlfriend suddenly found herself expecting and he quit virtually all of his drinking and is actually saving some money for the first time in his life. Didn't think I'd ever see that! Ditching booze can be done by most people.
One thing that I have never done in life is take a chance, quit my safe world and go out on a limb to try to make my lot better. If I felt that bad about a job I think I'd risk a big change. Think of what you would rather be doing in an ideal world and see if you can plan a route to it. Don't worry about how pie in the sky it is.
Another friend has recently done the same, doubling his pay but doing factory shifts, so not quite as good as the former, but still.
Honest question. Have you worked in this area in this capacity in reality?
But a technician involved in sound, lighting, mixing, cueing etc; sometimes all at once, while dealing with a bunch of prima donna musicians, performers, directors, producers, guests, VIP friends... maybe not so great
My bad.
Last year I was in a similar position. Been with the company 7 years, they did a restructure, downsized everywhere. I ended up with a boss who did not want me or my team and showed so little interest in me, that at one point we didn't even speak for 8 weeks!
Job hunting itself was liberating. I was honest with myself about what I wanted, what I was good at and applied only for things that I genuinely thought would be a good challenge or offer development.
My new job has proved to be eye opening and extremely challenging, yet I very seldom have to work long hours. I've lost some flexibility but I am so much happier.
The UK is home to one of the 2 largest financial centres in the world.
This means that there is a lot of cash flowing, and a lot of IT needed
If you can get into any kind of role in IT in this country, there is a lot of cash, for those from any background
For example 3 years ago, I worked with a woman with a fine art degree and masters, working as a contract PM in IT in her late 20s in Manchester, I'd guess on £400-£500 a day
I've met architects who were chefs, and lots of incompetent project managers on perfectly good senior salaries doing normal hours. there are any number of roles in Live service, run teams, PMO, BAs, infra that are mostly populated by bright people who did not do computer science a levels or degrees
This is where I have to be a little careful. But yes, I have done this before. Not only with my direct boss but with another staff member who felt that because I had an allegiance to one particular product, that it meant I wasn't suitable for a product management/product owner position. That was sort of the death knell of that part of my career. Somehow I'm still expected to do product ownery things though and that seems to be something that even when I do push back on, it's expected of me.
Good observations. I wont lie, and I will be transparent. I probably spend around £200-£250 on alcohol each month. That's based on going over my outgoings with the wife one time last year. That's more than I spend on transport. I know it's a problem, but nothing else "works" as such ... I've tried getting into exercise, swimming, all that jazz... seems to work for a month or two and then poof.... There is a part of me that could quite happily be a stay at home dad. 90% of the time I enjoy spending time with my daughter and making her laugh, feeding her, taking her the park etc... I see a lot of the mums in the area and from where I sit, they've got it cushy. Simply can't afford for me to not work though, and the other part of me... the part that wants to achieve... wouldn't be happy to do it. Pretty schizophrenic about family versus work versus passions tbh.
I actually had a round of talking therapies with the NHS at the start of the year. It helped a bit. And I learned some tools to deal with anxiety and stress in the short-term, but the long-term hasn't changed very much. You're right about putting self esteem into work (even band stuff as well tbh!) I possibly could. I've got a lot of QA experience already as it's what I did for the first 5 years. I've deliberately resisted the idea of A: going into non-music sectors and B: going back into QA. I applied for a QA Manager position last year and would've got the job if I ... er.. didn't tell them in my interview that QA wasn't really where I wanted to be!!! Stupid. Feels like it would be a step backwards, regardless of the likely higher pay brackets. I do have experience with Agile. Tends to be a buzzword that is thrown around, but everything we do is Agile in some way. Believe it or not, there aren't very many companies in London that specialise in music-tech. Things are changing a bit, but the UK isn't the best place for music tech. Germany, Japan, and the USA would be much better.
My hope is that, by reducing those hours, you will be in a position to plan more activities with your family outside work, which will (I hope) lead naturally to less drinking. If you want to stay in this job then, in my opinion, this is the way forward.
My feedback thread is here.
But the vast majority of that work in the music tech industry is contracted out. So right now I'm unemployable unless I lean on my other areas of expertise and experience. That's how it looks from my pessimistic viewpoint right now anyway.