Don't Wait to Make a Career Change and Regret it Later

by Seth
(Carson City, NV, USA)

Somehow my wife and I ended up concentrating too much on making money than living life. I had been working at the same job for nearly 10 years. It was with a great company with great benefits and they even provided me with opportunities for advancement yet something was still missing. I had even turned in a resignation letter and was about 3 days from leaving when they offered me a supervisor position and a sizable pay raise. This seemed like the right thing to do at the time but it wasn't long before I was having second thoughts once again. Finally my wife and I decided we needed to make a change before we had waiting too long.

I was fortunate in that I quickly located another job that interested me but for quite a bit less pay. We looked at our cost of living and decided that initially it might be a bit of a hard transition but with the improved quality of life and living location, these benefits greatly out weighted the decrease in pay and the pay would become more in line with what we were accustomed to down the road.

I decided to begin my new job and live out of a weekly rate hotel room with the basic apartment features, refrigerator and small stove. My wife stayed behind and set about selling the house and organizing everything for the move. I was able on the weekends to either drive or fly back to help as required but for the most part my wife was on her own and did a great job. I had also located a house for us to rent initially and had everything in order on my end for the move.

After about 6 weeks she was ready and moving weekend had arrived. We decided to rent a truck and move ourselves. It required a lot of additional manual labor on our parts but the cost saving was worth it. By the end of a very long weekend we had made the move to our new home.

Our life style was probably the key to this move. We lived a pretty quiet and reserved life style for a couple in their thirties; we did not have a lot of bills and did have a small amount of saving to cover the transition. After the move we realized that the move had not been as expensive as we had expected.

If I had to do it over again the only thing I would change would have been not waiting. If you are not happy with your current state in life then change it, don't procrastinate. Come up with a plan i.e., find a job, find a home in the new location, set up a moving date and do it. Don't over complicate it. You can and will find numerous reasons to not go through with it, heck it's a lot easier just to go on the way you are but you still will not be happy. Once you have finished your move you will realize just as I did that the biggest challenge was overcoming your fears.

We have now been at our new location for 3 years; we have since bought a new home and settle into our new community. Instead of stressing out about work every day, I arrive at work with a smile on my face knowing my 4 10 hour day work schedule affords me a 3 day weekend every week. We are finally living the life we had hoped for when we were married.