DH told me today its okay to be wrong, and I've been thinking about that tonight. A little back story - my relationship with my career can go from this isn't bad to loathing and overall I don't feel I'm suited for it. I say relationship because it leaves me without much of a work life balance and I feel drained constantly. Its soul sucking. Ive been considering changing careers but on paper its a bad call to give up a higher paying job for a lower and losing training time etc. Considering I keep having this recurrent thought over the last 1.5 years of my 3.5 year career though I feel I was wrong in the beginning to get into this field. Its okay to be wrong. Is my fear of being wrong again or failing keeping me unhappy? Maybe.
I struggled with a scenario like this for a number of years. Eventual conclusions for my family:
- my health and happiness are worth something;
- my health while trying to reproduce is especially valuable as it affects fertility and the baby's health;
- dual income family; spouse supportive of a change that improves quality of life, health, and happiness, plus we could afford it;
- now that I'm a parent I want to spend time with my children every day, not constantly work overtime;
- I want to work outside the home and FIRE is long enough away that I want to spend those years doing something more enjoyable than the status quo; and
- is this job's pay really all that great on a hourly basis?
If you earned some money, learned some lessons, and developed some useful skills at wrong-for-you career, then you got something out of your time in this industry and it wasn't a complete waste. You found out some things about yourself, like what you do/don't want/enjoy. That's valuable.
Good luck with everything! Please consider eventually turning this thread into a journal so you can record your progress and people can follow along and cheer you on.