Needless to say I have been quite miserable for a while, let's say for at least the past 5 years. I have been miserable about my career, miserable about my finance, miserable about investment, miserable about relationships, miserable about health (I fear that I have early symptoms of Alzheimer, which I need to diagnose this year), miserable about sex life. In general, miserable about my past, miserable about my present, and miserable about my future.
But let me be very clear about one thing. Despite being miserable about life in general, I don't feel totally hopeless or suicidal. Rather I feel motivated, tough not all the time but every now and then like today, to find a cure for my misery. I feel there is "One Thing" as Curly puts in the movie City Slickers, the movie about mid-life crisis, that will be the answer to my quest for happiness, and make me feel "alive" again.
I have to search for that "One Thing" within the constraints of my daily life because I cannot just drop everything in that quest and start anew like in a classic mid-life crisis script. I have responsibilities. I have reputation. Most importantly, I don't know for sure whether such action will lead me to the answer I am looking for or whether it will make bad things worse, and turn my misery into hopelessness. Given the risk-reward, I don't want to take such drastic action.
I have to work within my constraints to find the anti-dot to my misery. Addressing all the things that make me miserable at the same time is overwhelming. I need to tackle one at a time. The most important thing I need to fix at this time is my career. Actually, I don't have a career, just a job. I have a series of tasks I do. I don't feel excited about going to work because today is likely to be same as yesterday, tomorrow is going to be same as today. I have nothing to look forward to. Moreover, my contemporaries have either moved up or out in the past 10-15 years. So I don't have "buddies" at work. I really feel out of place at my work. I am amazed that I paid so much for doing so little. This means that I am at a very high risk of losing my job, which won't be the end of everything but would not be ideal. On the other hand, I don't see myself doing what I am doing now for next 15 years, I will go crazy.
So basically, I am looking for a career change. Ideally, I want to change to something that I can look forward to doing for the next 15-20 years. If I were to find a new job, I want to be part of a bigger endeavor, "I want to be in a team building a cathedral" Unfortunately, I don't think anyone will offer me such a job. First, I am hitting almost 50 and my resume has not improved commensurate with my age. As I said, my work is task-oriented meaning I do not have wider managerial responsibility. Nobody is looking to hire 50-year old do task oriented stuff because that's what recent college graduates are for. Second, I have very poor people skill, or what some people call an "introvert". That's probably why I did not have a dating life in my youth, and that's probably why I never had close friends. At my age, I need to be great at networking to find age-appropriate job but I definitely lack that skill. I don't even know where to start, whom to contact, and what to say.
Instead of looking at my resume and seeing what job I can find with experience, I probably need to turn on its head, and instead define an ideal job/career and try to attain it. Just off the top of my head, I want (1) flexibility i.e. I don't want to be tied to a location or be time bound; (2) decent paying (not looking to massive amount); (3) benefits if possible; (4) lot of room for progress; next year to better than this year; (5) lot of opportunity to met and network with like-minded people.
While I search for an ideal career for my age, I need to make my current job more palatable because I do not envision abandoning it voluntarily for nothing i.e. early retirement.
