The Unfulfilled Zillennial

Stage set

The set-up for my most transformative year in 2022 was this: having been at my company for 2.5 years, 3 role changes and 1 promotion, I was already feeling disengaged. The sentiment had started to set in after my two week holiday in late summer 2021 when, rather than feeling energised and renewed upon my return to work (as I normally would after a break), I simply sat and stared out the window above my computer screen at the blue sky of a sunny september day and resented to be kept inside with my computer. 

In January one of my best friends ‘ER’ suggested that this year she and her boyfriend were planning to move to Australia, which frankly stopped me in my tracks with jealousy. Wasn’t that my dream? Twice I had restrained myself from jetting off with my australian passport and a one-way ticket to prioritise the security of attaining defined ‘success’, whether that be jumping straight into my degree from school or securing a post-graduate job (albeit one that paid 5.5k below the London living wage at that time). Here I was 3.5 years later, engaged in the London rat race without even a vague timeline to go to Australia. 

One of my best friend’s Dad died from an extremely sudden and short illness, and I was confronted with the fragility of life and how quickly  it can change direction. My housemate GB was dragging herself through shifts in the emergency department with sole focus set on her backpacking trip to SE Asia, tantalisingly suggesting to me that I could join her whenever I voiced grievance with my work or general routine. 

The kindling

At the time I was working in the eCommerce marketing team of a large consumer goods company. Marketing plastic pens, specifically. The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns had brought on 2 years of huge growth for eCommerce and my team’s business had been no exception. It was extremely jarring to hear that our 2022 sales target was to be another huge double-digit growth in the face of much lower covid levels and no lockdowns, with many consumers returning to shopping in store. Everyday my eCommerce managers asked for ‘blue sky thinking’ ideas and plans to plug the gap to the target. I suppose this was meant to manage the team’s stress levels by collectively acknowledging that the target was incredibly high, and that the plan required to reach it fell outside of regular process. All the same, this required the team to plan towards the impossible target, to give 120% effort towards catching up (because we were of course behind from week 1), to constantly stretch my mind and research new avenues to come up with the most creative, outrageous and unlikely plans to meet the target. I found it a completely unsustainable way to work. I was feeling totally stressed and isolated, waking up on a Monday morning scared of how overwhelmed I would feel until Friday afternoon, when I would drink myself to oblivion to forget all about it.

The spark

“How is it you feel about what you do?” So earnestly my therapist asked me this small, simple question that completely blew open my mind and kick-started me to completely pivot my life in 2022. I can’t actually remember, so I can only assume that I was ranting about work, how stressed I was and how angry at the senior leaders I felt for putting the team under such pressure. No one had ever asked me specifically what I felt about what I did, which was to market to consumers to buy as many plastic pens as possible to the profit benefit of my company and the largest eCommerce marketplace in the world. I had myself always viewed my job as ‘good’, as it fulfilled various markers of ‘success’ as I had learned to define it throughout my life – namely that I earned a good salary. Yet in the moments after this question was posed I was able to unravel that I actually did not emotionally endorse my own job at all, primarily because I knew that consumerism is bad for the environment. Herein began full on burnout through the symptom of apathy, as I realised that I was enduring such high levels of stress for something that I actually did not give a toss about or believe in. Some might tell me that with more maturity or experience, I would have been able to better manage my stress, to let the target roll off my back, to do my best and deflect those who tried to ask for more and collect my paycheck. I know in my heart however that this is not me, that my greatest strengths are my passion and enthusiasm, and I want to spend the time of  my one life in a way that is authentic to me and my interests.

It was after my next session with my therapist, in which we discussed my passions, interests and what an authentic life with a job I deemed worthwhile and interesting might look like, when the second most pivotal conversation of my year took place. My team Director rang to inform me that a manager position had been approved within the team, for me to apply for a promotion and pay rise. At that moment my heart sank, and the director even commented that I did not greet her news with the enthusiasm she had anticipated. In that moment that the promotion was made available to me I knew with 100% clarity that it was not what I wanted. For a job that I didn’t really believe in or agree with, there was not a salary in the world that would make me happy to give up all my daylight hours Monday-Friday anchored to a desk inside, spending the majority of my free time completing life admin, commuting and feeling exhausted from work. I harbour a flickering belief that there must be more to life than this. 

So I resigned, and I entered into a whole new life, one which was not dominated by reaching the end of the academic year or attaining the next promotion. One in which I must find new ways to define and attain ‘success’. More to say on that in 2022 pt. 2 …