You can spend 10 or 20 years ‘climbing the corporate ladder’ or working at a career, only to realise when you get there that it’s not what you wanted. It’s not fulfilling. It’s not where you want to be. It’s not enough. What do you do then?
Most people would react like a startled rabbit and do nothing. They don’t know what else to do. They don’t have a Plan B. So they keep pushing for more and more in the hope that eventually they will find something to fill the void. Normally the void filler takes the form of ‘stuff’. Many people think that buying stuff will make them happy, and that will compensate for their shitty work life. Really what they are doing is applying a BandAid to a broken arm.
They could just stop. They could say “Enough of this!” They could make a change.
But most people are afraid of change. Change might mean that they can’t afford as much. It might make it more difficult to make the mortgage payments or the car payments or mean that they have to change their standard of living. So they stick at whatever it is that isn’t making them happy and try to compensate with stuff.
If you are stuck in one of those unfulfilling careers don’t fall into the trap of looking elsewhere for relief. Fix what is broken. Change what isn’t working. However hard that may seem, it’s never as hard as spending dozens of hours every week working at something unfulfilling or that makes you miserable. We have long working lives. Forty years in a shitty job just to pay for a bigger house, flashier car, large TV and an annual holiday is an enormous price to pay. For me at least it’s too much.