Modelling mojo and state of mind

[Dava]

Thanks for the advice from folks who replied, I’m giving this serious thought. In 2022 I’ll have worked for 40 years which is a kind of landmark. My employer has a £6m shortfall this year which is likely to result in tight spending, income targets & survivor syndrome for folks who are left. If I go I don’t necessarily plan to retire immediately, other options may exist…

 

Dava

[Northmoor]

6 hours ago, Dava said:

Thanks for the advice from folks who replied, I’m giving this serious thought. In 2022 I’ll have worked for 40 years which is a kind of landmark. My employer has a £6m shortfall this year which is likely to result in tight spending, income targets & survivor syndrome for folks who are left. If I go I don’t necessarily plan to retire immediately, other options may exist…

 

Dava

I agree with others, if you have other (realistic) options, you're not really enjoying the role and your employer is offering to pay you to leave it, take the money.  I was in the same position ten years ago, where my redundancy (not severance) offer was considerably better than you're being offered and I had another job to go to.  

The "survivor syndrome" shouldn't be overlooked either.  The year before my redundancy, there had been another round in the same area of the business.  Quite a few of the "better" people (right or wrong, businesses do target individuals in redundancy programmes) who were kept on after the first round, left voluntarily for better jobs in the following year, as they now had all the work left behind from the leavers as well as their own.  Not surprising that they voted with their feet.

[Coldgunner]

Might not be ideal, but quite a lot of people take retirement then do some shelf stacking to top up the funds. No shame in it.

[97406]

I often wonder about starting  a little business doing resprays and detailing locos when I retire. I do find it a very absorbing and satisfying pastime, and also good for the state of mind. It’s still the best part of 10 years off though, at the moment.

[Phil Parker]

14 minutes ago, 97406 said:

I often wonder about starting  a little business doing resprays and detailing locos when I retire. I do find it a very absorbing and satisfying pastime, and also good for the state of mind. It’s still the best part of 10 years off though, at the moment.

 

It's absorbing and satisfying when you are doing it for yourself. Doing it as a business means time pressures, and if something goes wrong, you have to keep going. No walking away and taking a break. Also, you have to do what the customer wants, not what you might enjoy. Finally, you have to work out how much to charge, and that's the really difficult bit, especially if you plan to cover all of your overheads and not subsidise other people's hobby.

[Lemmy282]

22 minutes ago, 97406 said:

I often wonder about starting  a little business doing resprays and detailing locos when I retire. I do find it a very absorbing and satisfying pastime, and also good for the state of mind. It’s still the best part of 10 years off though, at the moment.

I did some respray work and re numbering for a local model shop some years ago. It was great to start with, I got to work on loads of different models that I could never possibly afford. After a few years though it got a bit waring, the constant time pressures, and doing what someone else wants.

I had initially thought of going solo, but in the end gave up the whole thing, my own modelling had stopped, when a hobby becomes a job it can lose it's appeal!

 

Nigel L

[john new]

36 minutes ago, 97406 said:

I often wonder about starting  a little business doing resprays and detailing locos when I retire. I do find it a very absorbing and satisfying pastime, and also good for the state of mind. It’s still the best part of 10 years off though, at the moment.

When I quit paid employment with paid off early retirement I was financially OK so took on voluntary work for the SLS that I (then) had the skills to do. It just seemed like working from home, but with a bit more free time between tasks, and less stringent deadlines.

 

That was fine for around 11 years, including re-skilling by taking a related media degree, until my wife also retired. The killer though after that 11 years was the IT/social media world had changed so  much in the intervening period post-degree that even more retraining was needed and suddenly it just seemed too much hassle when there was lots of other stuff to do together.

 

I am lucky, still OK financially, but if you are thinking you may need that new business for the money it might generate be very careful. The hard part of a start-up is chasing down leads to get the work, then invoicing, getting them to pay up, keeping the books and more. I am not saying don't do it but as other's have said when a hobby becomes work you can so easily loose the pleasures of it as a hobby!

[leopardml2341]

3 hours ago, Coldgunner said:

Might not be ideal, but quite a lot of people take retirement then do some shelf stacking to top up the funds. No shame in it.

If only you can get someone to employ an 'overqualified shelf stacker'.  I tried it a few years ago,  no-one would take me on as a professionally qualified engineer, they were so paranoid that I'd take a 'better' job as soon  as one came along despite the fact that I kept telling 'em all that it was a positive career change I was wanting to make for my own wellbeing. 

 

Go figure!

[Dava]

I think my career goal is to become an idle fellow. Shelf stacking is out. I did go to work today and spent a lunch hour making the campus more hedgehog friendly by joining a litterpick. The happiest person I met has got another job. Work is over-rated and I’d rather spend more time making things. Can see where this might be going.

 

Dava

[MrWolf]

2 hours ago, leopardml2341 said:

If only you can get someone to employ an 'overqualified shelf stacker'.  I tried it a few years ago,  no-one would take me on as a professionally qualified engineer, they were so paranoid that I'd take a 'better' job as soon  as one came along despite the fact that I kept telling 'em all that it was a positive career change I was wanting to make for my own wellbeing. 

 

Go figure!

 

I have had the same problem. I have been told straight to my face that I wouldn't be offered a position "because you'll just get bored and leave". The other problem is that some employers think that if you're highly qualified and experienced and want to take an unskilled job, you're a slacker who's afraid of responsibility or a mental breakdown case. I prefer to make things and work by myself as I suffer from CPTSD and tend to be somewhat intolerant of people with an attitude problem, such as passive aggressive lower management types.

[97406]

12 hours ago, 97406 said:

I often wonder about starting  a little business doing resprays and detailing locos when I retire. I do find it a very absorbing and satisfying pastime, and also good for the state of mind. It’s still the best part of 10 years off though, at the moment.

Thanks for the comments above. I think there’s a middle ground somewhere, and as much about keeping the mind active as bringing in a few extra quid. I struggle to sit down and just do nothing, or watch the telly, and I don’t see that changing, whilst mind and body permits! Having said that, my time and modeling mojo may be taken up with a larger layout, and a lot depends on how much the pensions end up being.

[Mark Saunders]

A lot of people rise to their level of incompetence and fear exposure if they take on someone who has experience and may expose this!

[leopardml2341]

7 hours ago, MrWolf said:

 

I have had the same problem. I have been told straight to my face that I wouldn't be offered a position "because you'll just get bored and leave". The other problem is that some employers think that if you're highly qualified and experienced and want to take an unskilled job, you're a slacker who's afraid of responsibility or a mental breakdown case.

 

.......and tend to be somewhat intolerant of people with an attitude problem, such as passive aggressive lower management types.

Agree entirely, including the example of the mental breakdown case (which incdentally I had the good fortune to survive) but I hope the term 'case' wasn't used by them too?

 

My 'then' employer even suggested to me, when I had the misfortune to experience a minor relapse whilst at work, that my relapse had had a negative impact on others around me! 

 

Needless to say I don't work for that bunch of f**kwits any longer.

[MrWolf]

11 minutes ago, leopardml2341 said:

Agree entirely, including the example of the mental breakdown case (which incdentally I had the good fortune to survive) but I hope the term 'case' wasn't used by them too?

 

My 'then' employer even suggested to me, when I had the misfortune to experience a minor relapse whilst at work, that my relapse had had a negative impact on others around me! 

 

Needless to say I don't work for that bunch of f**kwits any longer.

 

I was told (by the MD) "Whatevers wrong with you, it's no fault of ours!"

If that was so, why had my predecessor quit due to mental and physical exhaustion too? That was my resignation and I was already booked on a flight to Africa to work with an old friend on something that many people would have thought far too demanding.

A great cure for stress is the removal of the cause.

[woodenhead]

I used to suffer terrible stress from anxiety and I remember the palpable feeling of relief when I left the company that was providing most of it.  I was sat in the car when a wave washed over me as I realised my problems of yesterday were not my problems anymore.

 

I vowed to myself right then I would not let such a weight of stress ever build again and 22 years later I think I have managed quite well, of course there are still stressful life events but I don't carry them like I did.  The amount of time in my earlier years that I would be crippled with neck and back pain from stress and I couldn't see it until it had gone.

[john new]

The roller coaster ride is at it again, bad morning of constant phone calls, not nuisance/spam callers just constant and ringing my mobile because the land line is engaged - not knocked off the hook it was saying engaged because I was talking on it!

 

Fortunately although it is an awkward location (under the stairs cupboard) some floor sealing to do - gentle brush painting with PVA will be a good soother. Getting it done while the cupboard has been temporarily emptied for another reason. 

[john new]

44 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

cut ---.  The amount of time in my earlier years that I would be crippled with neck and back pain from stress and I couldn't see it until it had gone.

Is that stress to back pain link proven? If yes it could well explain problems I had in the early 1990s. 

[woodenhead]

18 minutes ago, john new said:

Is that stress to back pain link proven? If yes it could well explain problems I had in the early 1990s. 

It was for me, many occurrences during my time with the company, stopped when I left.  It was crippling pain, not helped by a hidden condition with my brain that wasn’t discovered until my early forties, but by then the stress related triggers had been resolved.  My brain cannot regulate the pressure within it so if I get stressed or my blood pressure is raised it can lead to problems.

 

I still don’t understand fully how I have managed it, but for the past 22 years I have managed to manage myself.  I agree high level objectives with my managers and they have let me get on with it.  I deliver what they want and get praise, it’s great!  However underneath I still suffer significantly with imposter syndrome but I am open about it now with people so they understand me.  
 

My current employer does a lot of mental health and employee wellbeing initiatives.  It was strange recently being on a Teams meeting with 50 peers all discussing how we suffered with imposter syndrome including heads of.

[Northmoor]

5 hours ago, leopardml2341 said:

Agree entirely, including the example of the mental breakdown case (which incdentally I had the good fortune to survive) but I hope the term 'case' wasn't used by them too?

 

My 'then' employer even suggested to me, when I had the misfortune to experience a minor relapse whilst at work, that my relapse had had a negative impact on others around me! 

 

Needless to say I don't work for that bunch of f**kwits any longer.

IME there are two types of people; those that have had a mental health problem and those that haven't (yet).

 

The problem with stress is that it builds so perniciously that you rarely notice it in yourself.   I remember feeling a huge sense of relief when my previously mentioned redundancy was confirmed; instead of wondering whether I was going to lose my job (which I didn't enjoy at all any more), the uncertainty had gone.  The next three years in the new job, however, brought a whole series of new stresses, mostly a workplace culture (Large US corporation with Alpha-male managers) I didn't get on with at all.  Working now for an employer that does talk about employees' mental health, it made me think back to my previous two employers and how at both, when I was being criticised for my perfomance - which wasn't without justification, I would have done the same in their position - at no time ever was I asked, "Are you OK?".  The thought simply didn't occur to them; the culture simply categorised people as Overperforming or Underperforming, there was no Satisfactory.

 

To be fair I consider I escaped from that corporate world with no more than a few light scars.  I know of one guy who died suddenly of a heart attack at 47; he had regularly been working 12 hour days (then driving home over an hour away), another who died with less than a year to go before retirement and a colleague who two years after I left, was signed off work for six months with stress.

 

It is always preferable to be a little poorer but healthier; pointless being a little richer but too short of time to spend the extra money on the things that help you relax. 

[woodenhead]

Following on from my last post, my wife was also becoming stressed from overly close supervision at work and not being able to manage herself.  She works in the NHS and at the start of COVID she began working from home.  With the distance from the office she has been able to negotiate more freedom and now manages her own workload and only goes into clinic for printed materials or some client visits.  The rest of the time she is either in a school or at home, she’s never been happier or more productive.

 

it seems to me that the greatest stress comes from how we are managed, call it empowerment or self management is the best way as you feel in control and not being controlled.

[MrWolf]

Poor management and whiz kids who come in to "streamline and make sweeping changes" are the bane of industry. Often the whiz kid leaves for his next step on the ladder with a glowing reference just before it's realised that the changes they've made are unsustainable.

As for alpha males, one job I had we got landed with a boy wonder who had come from a shiny ar5e job in the navy.

He was busy snapping at people like he was at least a rear admiral.

I managed to upset him by pointing out that he was now in civvy street and if he wanted to behave like he wasn't, he needed to remember that I outranked him.

That shut him up.

[leopardml2341]

1 hour ago, Northmoor said:

Working now for an employer that does talk about employees' mental health, it made me think back to my previous two employers and how at both, when I was being criticised for my perfomance - which wasn't without justification, I would have done the same in their position - at no time ever was I asked, "Are you OK?". 

Ditto, in fact my experience  with my current employer has also allowed me to train (and qualify) as a mental health first aider. My first hand experience of breakdown has been invaluable,  in a strange way I'm so pleased that I had the experience.  At my then employer, I kept being told its good to see you getting better; my response was that I hoped to be different rather than 'getting better'. Being different might prevent further lapse/relapse.  

 

 

1 hour ago, Northmoor said:

 

It is always preferable to be a little poorer but healthier; pointless being a little richer but too short of time to spend the extra money on the things that help you relax. 

Well said!

Edited November 13, 2021 by leopardml2341

[laurenceb]

The trouble with stress related pain is that it creeps up and you don't necessarily realise the cause until you are out of the situation that caused it

[Poggy1165]

The problem with stress and depression (and probably other m.h. issues that I know nowt about,)  is that they are insidious and sneak up on you. (This does not happen with a broken leg, for example.) You may be unaware you have them and/or you may be in denial until a crisis hits. As eventually, given the pressures of life in general and working life in particular, it almost certainly will.

 

My wife spotted I was ill (or nor right) months before I realised.  She kept telling me to take time off work, but I wouldn't, as I was convinced that there was either nothing wrong with me or it was just a low mood that would pass. I wasn't having time off with that! But if I had gone with her advice I might not have become as ill as I eventually did.

Edited November 13, 2021 by Poggy1165
completing bracket.

[96701]

4 hours ago, laurenceb said:

The trouble with stress related pain is that it creeps up and you don't necessarily realise the cause until you are out of the situation that caused it

It was about 3 months after a stressful situation that I realised just how stressful it had been.