by Kris Dyer
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20 October 2022
Choosing Happy Work: My Journey So Far It's not uncommon to feel unhappy in your current job. In fact, according to a Gallup poll, only 13% of people worldwide are engaged in their work. So if you're one of the 87% who isn't, it might be time to consider a change. I am all too familiar with that feeling of Monday morning dread, and despite knowing that I was unhappy, it took a lot of willpower to pull myself out of the situation. A big part of finding happiness stems from self-reflection. You need to know what makes you happy to go out there and obtain it for yourself, and that was a central theme when I was trying to put together this blog. What makes me happy? My interest in media stems from a love for theatre. Not only did I love watching productions, but I also loved being in them. I feel that, paradoxically, I have strengths in places I have weaknesses. For example, whilst I’ve always struggled with traditionally academic things, English was a strong suit of mine, and I was good at spelling despite learning difficulties. Throughout my childhood, this passion only grew. My interest spored into the broader world of production, and my focus shifted from onstage to offstage. I became fascinated with the typical backstage crew work and media studies at school. Uni was a really happy time, and my course allowed me the scope to experiment with mixed media and touch on a broad range of options within the field instead of just one thing. I am an indecisive person, and whilst it was incredible to see all the different avenues available to me, it was slightly confusing, and I struggled to find a focus. I'm still unsure if it was a positive thing- being overwhelmed by choice, but I did glean a bunch of technical skills from it. Music, Audio and video editing seemed to be where my talents lay, so I figured there was no better place to start than that. So, I threw myself into freelancing. Or tried to. As I discovered, Audio and Visual services is a very competitive field, and I found it impossible to get into it without a fully organised portfolio. So, due to the lack of response, I got discouraged. Very discouraged, and I lost a lot of confidence quite quickly. This chapter of my life is a weird one to write about, but it marks a fundamental and essential turning point. Honestly, this post-uni portion of my life felt very dark. I felt like I was in a metaphorical hole, and I battled for a good year and a half to get back out of it. Something that felt necessary was to be gentle with myself, so I mustered up the courage to take a job in a pub and tried to strip everything in my life back to the basics. I focused all of my time on finding joy. I made music, went on walks, and let these healthy activities consume hours of my day. That time was quite surreal for me, but I believe that it marked a turning point in my personal development, and I reached a point where I was ready to explore my career development again. My first role after the pub was everything that I needed at the time. It was a blend of retail and sales, but the easy kind. The company specialised in technology, and the brand we stocked effectively sold itself because most people who walked through the door wanted to play with the products or had the intention to purchase. I felt a bit of a sales buzz because I was outselling all the other staff, even when it came to the harder-to-shift items. Reflecting as I write this blog, I think the key for me to selling was just authenticity. I was never pushy, and because I was interested in tech, it was easy to convert my passion into enthusiasm. After all, you want to share your passion with people. The boost this role gave me spurred me to climb the career ladder again, and I landed a position with a rental car company that a friend from uni recommended. This role was a natural next step for many reasons, and I was thrilled with my career's direction. I no longer had to work weekends, I was earning well, and it felt like an 'adult job'. It also exposed me to entry-level marketing, and we had free license to create social media responses. There were also weekly competitions and a recurring ask-the-audience feature that would pose questions like ‘what are your number one road trip songs,' and we’d come up with puns off the back of that. Looking back, I consider those online responses as my baptism into social media. In addition, this company felt safe and familiar because my dad had worked in the same building 20 years earlier, under a different part of the brand umbrella. I also built close friendships with the people in my team. However, things turned slightly sour, and job insecurity turned into a somewhat toxic work environment. As people worried their departments would be cut, they became more competitive. My only reprieve from it was when the national lockdown forced everyone to work from home. Despite all the negative things happening worldwide, I loved working from home. There was no negativity aside from occasionally during work calls, where I would start to experience the daunting feeling that I was so desperate to get away from. But typically, the calls were fine. I could focus on my tasks better because I was physically out of a toxic environment with negative memories. However, inevitably, we shifted back toward an office environment, and I was forced to face my workplace reality. As much as I enjoyed the role, to begin with, my job had become draining, and I lacked motivation because there were so many bad experiences and memories, and I felt I couldn’t do my work properly. My output never fully returned to its optimal level in that role. So, having tried many things and gained career confidence, I returned to the drawing board again. I was genuinely interested in Marketing at that point and was keen to break into it, so when the head of social media left, I spoke to the head of marketing about taking over his role. Whilst I wasn't turned down, I was told there was a hiring freeze due to the lockdown, but people around me were getting hired, and it felt like a palm-off. So I decided to leave once again and have a fresh start. I wasn't entirely sure what was next, but I knew I wanted to move back into something that made me happy. I didn't mind if it was something I loved- like helping people or stripping it right back to the creative things that had bought me so much joy. It didn't take long for a solution to present itself. On my annual holiday that I take with my old school friends, I began chatting with a good friend. We talked about everything from my job concerns to what the future held, and when he started telling me about the skills gap in his business, my face lit up. It immediately felt like a way out, and I was so relieved. A helping hand reaching down into that metaphorical hole, so to speak. Since coming on board, it still took a while to carve out a role in which I was truly happy, but I did get there. When I initially joined, there was a lot of learning about systems, and I was the marketing account manager for one of our smaller accounts and started doing a lot of business development. Although it has been a journey, I truly feel that I am well on my way to happy work.