I've been a long time viewer of these forums, and have found some of the responses from the community insightful and helpful, thought I'd put in my own current situation to share and maybe seek others thoughts on it.
After spending a number of years trying to break into the media and broadcast industry and finding it too competitive for my tastes, I fell into call centre work as a means of earning a wage. Twenty five years later, it's basically my entire work experience portfolio. In 2019 I suffered a nervous breakdown and fell into major depression which was diagnosed by my psychiatrist from the old school of psychiatry of "give prescription first, ask questions later." I knew in 2017 something was definitely wrong with my mood but my pleas for help were feeble and mostly ignored with the usual "don't worry about it, you'll be fine" rhetoric people who don't understand depression give you.
My job went from full-time to part-time to casual to the point I had to resign when my depression became so overwhelming the first five minutes of my start of the day was filled with absolute loathing and anger. The repetitive nature of call centre work only added to a sense of hopelessness. I spent about 9 months off work then acquired a work from home job. At first I thought it was the sort of change I needed. But it only took about 2 months for me to realise how much I hated this line of work, and me in it, and wondered why the hell I was still working in such a high turnover industry that I'd been stuck in since 1996. What the hell have I been doing with my life?
I've been on financial hardship since June 2022 now. At the moment I am planning to sell my home. I am on medication which has been a life saver in keeping calm about things. However I seem to just be stuck. I have been involved with an online community I talk to every day about life, who have been supportive for the most part.
But the depression part of me wishes these problems would just "go away". I have a huge job cleaning and preparing my house for sale, but all my identity wants now is for the world to leave me alone in my safe space, and it's really hard to find a way to crawl out of it. The problem is I don't really have a choice. I'll need to sell soon to ensure I recover debts. I'm thinking of reskilling into TAFE. I'm just stuck right now, and it's really tough.
