In May 2012, I started a new job as a pub manager for a big company you might well have heard of. The shift pattern and expectation was gruelling - 5am starts, 12+ hour shifts and often not being able to take breaks. It was a culture shock having come from a small country pub but I felt I was meeting expectations.
Last summer, I had just finished a hectic week at the Henley Regatta and I was absolutely broken. Among other things,I was making silly mistakes and fixating on them. I couldn't relax, I would become tight chested and panicked. I saw my GP who defined my symptoms as a mixture of burnout, stress and depression. He prescribed me anti depressants which I put in a drawer in my desk at my parents house. They're still there, untouched.
A week before Christmas, I felt similar feelings returning. I couldn't function. I would burst into tears at home, in my car or in Tesco. This time, I was signed off work for a week. After getting home at stupid o'clock and sending a rambling email to my parents and girlfriend explaining my breakdown, I spoke to my boss.
Due to a mixture of the stigma/shame of being signed off of work with depression/work related stress and it being Christmas, I didn't take the time off as advised. Instead, I started to look for a new job.
I found one and gave my notice in six weeks ago. I am now almost two weeks into the training for my new job (manager of a coffee shop in a small but growing chain). It's intense, I'm having to adapt a skill set I have honed and refined over the last seven and a half years to a different environment and also become a fully fledged barista.
It's tough going - I've hardly seen my girlfriend recently as the training takes place in Central London and Hertfordshire but I am absolutely loving it. I've met my store manager and the other assistant manager and they both seem like lovely people. They both have coffee shop experience but I feel the training given to me by Wetherspoons will see me go very far in this company.
It took me a long time to realise that things didn't have to be like they were. I would miss family events, I lost my social life and my relationship with my girlfriend suffered greatly. I realised that if I wanted things to change then I would have to do it for myself and I put an incredible amount of time and effort into finding my new career. The amount of dead ends and knock backs I came across was at times soul destroying.
All in all, I feel very positive about the future and am going to be throwing myself, head first, into any more opportunities that come my way.
