Starting Again, Part 1: Misery Marks the Need for Change

A series outlining a career gone bad (and the eventual changes made to begin setting it right)

In February, my professional career turned nine, the entirety of which I spent working as a writer in marketing and PR. And for every one of those nine years, I was miserable. 

The misery surprised me when it first showed up, at the very beginning, just a few months into my first job post-graduation. Degree in hand, I moved from northern Indiana to Nashville, Tenn. with $700 left in my bank account after paying my first month’s rent. I only had two job interviews lined up but a whole lot of fresh-faced belief that everything would work out in my favor. I was convinced the city would give me more options or, at the very least, options beyond what I thought possible at home.

Where I grew up, most people, including the Amish I hailed from, worked in the local RV factories save for the few who farmed or ran their own businesses, often in the woodworking vein. Employment in the RV factories was grueling work that rollercoastered from booming markets and six-figure paychecks to mass layoffs and shuttered factory plants. The rhythms repeated and those unaware of the industry’s curves struggled to stay fed and keep their homes when the bottom inevitably dropped out.  

I wanted something different so I gambled on continuing my education past the 8th grade as my family teetered on the brink of leaving the Amish church. A year or two into high school, I started considering college and once I aimed for it, I put all of my teenage hope into a degree and a distant city. 

About a month after moving from Indiana to Tennessee, I received a job offer from a marketing agency. I said yes without even taking a breath, desperate to be done with the loneliness of having no work in a strange city where I didn’t know anyone. The role started me off as a client coordinator with the promise of writing work once I learned the ins and outs of my initial responsibilities. I was ecstatic. I thought my life was about to begin, that I had completed step one of making it, whatever making it meant. 

But oh so quickly the thrill wore off.

Just a few months in, the workplace revealed itself to be no different from what I thought I was escaping by leaving home. It was the same exhausting hamster wheel of work I watched so many get stuck in back home. Added to it were impossible office politics I couldn’t grasp let alone navigate, cruel clients who yelled at and belittled me over the phone, men who said the terrible and cruel things out loud, favoritism I somehow always landed on the outside of, and so much pressure to conform to a staggering ideal of the workplace woman. I was terrified of messing up or saying the wrong thing or looking stupid. Once in a staff meeting, everyone laughed along with the CEO when he randomly piped up, “Angelina—what does she even do?” 

Looking back, I can see just how incredibly naive I was. But in that same look back, I also feel so much tenderness and compassion for my younger self who entered the workplace with such an earnest belief that something better was out there and that she’d be able to contribute in a meaningful way if just given the chance to find and align herself to it.

At the time though, I felt like I had been duped. Tricked. I couldn't believe I had gone tens of thousands of dollars in debt just to end up someplace like that. I railed against anything and anyone I could blame. I cried on the way to work and again on the way home. During lunch, I’d drive to a park or sit under a tree and cry some more. I thought maybe I’d feel better and that work would get better if I got a job somewhere else but the disappointment followed. Disappointment turned to misery turned to depression so I quit my job and tried doing freelance work full-time. The depression lessened but the misery stayed. I found that I simply hated the work I was doing but I couldn’t see a way out. To cope, I refused to admit it and kept trying to find a way to be at peace with it.

A few years later, early in the pandemic, I left another job to try freelance full-time again. During that season, I began collaborating with a friend and former colleague to concept and design her own PR firm. 

Months of planning and building led to a dream role within a dreamy company that should have had me settling in for life. And for a brief period, I thought maybe I would. My pay was much higher than ever before, and I gained the flexibility, remote work, and unlimited PTO I had always craved. Just the two-week holiday shut-down, three weeks of paid sabbatical every year, and eventual 4-day work week alone should have made the job worth it. But somehow, despite all this plus getting to lead a team and assist in building a business from the ground up alongside someone I liked and respected, I was still wildly unhappy. Less than a year into the new business, I told my friend just how miserable I was. 

Over the next several years, it became a conversation we repeated many times, often leading to changes like incorporating our beloved annual three-week sabbaticals and moving to a 4-day work-week model. But rather than satiate my unhappiness, the increased margin for my personal life stood in even starker contrast to how unhappy I was at work. 

It was time to say the hard thing out loud, the truth that I had always suspected but was terrified of admitting: to find myself still riding waves of depression despite being in a much healthier workplace with equitable pay, coworkers AND clients I respected and admired, generous benefits, and loads of flexibility meant that the final variable—the actual work I was doing—also had to change. 

For nine years I had honed in on that one specific skill—writing in the marketing/PR landscape. I wasn’t even sure I could do anything else. I thought about I could pivot to another context or industry as a writer but doing so still meant starting over, starting at some type of bottom. Could I stand to do that again? Could our budget? I didn’t even know if I wanted to keep writing for other people or for projects that weren’t my own. 

I had so many questions and so much fear. Like: how the hell did I get here? Did I just waste nine years of my life? Did I miss my chance? Oh shit, was I too late to my own life??

It would take burnout rage, several personal vows, a simple reframe from a friend’s husband, and a few more years’ time to help me answer all the questions and prepare for a full-body yes when that one juicy opportunity to pivot and start again arrived. 

Next week: my burnout year and how burnout rage served as a clarifier.

To keep reading, click here for part two.