Cold Hard Feelings
Like the snowflake, no one person's story is the same as another. In mine, you'll find a winding road with twists and turns that led me here; sitting down, talking about it.
Cold Hard Feelings
Breaking Free: My Journey Through Career Change and Personal Growth
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Sometimes walking away is the bravest choice you can make. After dedicating over eight years to a warehouse management position, I found myself trapped in an unsustainable cycle of overperformance and underappreciation that was slowly draining my spirit. What began as a fulfilling career where I thrived as a supervisor gradually transformed into a daily burden where giving 120% became the normalized expectation.
The turning point arrived unexpectedly. In the aftermath of my grandmother's passing, a mysterious illness left me bedridden - as though my body was physically expelling years of accumulated stress. This moment of forced pause became the clarity I needed to recognize it was time for change. Despite the security of familiarity and the uncertainty of starting over, I gathered the courage to pursue a new opportunity that has since transformed my relationship with work.
This raw, unedited episode marks my return to podcasting after an extended absence. I share the unfiltered reality of recognizing when to leave a situation that no longer serves you, the physical toll of workplace stress, and finding the strength to prioritize wellbeing over comfort. For anyone feeling trapped in a similar situation - dreading each workday before it even begins - this episode offers both validation and encouragement that better possibilities await when you honor your worth. Have you ever had to walk away from something comfortable to save yourself? Share your experience or thoughts on this episode - I'd love to hear your story.
Check out my episodes, and if you like what you hear, give me a shout out and spread the word!
What about now? Am I loud or what's going on? It's a little bit louder, but it's not like how it used to be. What if I set it to 10? Would that do anything? No, not really. Okay, I'm gonna set it here. Okay, everybody, welcome back to Cold, hard Feelings.
Speaker 1:And I know it's crazy. I've been gone for quite some time. I've been gone for a while and something hit me today. I'm like you know what? I just am gonna record something. I don't know how long this accord is gonna go, but I can tell you that I have no idea what episode this is. What I'm gonna talk about.
Speaker 1:Um, I guess the main thing is just, there have been a lot of issues recently, a lot of things I've had going on in my life and, uh, you know, not everything has been easy. It hasn't been peachy, you know, uh, not. A lot of things have been going my way recently, but I'm still here, I'm still kicking, you know, still recording. Um, my girl left. Uh, I've changed jobs. Um, I've been feeling pretty sick recently, not like, you know, um, like the flu or anything, but like, kind of like that like, oh, something's wrong type of you know sick. There's nothing like life-threatening that I know about. I still feel pretty good, still going to the gym, you know, still making content. What's this popping up here? Razor Synapse? Yeah, so you know a number of things have happened. You know you can't stop life from happening. I'm not trying to, just trying to see how it all turns out. You know, sorry for the creaky chair. You know I need to get a new one eventually. I used to play a lot of League of Legends so I was sitting in this thing for hours upon hours upon hours, for days upon days upon days. So, yeah, forgive me for that. Yeah, this is just going to be kind of a quick one. There's not really a lot for me to talk about.
Speaker 1:I guess we could start with jobs changing. I guess the first thing about the job changing was I was in the job I was in for about eight and a half years. I was doing warehouse work and I started off, you know, making boxes for people in our shipping department, our shippers, and I worked my way up through management to being a supervisor in the outbound department and, as nice as it was, I enjoyed every minute of it. I enjoyed having my different crews, different people coming in and out. You know learning as much as I could, being able to give off some of my things that I've learned to people. It was great for a long time. Eventually, I ran into some hiccups, like you know management above me changing, like higher management changing and, you know, bringing in their new ideals and opinions which may or may not have been in line with the way the company was and how things are being run, um, which, you know, isn't always a bad thing, but in this case it was. Um, there were a lot of things that were done and were said and they weren't really the the best, but hey, you know, uh, we made it. Uh.
Speaker 1:One of the things too about this is I need to definitely record a lot more, because I've got a lot of like brain fog just from not recording and not talking about something having a topic. So bear with me Just going to give just the pure adulterated version of this next episode. I think I'm just going to just release this. I know it's crazy. I'm not even going to edit this. I don't even really have the mental energy to edit this. I'm not even going to edit this. I don't even really have like the mental energy to edit this and I apologize to everyone for it sounding kind of, you know, lull and melodramatic and just not up to a lot of people's standards. But you know what? The best part about this was that I got off my couch, turned YouTube off and actually just started recording. So not really much wrong I can say about this.
Speaker 1:Um, but back to what I was talking about, um, my job. So I was working as a supervisor. I was a supervisor for about four and a half years and I had some new management. Um, I would say we changed managers like three times. We changed directors like twice, and the second time we changed director it was just the most negative change I could have embraced and I dealt with it for a while.
Speaker 1:I did a lot for the company. I gave my best foot and put my best foot forward. I gave it 110% and continued to do so. But the problem was that eventually I was just being taken advantage of and giving 110, 115, 120% kind of became the normal. 110, 115, 120% kind of became the normal and it was expected of me to give 120%. And I forgot what a hundred percent felt like.
Speaker 1:I forgot what you know, my, my lull days of a hundred percent, 90% were like, and so anytime I dip to regularly a hundred percent, that I was giving my all for um, then it was you're not doing enough, you need to pick it up. You're not working to my standards, which was still, believe it or not, above and beyond everyone else in leadership at the time. And that was fine, because I'm a go-getter, I love to work hard, I love to have criticism, I love for someone to tell me that it's not enough in some cases, because if, if I have anything left in the tank, then I didn't give it my all Right. So I love to push and push and push harder, but the or should I say, constructive criticism, it just becomes criticism in a way that you can do no right in their eyes. And that's kind of what it got to.
Speaker 1:And I was starting to feel the effects, you know, mentally, physically, and you know, and it just I was just dreading. Every day I was going to work. I used to love the job and I began waking, waiting, just I was ready for the day to be over before I woke up in the morning and that was just not something I wanted to continue doing. I did not enjoy, you know, feeling like that. You know, and I'm not I know I'm not the only person on the planet that feels like that, you know. But what I did do was decide to make a positive change.
Speaker 1:So the first thing was talking to people, you know, in my, my, my colleagues, you know others in management with where there's a step below me, a step above me, cause you never want to take that to your team. But I was asking him. You know, like, what their thoughts were on. You know the higher up management. You know what my performance was like. Um, you know how they viewed me as a, as a leader. Um, you know how my role was and I got a lot of feedback like oh, you know, you're doing a great job. There's just a couple of things you could tweak.
Speaker 1:Some say I should be meaner. Some people say I should be a little bit less relaxed. Some people say that, you know, if it wasn't for me, the company would have burned down by now, you know. So you know it was a lot of a lot of M flow and I enjoyed it. I was happy to talk to them about it, but eventually it all came down to me really having to sit down and talk to myself about it. You know, talk to my therapist, talk to you know, to anybody who was willing to listen, and I think that's something that we struggle with. I say we, but us, as human beings, we struggle with talking about things that are bothering us and asking for help. And I get it. I don't like asking for help, but I did this time and eventually I decided that the next thing I need to do is just take some time, self-reflect, look at how my days are, how I'm feeling, and I decided that it was not my best interest to stay there. Unfortunately, this is back in fe of this year. Unfortunately, during the time that I was thinking about this, my grandmother also passed. So do everything that I wanted to do in this lifetime, and if I were to stay in that job another week, I would be 90 years old. Thinking man, I should have just left earlier.
Speaker 1:Always say that I don't want to live with regrets, and you know that's almost impossible, but what I don't definitely don't want to do is live my life wishing that I had done something in a different manner. Not like, cause, I understand, you know, when I get to a certain point, you know like, and you can't really regret things because you made the decision to do one thing or another. But I just don't want to get through the end of my life having made the decisions and knowing and finding out that they were the wrong ones. My life is just so terrible now. It's so crap now. No, I don't do that. But you know, I don't want to get to the end of the road and say, man, the decision was wrong. Oh well, you know, that's not what I want for my life.
Speaker 1:So after my grandma passed, I kind of was ready to start taking a look towards myself and really asking just what do I do? So I was starting to pray. I was asking God, what do I? I need a sign, please give me a sign that says whether or not I should stay at this job or not. And, funnily enough, on the way back from the funeral, I was like fading in and out, like I got so sick. I had like a minor cold, but I got so sick. I mean, I couldn't breathe, I was sweating bullets and I laid down on the couch and I woke up like six hours later and I was just, I could barely move, I was, my muscles were aching and everything, and it felt like all the stress that I had felt just in general had just like been pressed and pressed from my body and like the weight of it was all just expunged. And I took that right there as it's time to start over, right.
Speaker 1:And so I I emailed a another job that had been looking for me to show up for a bit and I was ready to schedule an interview as soon as I got better. And I scheduled the interview and I got the job and I went into my old job and told them I was putting in my two weeks and you know they freaked out for a bit, but I like to believe that they survived. They did. Obviously, you know I wasn't the herald of the place. The place wasn't standing on its foundation because of me, right, but I did tell them, yeah, I found another job, I can't say where I didn't want to have any bad ties. They wrote me a card with a bunch of signatures and stuff, which was really awesome.
Speaker 1:But it was time to move on and I did and, uh, I am much, much happier, much better off for it. Um, but you know there are always going to be ups and downs. You know, no job is perfect. So I mean, I've had my my downs there, I've had my ups there, you know, um, but I'm still learning it. I'm enjoying it a lot.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, I'm not really sure I can, you know, mention what I do and all that stuff. I mean, I can talk about what I do, I guess you know, but uh, I don't know what all the legal aspects to that are, so I'm not going to mention anything. But I am very happy in my job and, uh, I actually wake up every morning wondering how busy I can get, how good I can make the company. Um, you know, and just keep being me. You know, can't let anything take that away from me. You guys can't let that take, can't let anything like that be taken away from you. And, yeah, I promise I'm going to start trying to get better at the uploads here, but it's been a wild ride for the past couple months and I'll cover it as time goes on.
Speaker 1:The thing about these is that I don't really make these based on how well they do. I'm super new, nobody knows me that type of thing, which is fine, you know, I'm not super worried about it. Um, this is going to be kind of like my, my audio journal and I'm just kind of like sharing it with the world. I guess, um, yeah and uh, I hope you guys like it and uh, if not, let me know to just not do that type of content. Don't tell me to stop, I'm not going to stop, but, um, you know, if there's something you'd rather me talk about, any types of things you want advice on, or anything, just let me know, uh, in the comments. If you're on YouTube, um, send me a message on whatever platform you're listening on or not, and just wait for the next one Later. Thank you.