I love my job but it's really fast paced and I'm finding that as I get into my mid-forties I am really struggling to keep up. I've always had the sorts of jobs in the public and voluntary sector where I'm covering lots of different issues, having to prioritise and reprioritise my time depending on what happens and basically keep all the plates spinning without anything crashing down. I am now in a senior management role working with people across the organisation who have different priorities and who want to make different demands on my time, as well as having my own priorities that me and my team are responsible for delivering. I'm paid about £55K per year, which I am beginning to think is not enough for the amount of pressure and responsibility. I used to think I thrived on this, but now I am finding that all of my energy is going into my job and I have nothing left in the evenings or weekends for my friends and family. Friday evenings are a write off, and Saturdays are normally spent feeling burnt out and exhausted and even when I take annual leave it feels like it takes at least a week to start to feel normal again (I feel like I have to do twice as much work in the weeks running up to annual leave to cover the time I will be off, and I still come back to a mountain of emails to catch up on). I no longer feel like I can keep this up for another 10-20 years especially as I am beginning to experience symptoms of perimenopause, but we also really depend upon my income so stopping working is not an option either.
I am beginning to consider other career options and am wondering if the civil service would give me more flexibility and less pressure without a big pay cut? Is there any chance of getting into the private sector at this age? Is it normal in those sectors to work at this pace all the time? I read about people on here who have really busy periods at work, but that is compensated by relatively quiet periods where they can deal with personal appointments and take things a bit more easily. Is that common? It feels like my job could have that natural ebb and flow but because of limited resources additional responsibilities are piled on to people until they are working full pelt all the time.
YABU - this level of stress and pressure is normal and you just need to suck it up or take a big pay cut
YANBU - this level of stress and pressure is not normal, you should have energy left to enjoy your weekends so start looking for alternative work
(Name change in case linking this to past posts is outing)