Hi,
I am hoping someone can help me with some career advice.
I have been thinking for a while of changing careers and, like a lot of other people, the pandemic really helped me get my priorities straight. I work in production management in TV (please cast aside any visions you have of a glamorous telly job, its largely admin and paperwork based and I am chained to a desk for 8+ hours a day...) In terms of duties/skills, the work itself involves: coordinating travel and accommodation, arranging work permits and visas, managing databases, liaising with suppliers, reconciling credit cards and petty cash, communicating with multiple departments and team members, amongst other things. But it also involves essentially being 'on call' regardless of the time of day to answer largely pointless questions that could have been answered by the caller reading an email, having people call you up to slag off other team members for increasingly petty reasons, being given a cripplingly unrealistic workload with little to no support, and generally being worn down until you burnout and can't cope and cry at everything and end up posting to strangers on the internet in the desperate hope they may be able to offer some advice.
During the pandemic I was able to work from home, which suited me perfectly for a number of reasons - namely that I have quite bad anxiety and found working from home reduced the number of panic attacks / trouble breathing / general sense of doom that I would experience near-daily when having to commute to London. I was also terrified of catching Covid/general germs from public transport which WFH obviously avoided. As my job is largely done at a laptop, WFH worked perfectly and I have managed to stay employed throughout the pandemic in this way (I work freelance on PAYE fixed-term contracts).
The other two things to mention is that I have recently moved house to a more rural location (which means commuting to work on the train would involve a long drive to the station, paying for parking, the cost of the train ticket, and a longer train journey - 2 hours door to door). And lastly, I have two six month old kittens who I don't want to leave for more than a few hours at a time (I don't have anyone who would be able to watch them). Commuting would mean leaving around 7.30am and not getting home until 8pm earliest (later if I had to stay late which I would be expected to do the majority of the time, based on what the office was like pre-pandemic).
I have recently been told that it is more than likely that I will be expected to go into the office for 2-3 days a week going forward and that WFH full time is no longer an option. I am absolutely gutted and cannot describe to you the speed at which my anxiety shot through the roof at learning this. The thought of being out of the house for 12+ hours a day with nowhere to go if my anxiety is bad makes me feel sick.
What I am asking you in an incredibly roundabout way is - based on the job duties above, does anyone please have any recommendations of a career that I could look to changing to that would permit me to work from home full time? Either a specific job or a company that works fully remotely? I have read that lots of people who leave production management go on to working in HR - is that something that could be done remotely? I have Googled it but am getting a bit lost and don't really know what to search for. I am open to a complete career change at this stage as realistically I do not feel as though the path I am on is sustainable, I don't enjoy it nor have any desire to do this until retirement (I am 33), and life is too short to be this unhappy for so many hours a week.
I'm sorry for the long post, but I am getting to the stage where I am so unhappy and have so much anxiety about the idea of going back into the office, I am so so desperate and would really appreciate any career advice you might have.
Thank you in advance to anyone who might be able to help.
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