I don’t know what to do, I feel I have quite a few issues but where I go job wise is I feel causing me stress and sleepless nights which is impacting my health.
I’m 40s Female based U.K.
Last year I split up with my husband, I got to stay in the house and we share our secondary school twins 50/50
I got a business studies degree and PGCE and a few years work experience as a Data Analyst for financial firm but this was around 14-20 years ago (the only tool used then was Excel, Access and some SQL).
I was not particularly enamoured with corporate life and decided to focus on family life when I had my twins - I didn’t go back after maternity leave.
I provided admin support for my then husbands business plus did private tuition on a 1-1 basis mainly Maths GCSE. I also kept up my skills in office (had a subscription to MSOffice and learned the new functions / features when released).
Last year my ex-husband went into partnership with someone and they already had an accountant providing all admin support. So that meant no job for me. I very luckily managed to get an admin role for a local company based on my experience with my exs company.
However it is temporary and is minimum wage which isn’t financially viable for me really. The job is fairly basic and repetitive and not really enjoyable as it’s all remote and no one really chats or interacts with me. They have bespoke systems so my experience with them isn’t really transferable as well as hard to learn as there are no standard operating procedures. I asked if they wanted me to produce some documentation for the system and it was a hard no.
I have looked into options for upskilling and I feel like my brain just is too stupid (peri menopause may not be helping). I used to think I was reasonably intelligent but when I’ve looked into the skills even entry level data analysts need these days it’s just so overwhelming. I’ve looked at Power BI (free trial), followed free online training, read lots and still find it very confusing. I looked at sql and im ok with the basics but when I look at more advanced functions and stored procedures it just seems beyond my comprehension. It doesn’t help that I find it hard to learn without a real context and also hard to learn something without a specific problem to solve. I think maybe I’m just not intelligent enough to do this kind of job ? I have got to work for the next 16 years and need to earn £30k a year really but don’t know how to even aim for this ?
I think I would feel better if I even had a realistic plan so if you can help me formulate this I would be very grateful 🙏