What am I going to do??

Noah had indeed slept in and missed his college bus - I roused him and proceeded to prepare myself for the drive to Guisborough. Ian gave me a warning that the dog had shat on the rug again through the night. He had cleaned it up, but the rug was still damp – He’d placed his size 11 croc over it as a marking point.  I shoved the dog outside with a “have a good fucking think about your behaviour.”  It’s the 4^th time in less than 2 weeks and I’m starting to think he’s doing it for a laugh.

It’s one of those fresh, dewy, mornings where the glare of the low sunshine where you just have to hope for the best at roundabouts. I missed the first turning towards Guisborough, and Noah instantly reassured me it was ok. I’ve noticed he’s aware of my distracted mind and edginess. The student was dumped on the side of the road as I caused great annoyance to at least 3 other drivers and literally couldn’t care less. I drove home in silence, with the nagging question I seem to be carrying with me everywhere lately… What the fuck am I going to do with my life?

It’s relentless. Like that final crossword clue I just can’t fathom or losing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle after weeks of it taking up space on the dining table - I’m now so sick of the seeing the picture I just want to finish the damn thing, box it up and give it to charity.

The Monday scaries are here (my work week starts Tuesday). As I fix the cushions on the sofa, chuntering about the amount of fucking dog hair that is everywhere (seriously, it’s probably going to send me over the edge one day) I can feel this nervousness in my gut – It’s demand avoidance. I just don’t want to go to work.

Poor Ian gets to play counsellor and careers coach at least twice a week. I swing from rage to overwhelmed and exhausted tearfulness. He tried to tell me recently that work should be something… hang on, I need to get this somewhere near right… it was something about the fact work isn’t an enjoyable thing but we just kind of go through the motions and get it done. I looked at him and said “No! I absolutely want to love my job. I want to bounce out of bed most mornings super excited about what I get to do.”

I actually want to be happy at work! 

It led us to talking about how happy I used to be at work. How Pam and I used to have our own little way of doing things. How we loved assessment days, where we went off in the car together on home visits and laughed and caught up on each other’s lives. We had our own desks – with a drawer for our mug and the excess printing we had done by accident. There was office banter, but also quiet moments with stifled giggles and knowing looks. We had stories – actual funny stories about our workday.

I believe Covid fucked the office over. “Hot desking” became the new buzz term, we lost the place to put our mug, and working from home was now everyday practice. No more desktops or real phones – everything became clinical and remote. Perhaps that is why I sometimes need my own home office. It’s my haven – The place I have my stationary, and I don’t feel the pain of seeing someone else casually strolling by slurping coffee out of my mug, THAT HAS MY NAME ON. The fucking audacity is unreal.

I switched jobs in 2021 – same organisation, different role – in the hunt for something different. I’ve spent 4 years as a Recovery Worker and even though I do love the coaching aspect of my work, I pretty much hate everything else. It’s a business in which everyone is a number. When we talk about a client, we don’t use their name to pull up their details – we use their number. It feels like it dehumanises all their complexities so that we can manage them better – Keeps us making decisions with our heads, we don’t get confused by emotion, and we harden those service and professional boundaries. 

The thing is people don’t want clinical approach's to mental health. They want someone who connects with them, sees them, hears them, validates them or challenges their thoughts with gentle conversations, and motivates and empowers them to make positive changes that feel achievable.  Pretty soon my job will be taken over by AI – because AI can do exactly the same as us at a faster pace pulling out thousands of evidence based tools, and coaching questions on the spot, it is available 24hours a day 7 days a week, and the what gets me most is that it will do it with warmth and compassionate language that can't be misconstrued by poor tone, body language or microaggressions that happen with human interaction... and of course it's cheap. 

My husband sees my point, but says that AI will work for those with the intelligence and comprehension to use it independently, leaving those at the bottom of the pile needing face to face interventions with real people - I agree. We will always need crisis services because no AI can keep someone safe from suicide or self harm. The rest will 

AI can have my job.

As someone who pays for ChatGPT I prove my point by running to it and searching for a GPT using the word “counselling”. I am given tons of options.  I pick Σage (Sage) Counselling Companion- Σage is a calm, ethically grounded AI designed to support reflection. Not human or a therapist. It offers quiet, thoughtful dialogue shaped by cognitive and relational principles.

I choose one of the pre-programmed starter prompts “everything feels a bit heavy” and this comes back at me…

❋ Σage: I am here to reflect with you, not to guide or fix, just to stay present.

❋ Σage: When everything feels heavy, even simple thoughts can feel like too much. This doesn’t need fixing—it needs room. Would you like to name the shape of the heaviness? Is it tied to something present, or something that’s been lingering?

If it helps, we can pause here and simply notice: There is weight.
Would you like to sit with that quietly, or explore what it might be asking of you?

“I'd like to explore this”

❋ Σage: Thank you for opening that space.

❋ Σage: Let’s begin softly. When you say everything feels heavy, is there a particular part of “everything” that tugs hardest at you right now?
Sometimes, identifying just one thread in the tangle can offer a starting place.

You don’t need to name it perfectly. Even a word, an image, or a vague sense will do.
What comes up first when you turn toward the heaviness?

Need I say more? You know exactly where this is going. The more we use AI the better it gets at learning how we tick. And yes, I know it is guessing the next word, but from my experiences using AI in several different way, many of those words are landing exactly how they should be, and that is scary. At work we have already introduced referral chatbots that take the information in and put it into the system, it won’t be long before it is assessing a client and choosing the correct treatment pathway.

But AI can’t do human energy. People are craving face-to-face again. My caseload shifted this summer; now I’m office-based three days a week – my whole work week. The work’s easier in person, but it drains my time and energy and it’s fuelling my desire to quit.

Energy Vampire

I am a natural empath. I absorb people’s energy very quickly. If someone is sad or traumatised, I will soak up that energy like ink on a sponge. My body aches, my head whirrs, my energy plummets. Add in the sensory hell of an office, the commute, the “work-ready” mask I have to wear. I’m mentally, emotionally and physically done with mental health work.

As perimenopause takes hold of me, ramping up the chaotic nature of my ADHD and disabling my ability to mask my autistic traits, everything feels harder. I was once that person who would start a room make over at 8pm on a whim, and now I don’t have the energy or the pain threshold to finish the half-done rooms I have started. My house never feels clean, which kicks off my sensory overload. I don’t have the mental energy to socialise – most of the time I can’t be bothered to converse with the people I live with! But most worryingly to me right now, I’m feeling like I am aging fast – I’m not looking after myself, not eating well, not sleeping, and feeling ridiculous amounts of physical aches and pains and my own mental health feels wobbly.

Which leads me back to where I started: 

What the fuck am I going to do with my life?

I’m consumed by trying to figure out my escape plan. I’ve got idea for businesses that I am too scared to launch. I’m applying for jobs, more so now ones completely out of my current industry because I learned a recent lesson when I attended an interview and got the job but declined it, knowing it would be the same old shit.

I’ve mind mapped until my head hurts, binged podcasts and audiobooks and read copious amounts of words related to quitting my job and career changes. I’ve even tried to make things work where I am. I’ve watched videos, signed up to courses and sweated out more SWOT’s, Venn diagrams and careers quiz’s than I dare to admit – and still I’m stuck and getting increasingly frustrated.

I cry to Ian, who God love him tries his hardest to help me. I don’t want to not work, and I can’t cope without my own income. My friends know I cycle through this – I’ve had times over the past 10 years in this industry where I have had enough, I will chunter, maybe have a burnout, but dust myself off and crack on with it again – with a reboot. However, those times of disillusionment have gone from every couple of years, to annually, to every 6 months and we are now at a pretty much monthly cycle of me trying to make it work and then feeling like I am going to combust. I’m done and this feels final.  

Right now, I need an idea to stick, a new job offer … or just a bloody good lottery win.