{"id":7809,"date":"2023-11-05T14:39:48","date_gmt":"2023-11-05T22:39:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sallybzhao.com\/?p=7809"},"modified":"2024-11-28T18:54:02","modified_gmt":"2024-11-29T02:54:02","slug":"i-started-a-new-job-and-quit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sallybzhao.com\/i-started-a-new-job-and-quit\/","title":{"rendered":"I Started a New Job\u2026 and Quit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"\">A few months after being <a href=\"https:\/\/sallybzhao.com\/laid-off-into-my-dream-life\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">laid off<\/a>, I took up a new job as an Assistant Project Manager at a construction subcontractor company. This was the role I had been working towards after completing a semester of <a href=\"https:\/\/sallybzhao.com\/spring-2023-construction-management\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Construction Management classes<\/a>. It was a quick pivot from my tech career, but I was given the opportunity to jump right in and start fresh in a field I&#8217;m passionate about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I quickly learned a few things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li class=\"\"><strong>The Construction Industry is a Big Dinosaur. <\/strong>Coming from the tech world, I was shocked by how much slower the processes were.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong>Supportive Team Environment.<\/strong> I was relieved to find that I wasn&#8217;t expected to do everything on my own. My team was very supportive in onboarding &amp; training, which was a pleasant change from my previous roles.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong>Early Work Days.<\/strong> Workdays start VERY early. Even arriving at the office at 7:45am, I was already on the later side. This was a stark contrast to my engineering life.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong>Rough Project Site Offices. <\/strong>My project was at the SFO airport, and the makeshift office was set up in a windowless tunnel under the airport &#8211; far from the office environment I was used to.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\"><strong>Car Commute.<\/strong> I did NOT enjoy commuting by car every day. Traveling from the city to the airport took 1.5 hours round trip, and remote work was not encouraged.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">After about three months, I made the tough decision to leave. The daily commute and early start times left me feeling exhausted when I got back to the city. In the first few weeks, attending my usual evening runs felt impossible &#8211; I was so tired I could fall asleep while standing (or running). Although it got slightly better over time, I remained in a constant state of fatigue. My body wasn&#8217;t recovering well after runs, and my performance started to suffer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">After missing my PR by about 30 seconds in the Santa Rosa half marathon in late August, I knew I had to make a change. Despite being in great shape before starting the job, my fitness had drastically declined over the three months of employment. The physical toll began affecting my mental health, and I finally summoned the courage to call it quits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">It\u2019s been a month since then, and I had a brief stint of interviewing at new companies. I made it through a few onsite rounds, but ultimately canceled all processes. I was burnt out from juggling the new (now ex) job, my real estate business, and training for a race. I didn&#8217;t have enough time for self-care, so I decided to take the rest of the year to myself. With big travel plans in December, I&#8217;d rather not start a new job before then. Once I return, I\u2019ll figure out which direction to move forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I am learning to cope with just \u201cbeing\u201d. I\u2019m a doer and have always lived life at full-throttle, curating every day for maximum efficiency. It\u2019s a jarring feeling to stop and be idle. However, even with less \u201cdoing\u201d, my days are still packed full. Self-care is more involved and time-consuming than I ever gave it credit for, and I&#8217;m spending my days doing just that. I finally have time to catch up on organizing, cleaning, reading, writing (this blog!), managing finances, knitting, and more.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">This wraps up my crazy year so far, with more changes than I (and my friends \ud83d\ude05) can keep up with. With less than two months until the end of the year, I hope to find some peace in my chaotic life. And to finish up way overdue blog posts. Stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few months after being laid off, I took up a new job as an Assistant Project Manager at a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thoughts"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>I Started a New Job\u2026 and Quit - sallybzhao<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sallybzhao.com\/i-started-a-new-job-and-quit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I Started a New Job\u2026 and Quit - 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