Help me find happiness in my current job, or one that suits me better?

• I am unhappy with my professional life, but have no idea what I’d rather being doing. Does a person exist who can help me either figure out how to be happy with what I’m doing, or figure out what I really want instead? And if so, how do I find them? Long, and possibly skippable/skimable backstory: -- My professional career started with an incredibly huge break. Two years out of college, I was hired as a project manager for the website of a pretty big bricks and mortar retailer. For the first three years, things went very well. I was doing a good job, was told so frequently, and was given the raises to back it up. Despite having very good sales, eCommerce wasn’t a big focus for the company (we were a branch of marketing, rather than our own department.) As things started to grow, and people were pulled in different directions, I assumed more and more responsibility, until I found myself being the main business lead for the website for the better part of a year. I didn’t always love the work, but on the whole, things were going very well. Right around the three year mark, the company decided to put more of a focus on eCommerce, and there was a pretty big reorganization. This resulted in two significant changes: 1. My boss, who had been very hands-off, now needed to be looped in on pretty much everything. 2. The project management team was greatly expanded, and a new role was created to manage this team. This role went to a member of a different team. #2 meant I had been effectively demoted (I would no longer be directly reporting to my boss) but I agreed with the decision, as I wasn’t ready to take on a role managing others. For the first year under this new arrangement, I was still doing a good job in the eyes of the company, and still had successes I was personally proud of, but I was starting to become pretty unsatisfied with the job on the whole. The increased involvement of my boss was probably the single biggest issue I can point to, but in general, I found myself becoming increasingly unhappy with the whole notion of working in eCommerce for a retail company. Things started getting pretty bad in the second year under the new arrangement. It wasn’t until the end of the year that I actually received any real feedback that the company was unhappy with my performance, but I’m certain there was a growing dissatisfaction on their part throughout. Sunday evenings and nights became incredibly dark times for me, having to face the prospect of another week at work. I was having terrible anxiety and was often unable to sleep. Towards the end of this period, there was a ray of hope: My wife and I needed to relocate to a new city for her career. I began applying for jobs in the new city, and very quickly began discussions with another bricks and mortar retailer who was interested in hiring me for a similar position. I flew out there, met the people I would be working with, and came away feeling like the organization would be a much better fit. I accepted the position and we completed the move to the new city. I definitely had some concerns that I’d be bringing some of my baggage with me to the new position (and even typed up, but never posted, and anonymous Ask about how to avoid this) but convinced myself that the new city and new job would be enough to break me of my old habits, and I’d be right back at being the great employee I was for the first few years of my old job. Unfortunately, a few months in at the new job, I’m probably about 80% of the way towards being right back in the same mindset as I was at the old job. I can attribute a lot of this to disappointments with the new company, but I’d be kidding myself if I didn’t acknowledge that at least some, if not the overwhelming majority, of the problem sits with me. Yes, there are things that I wish were different, but at the same time, I have no enthusiasm whatsoever for tackling new projects, and can only begrudgingly move current ones along. -- So, backstory out of the way, here’s where I stand now: I’m fairly convinced that being a project manager for eCommerce Retail isn’t for me. But how can I decide how much of the baby to keep if I throw out the bathwater? Perhaps being a PM in another industry would suit me better? Or perhaps another role in retail? I know nobody can really answer these questions but me, but I have no idea how to begin exploring them with myself. And if I need to make a significant change, I don’t even know what it is I would want to be doing instead. Part of my concern about making any drastic changes is that I don’t feel like I have any marketable skills outside of being a PM. I’ve got a liberal arts degree in an unrelated field that doesn’t really present much in the way of professional opportunities. I know tons about the structure of eCommerce Websites, but can only dabble in coding. And yet: I have tremendous guilt about not being happy with my current situation. The economy sucks and the pay is very, very good. I am so ashamed with myself for not being able to just suck it up and do what’s asked of me. There’s a huge, huge part of me that just wants to figure out how to make this job work for me and be on my merry way. I really don’t know if that’s possible though. But at times I feel legitimately embarrassed that so many people are out of work, and I have a job that gives me more money than I need, and I spend so much time thinking about how much I don’t like it. With all of this said: Outside of my professional life, I am very happy. My wife and I have an incredible, loving relationship. I adore spending time with her, and our new city puts us much closer to old friends and family. Also potentially important details: We’re young (late 20s) and have no kids, nor any plans to have any. She’s got student loan debt, I do not. I’ve done a few stints of talk therapy, and have generally found them to be very helpful. But I tend to fall into a pattern of waiting until things become problematic for me emotionally, starting therapy, getting better, and then stopping. Rinse, repeat. I think I’m wondering if such a therapist exists who can really help me clarify what I want, professionally. If such a person exists, I’m not sure they’re a “therapist”, per se. Maybe a life coach? I guess I’m not even sure what such a person does. So, in short: Right now, I have zero idea what I want to do with my life. No passions that could ever make a career. I want to figure out how to fix this. I suspect it’s talking with someone, but I don’t know who, or how to find them. I am also open to any approaches I can take that don’t involve talking to someone about this. Books, exercises, whatever. Throwaway email: [email protected]

• Answer:

  No passions that could ever make a career. I want to figure out how to fix this. The fix is to realize that almost no one gets to make their passion their work. Even if they do, the passion often stops being a passion because it is now work. The idea that your job should be your passion and/or source of "self-actualization" is very new and in my opinion, very wrong. Your job is not who you are. Your job is the unpleasant thing you do so you can have food and shelter. That being said, you should try not to be miserable at your job. However, I do not see in your question was are the specific problems with your job. Are deadline unrealistic? Is management abusive? Why are you disappointed with your new company? I realize that "project manager for eCommerce Retail" was probably not the title of your grade-school "What I Want To Be When I Grow Up" paper, but that in itself cannot be the reason for your current state. Why do you think you are so unhappy? The larger problem is that no matter where you work, there you will be. There is no such thing as happy jobs, only happy people.