The stress, overwork, aggravation and frustration and sleepless nights is just simply not worth it. I've spent significant portions over the last 3 years ill fr

The stress, overwork, aggravation and frustration and sleepless nights is just simply not worth it. I've spent significant portions over the last 3 years ill from problems that are probably stress related. I've gained weight, lost fitness and my work-life balance has gotten terribly out of whack. I just realized earlier in the week that my license expires next week and I literally have so many meetings scheduled that I simply won't be able to make it to the DMV in time. I've even had to cancel my vacation for the later part of this year. I realized this year that of the three major parts of my day, with 1/3 sleeping and 1/3 working, I'm so miserable that the 1/3 I should have as free time is simply wasted either over working, or coping with stress. And realistically I'm not even getting my 1/3 sleeping time either. That was my situation up until 5 months ago, and the pay cut I took to get out of it (about 10%) was worth every penny. People have told me since then that I now seem like a completely different person. In my situation, the mental load got so bad that it actually started hampering my ability to find another position[1]. I started approaching every nibble with desperation and likely underperformed on multiple interviews due to the self-imposed pressure to get them right so I could get out of my miserable situation. I worried about actually having time for interviews with the schedule I was working. My failure to find something else then fed back and made the problems related to the job worse by injecting hopelessness. I finally managed to break that cycle long enough to find a position at a very small local company. [1] As a bit of background to put this and the following statements in context, I live in Dallas and spent almost 10 years at a major defense contractor here. I also have some issues with explaining my experience in detail, particularly confusion over my "systems engineer" title[2] and not being able to talk about the good stuff I did. [2] Aerospace/defense systems engineers are not what most of you probably think of when you hear that title: http://www.incose.org/practice/whatissystemseng.aspx http://www.incose.org/practice/whatissystemseng.aspx