I changed my work stress.

On 12/14 I quit. I was tired of dealing with the owner who was supposed to retire and I was taking over. After six years and still no contract, no transition plan, and then him telling me his needs were most important (after he renewed a lease we couldn't afford to satisfy his ego) snandd with him not paying me when his cash flow got tight I decided I couldn't wait any longer. I'm a licensed professional and have a base of clients so I have something to start around.

The last couple of months have been really busy as I laid the groundwork to go. I've been at peace with the choice until tonight when I had the first nightmare about failure.

Oh well shrug that off and plow ahead. At 55 I'm finally doing what I said I wanted to do 20 years ago.

(And just so things stay interesting we are in the early stages of building a new home. And our youngest just graduated college so we're working on getting her gone. Nothing like change! )

@allenpriest, from what you've described, it sounds like you're overdue to escape that job!!

@Farback, you're re-retiring? Is that even a thing??

My work stress dropped off dramatically last year when the executive of our group changed. The manager was (is?) a micromanaging azzhat who made life miserable for most of us. In retrospect, I should have pressed a formal complaint against him instead of trying to resolve the conflict informally since that allowed the previous executive to shield the manager due to their friendship. Anyway, new executive comes in and within a couple of weeks, the manager is back to his old tricks... so, in a meeting between the executive, the manager and I, when the manager blustered about how great morale was, I got caught rolling my eyes. After a somewhat heated discussion, the executive asked for time to digest the situation. I followed up a week later and described the toxic work environment created by the manager. The executive suggested if we were unable to resolute the situation, someone might be transferred. I provided material on internal resources available to address a toxic work environment and said if someone needed to be transferred, the manager was the longest term employee, having worked in this group since 2002. Within a couple of weeks, the manager was shuffled to another position.

This means we're working short-handed but it's still better than being constantly manipulated by a useless manager whose sole focus was getting himself promoted...