Do I Still Enjoy Living In London?

It’s only Wednesday evening and I’ve already ditched the vaguely less unhealthy diet (ie less than 3,000 calories a day), and opened a bottle of red wine.  Actually it was already opened – I’m finishing it off.

I am questioning things at the moment.  Particularly in terms of where I work and where I live.

Why do I live in Harrow?  Am I still happy in my job?  Is the commute worth it?  At what point do I get fed up of being on junior pay?  Am I still a junior developer?  Should I start looking for another job?  Should I move closer to work?  Is living on my own worth it?  Do I actually still enjoy living in London?  Am I black?

I knew the deal from the off – moving to London for a new career wasn’t going to be easy.  I knew I’d be much poorer.  I knew it would be hard work.

Yet as I get older, fatter and even less fit, doing the longest working days of my life with the longest ever commute is taking its toll.  I’m often tired, often resorting to Red Bull, chocolate, sausage sandwiches – just whatever I can to survive and make it through the day.

Once I get home, I have 2 hours before it is time to go to bed – 20 minutes to chill out and read, then maybe put TalkSport on or something for 20 minutes, then I’m normally ready to sleep.

There is no time to enjoy London.  There are all kinds of events at the office, all kinds of things I’d like to do – evening classes in Spanish, evening coding practice events – meeting other developers, finding new friends.  Having a fucking beer in the evening sun.

But I know if I don’t get my 8 hours sleep, I am not as on the ball the next day – and I really need to be in my job.  I cannot do my job properly at even 80% – my old job as a credit controller I could turn up still fucked off my face having not slept and still turn in a decent day’s work, as I didn’t have to think.

So my dream of moving to London so I could do all these cool things in the evening isn’t turning out to plan.  Not that I can afford them even if I had the time.

I have proven myself as a web developer, yet there is no sign of a decent pay rise.  I know I can get £5-10k more elsewhere – I regularly receive e-mails from recruiters and department managers requesting I interview for roles for £10k more, that I am experienced enough for.  I have actually started thinking about the e-mails I receive rather than responding with pages of GDPR compliance law.

In fact, I am actually regretting saying “no thanks” to one last week.  Maybe I am only thinking that as it has been a particularly difficult and miserable week for the whole tech team, but I do feel that I am edging closer towards the door.  The low pay, combined with all the bullshit like 4 hours of unpaid customer service a month, plus having more responsibility than most junior developers (at least from what I read online) is making me question my situation.

At what point does having a good boss and being able to wear shorts stop outweighing the feeling of being underpaid?

Also living where I do takes up a lot of my time.  2.5 hours commuting each day if it runs to clockwork.  Which is a big if – though it has been better recently.

Not only that, but living by myself means I have to look after a whole house – one of the reasons I wanted a pay rise was so I could afford a cleaner once a month, so I could then study more.  Plus the amount of time I spend washing up without a dishwasher.

But what if I move house to near work then I realise that my current disposition against my job isn’t temporary?

The thing that most pisses me off is my belly.  But I don’t have time for exercise and I’m often too tired to eat healthily – which is a negative virtuous circle.  And I know I have to do something about this.  I really do have to take this seriously – but I simply don’t have the energy to do so.

So I don’t enjoy Monday to Friday in London any more.  Long gone are the days where I get excited to get on the underground in the morning.  I’m closer to being arrested for biting someone that spends 2 seconds at the ticket barrier trying to find their Oyster card.

Saturdays I then tend to have to clean the house.

Sundays are the best day of the week – I have my roast dinner adventure.

And then it is back to Monday.

Don’t get me wrong – I know a lot of people feel like this, and a lot of people have much more difficult lives.  But I worry that I am working so much that I am not getting time to enjoy my life.  I moved to London to fulfil a dream.

Yet it is just proving as difficult as other periods of my life, albeit just a very different type of difficult.

It is still preferable to Bracknell.

There are solutions.  Lots of potential solutions.  I best go to bed – it is approaching 10pm.  I didn’t answer the question, did I?