Hey Little Pineapple,

My friend is a prison guard and within a year, the job nearly destroyed him.

From the outside, it doesn't look like work that takes a heavy psychological toll.
But the stories he shared painted a different picture entirely.

"I feel like I teleport to a different reality when I start my shift," he told me.

No phone. No contact with the outside world unless absolutely necessary.
Just him and the inmates for hours on end.

The isolation ate him.
The constant stress.
The weight of being responsible for people he couldn't trust and couldn't escape from.

And he's still there.

Not because he loves it.
Not because he's stuck financially.

But because despite what Instagram and LinkedIn tell you, switching jobs isn't always easy.

It requires energy.
Planning.

All of which are nearly impossible when you're emotionally drained from the job itself.

Here's the trap:

When you hate your job, you enter a vicious cycle.

You're too exhausted to job search.
Too depleted to interview well.
Too anxious to make a clear decision about what you actually want.

So you stay.

One more week. One more month. One more year.

And the real cost?
It's not financial. It's - pardon the big word - existential.

You're not just losing 8 hours a day.

Your relationships get the exhausted version of you.
Your kids get whatever's left after you've recovered from Sunday anxiety.

Your hobbies?
What hobbies?
You're too drained to even think about them.

Growth stalls because you're in survival mode, not learning mode.

I've watched talented people become shadows of themselves.

Not overnight, but slowly.
One Sunday evening at a time.

They stay because of golden handcuffs.
"I have a certain lifestyle, you know."

They stay out of fear.
"What if I change and it's worse?"

Look, I'm not talking about chasing passion every single moment.
That's just naive.

Even work we love has boring parts.

But there's a massive difference between "this task is boring" and "I fundamentally don't want to be here."

The question isn't whether your job brings you joy 100% of the time.

It's whether you:

• Generally look forward to Monday
• Feel like you're learning and growing
• Believe your contributions matter
• Can see a version of yourself in this role that you actually want to become

If the answer has been "no" for months, you owe it to yourself to explore what's next.

Not recklessly.
With intention.

I read this line in a book recently and it stopped me cold:

"There's no better way of feeling fulfilled than to fill the day with things you like to do."

Not because it's profound. It's so simple it's almost insulting.

And yet, how many of us are actually doing it?

And it also connected the dots to other simple truth I already knew:

The cost of staying in a job you hate is always higher than the cost of leaving.

Not just in money or time, but in who you become.

Life's too short to spend the majority of your waking hours counting down to the weekend.

If you've been feeling this way, start small.

Update your resume.
Have one coffee chat.
Explore one opportunity.

You don't have to quit tomorrow. But you do have to start moving.

Because standing still in a place that's draining you?

That's not stability.
That's slowly disappearing.

I believe in you,
You got this.
​
Buddy in your corner,
Patryk

PS If you're ready to explore what's next but don't know where to start, reply to this email. I help people every day figure out their next move, not just any job, but the one they actually want. Let's talk.