@bozz I was very like you. Very loyal to my job. I worked for a company that started going global when I was a year or two in the job so I flew up the ladder. The company has now come to the states and it is called Primark. You may have one coming to your city soon. Anyway I worked all over Europe for them and it was time to come back home and settle down. Now I was a lifer and I would put the job before anyone else but when I came home , they could only put me in their head office so I left them. I remember painting my new house back in my home town thinking, its over . All that stress , work and now I'm just painting a house. I got a job with another company and they asked me to go for a job interview for a promotion not long after I joined them. They asked me to do a presentation about my life. I was proud of my previous work achievements so obviously alot of my presentation was about my career. In the feedback the interviewer took me in and said that my work balance was off the charts but I didn't really have much going on in my personnel life. Nothing exciting. Nothing interesting . My mouth was actually open with the shock. At first I was pissed off . So from that day on I have never taken work too seriously and focused more on the home life. Got a new job again. One that works around me. I do my posts on Hive there for example. It pays the bills but I am not as career driven as I first was. I look at Primark now and some of my lower management are all heads of countries. One is actually the head of USA and they were of no great shakes when I was there. But I'm quite happy with my decision. It was a Steve Jobs deathbed moment that interview for me.