Ten months ago, I quit my job to save my health. You can read more about why I did that in my article from October 2017.

Last month, I was featured talking about my career change in the latest issue of CF Life magazine from the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, so I thought now would be a great time to write an update on what has changed since I left a high-pressure, full-time job last summer.

A lot of people have a job that negatively impacts their health to some extent. It might be mental health, or it might be physical health. Perhaps your stress levels are too high, perhaps you don’t sleep properly, perhaps you skip meals or buy junk food or have extremely low activity levels because of your job. If so, you need to make a change. 

Employers may tell you ‘health comes first’. But often, it seems insincere: something that HR have told them to say so that they don’t get sued for neglecting occupational health.

Sometimes when people have said it, ‘health comes first’, I’ve believed that they really do think that health _should_ come first. But does it? No. Not until you’re hospitalised (or threatening to leave your job) and they are forced to be accommodating or risk losing you permanently. Or, even if they believe it with every bone in their body, perhaps they just don’t have the resources or authority to actually make ‘health first’ a reality.

But whatever the situation, you should never let it get to the point where your health tangibly declines before you or your employer starts valuing it. 

It’s 100% true that if you do not make time for better health now, you will have to make time for illness later.

So, with this in mind, I quit my job.