I'm 34 and I've been working at the same company for 12 years. Lately I've been wondering if I'm wasting the best years of my life chasing a salary and a position that doesn't really fulfill me. I see people who've chosen different paths and they seem more aware of themselves. But giving up now would mean losing what I've built.
The real question isn't "career yes or no" but rather what would make you feel aware of yourself, because that awareness you see in other people might not come from a different job but from the fact that they've stopped doing things just for the sake of it. At 34 with 12 years of experience you're in a strong position - it's not about giving up everything, it's maybe rethinking what you actually want from these next 30-40 years, which is still quite a lot, not nothing! Maybe you don't need to blow it all up, but you shouldn't stay stuck thinking you have no choice either.
At 34 with 12 years in the same place, the point isn't choosing between career and life - it's understanding whether you're building a life within that career or just a paycheck. I've seen people stay put because they were afraid of losing what they had, and they ended up unhappy anyway, just richer. But I've also seen others who changed direction and discovered that what they feared losing wasn't worth anything compared to what they gained in self-awareness.
The thing is, 12 years is both a lot and not much: it's enough to know whether that company is feeding you or consuming you, but you're not yet so stuck that you can't get out. If that position doesn't fulfill you, the real question is: are there others that could, maybe in a different field, in a startup, as a freelancer? Or is it that the *concept itself* of a career just isn't for you - and then the conversation changes.
You don't have to choose between career and a real life - the risk is thinking that giving up what you have now will automatically take you somewhere better. What I notice is that people who are self-aware usually didn't get that way because they changed jobs, but because they started making intentional choices *within* what they were already doing, or they stopped waiting for the perfect permission to try new things in their free time. If at 34 you feel like something's missing, the important thing is figuring out whether it's the job itself that's not enough for you or whether you're waiting for your career to fill you with meaning - something it rarely does on its own 😅
Twelve years in the same place is a long time, and the fact that you're asking yourself this now means something doesn't feel right anymore. But the real trap isn't choosing between career and life - it's thinking the problem is the job when maybe it's how you're experiencing it. I mean, before you quit everything, it helps to understand what exactly isn't working: is it the company, the type of tasks, the hours, the people, the sense of stagnation? These are different problems and they have different solutions.
The awareness you see in others doesn't automatically come from making a change - often it comes from the moment when someone actually stops and decides what they want instead of running away from what they have. And here's the real risk: if you leave without knowing your "why," you might end up in a new situation that turns out to be the same or worse. Because it usually happens when you change just for the sake of movement, not for a direction.
A more useful question: if you could change just one or two things about how it is now (the role, the salary, the environment, the hours), what would you change? And then: is there a way to try that thing within the company you're at, maybe by switching departments, asking for new responsibilities, negotiating different conditions? Not to give up on making a change, but to figure out first if that's really what you're missing.
The way I see it, the issue is different: 12 years in the same place gave you stability, but also a habit that might be keeping you from understanding what you actually want. It's not that throwing everything away is the answer, but staying put and waiting for clarity to show up on its own doesn't work either. Try some small experiments before making a drastic decision - a side project, a course, an internal role change - that way you can figure out if the problem is the job itself or how you're experiencing it. At 34 you still have time to make a move without starting from scratch, and that's a privilege a lot of people don't have.
What nobody mentions is that you can test a change without throwing everything away: try dedicating six months to a side project (freelance work, a course, volunteering in a field that attracts you) while keeping your salary, so you can see concretely whether that "awareness" you notice in others actually comes from doing different work or something else. The point isn't choosing today between career and life, but gathering real data about who you are when you're doing something that isn't automatic, because after 12 years in the same place your brain gets used to it and can't tell anymore between "I don't like this" and "I don't know anything else." If after six months of doing this on the side you feel like something's happening, then you can think about a more serious move knowing what you're actually looking for.
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