Restarting Your Career?
Why it’s Okay
If you haven’t had that mid-life crisis yet, and you haven’t thought about restarting your career later in life, a lot of us haven’t. I, at least, haven’t gone through the stereotypical buying a hot rod, running around town, divorcing for a younger man, and all that jazz. No, I decided to go to school for a master's in English and Creative Writing. To do something I was passionate about than doing what brought home the bacon.
The Pandemic
I had a successful run as a small business owner — at least until COVID-19 hit. I wasn’t against shutting things down to control the pandemic. My business was one of the first to shut its doors, thinking it would be for a little while. That was a little while which turned into a long while, and that while turned into a year and counting. That, as you can imagine, placed a huge strain on income in the household.
During the pandemic, I learned a lot about myself. How I handled stress, finances, and other important things in my life, and I feel, came out a better person on the other side. Thankfully, I didn’t pick up any habits that would be difficult to get rid of. I have to admit the gaming late into the night habit was a little difficult to give up once going back to work.
With the masters in progress; it will take me another 10 months to finish. But it’s been a wild ride. At first, I had all the time in the world to take classes without having a job to occupy my time. Then, found a job. It wasn’t one you’d think I’d get with my background, but it was one I enjoy and can telecommute with.
Where I am and where I’d like to be
My current job deals with COVID-19 every day as I have a background in the medical field. I’m not on the front lines like nurses, doctors, and other essential employees working tirelessly throughout the day each day to fight this disease. I’m more in the background providing support. While this isn’t the career I’m talking about having started; it’s the job I have now. This is a job I will be taking with me into the future as a learning experience.
No, my career that I’d like to be starting once I’m done with my master’s degree is that of a full-time writer. Writing books, writing for clients instead of it being a side-gig, and waking up every morning loving to sit down and work.
You’re laughing? I’m laughing; we’re all laughing. We’re all also crying. If, anyway, you’re like me and want to do that full-time without having a job on the side to support yourself. I could say I have a plan. But I have a realistic view that writing full-time as a job may not be what I dream for it to be.
I have a friend that’s a content writer for a living. While I envy her and what she does as she’s living the life getting paid to write, it’s not what I want to do. Content writing isn’t my deal most of the time. While I love doing it, I don’t want to do it as my full-time job with someone else telling me what to write. But who does? I mean, honestly, who does.
Restarting your career later in life is great
So, again, why did I restart my career later in life?
Why do we do things later in life? People change. People make decisions when we’re young, affecting us all through our lives. At some point, we reflect and think, “Was that what I wanted or what I was influenced to do?” Being young, we’re easily influenced. Heck, being older we can be, we aren’t infallible.
This is easier said than done, of course. At a young age, you’re influenced by a lot of things. That isn’t to say the choices you make at a young age aren’t good ones. They’re good ones, more than likely, at the time and something that propels you into the hopeful future.
Most of us want more money, more influence, more freedom, more this, more that… whatever it is that drives you. These are things that place you at the top of your game. Being older doesn’t mean you’re not at the top of your game. Though I believe it does make you wiser about your decisions and knowing the direction you want to go in.
You’re more experienced at this point, have more knowledge, have gained more world know-how. You’ve listened to the myriad of voices in your head over the years that have told you what you can and can’t do. Either you’ve beaten them down, let them hound you, or taken control and told them to F off. Either way, you’ve learned something, come out battle-scarred on the other side, and know to fight like a veteran.
Restarting can be daunting
Setting your own path and restarting your career later in life isn’t easy, whether you’re young or old. Some people never find a way to make a second career path. Moving along in the same career they’ve followed for years since they were young into their retirement. And that’s fine. If that works for you, that’s great. There’s nothing wrong with that.
But not everyone is fine with the staid and narrow path. I wasn’t.
I had accomplished much by having my own business for seventeen years. COVID-19 hit, and that all came crashing down. What I thought would be my life’s work suddenly wasn’t. I had to do some deep soul-searching to figure out what it was I wanted to do. I was already writing for clients on the side for side money, so I turned to it full-time for cash.
Finding what you love isn’t always that easy, and certainly, making money at what you love isn’t always that easy either. We talk about wanting to do this, and that, or something people will look at us and remark how incredibly crazy it is. Or how you’ll never be able to make a career out of it. Many people seem to think that if you’re not working a trade job, office job, or something similar, it’s not a job.
Thinking of ways to restart your career
“Find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
These words are great for those who have the ability to be able to start their careers over again. Or even for those that have to start their careers over again due to life’s circumstances. There are a few reasons people choose to do so. That or have to do so and there’s nothing wrong with this as long as you are moving forward rather than backward.
Ways to think about restarting your career include the following tasks. I set these for myself when doing so last year in 2020. A year I thought I would never get anything out of it besides heartache.
- Assessing where you want to be in life
- Asking yourself that ‘where do I want to be in 5 years’ question
- Asking yourself what you’re passionate about
- Finding what you can do with what talents and interests you have
- Deciding what you’re willing to do to make it happen
- Looking at your current situation and how to move forward
- Your comfort level of risk
- The comfort level of possibly taking a pay cut
- Evaluating your comfort level of possibly striking out on your own
Not everyone wants to put a lot of effort into starting a new career, nor do they want to take risks. That’s understandable if it’s something that makes you uncomfortable. However, a certain element of finding those things out is important for your overall success.
Setting Goals
Goals are overarching and should be something you have throughout your lifetime. They should be no less important when restarting your career.
These should also be things that aren’t rigid and are ever-morphing depending on how life turns out for you.
Sometimes reaching that goal of earning a million a year may not be attainable if you don’t have a job where this is possible. That dream car may not be a realistic goal if you’re not working in a job that will propel you towards that goal realistically.
Setting goals should be something you do quarterly, and adjust quarterly. I have 3 overarching goals each quarter and adjust them as things move along during the year. This doesn’t mean that I don’t expect I won’t meet them by the end of a quarter, year, or however long it takes. It just means I’m being flexible with my life’s situation and how things are going at the time.
Breaking goals into projects and tasks
I’ve talked about this before in other posts here on Medium. Breaking goals down into projects and then tasks is something important to your overall success when restarting your career. Having just a goal to reach for and no way to do so isn’t very conducive to making it work.
Projects are what you could call quarterly goals. Larger goals are broken down into pieces in which you break those down into individual tasks. These tasks are completed daily, weekly or monthly to push you towards completing projects, and completing those projects pushes you towards completing a goal.
The takeaway
No matter what you do, restarting your career can be daunting, or it can be exciting. Sit down and think about what you’d like to do, whether you’re 25, 45, or 55, and starting over again. There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind on what you want your ‘life’s work’ to be. If anything take your experiences and use them in your new career.
Be your own advocate when it comes to doing this though. Don’t sit on your laurels and wait for an opportunity to come along which will excite and propel you. Make your own path, toot your own horn, blaze your own trail. Be yourself, and the rest will come with you.
