Why Your Career is Not a Straight Line
A Case for Taking the Non-Linear Path to Professional Fulfillment
When I was a young woman, just graduated from college, I believed I was supposed to know exactly what I wanted to do with my life — professionally speaking, that is.
Fortunately, my path was not only clear, it was well-paved, well-signed, and stationed with guides to steer me back should I ever get off course. In other words, as an accounting major at the University of California, Santa Barbara, I was recruited at the beginning of my senior year by multiple companies and had a job in hand with the then top public accounting firm more than six months before my graduation. And I was by no means alone in this feat.
So imagine my surprise — and concern — when just two years later I realized I not only disliked my job, I was also fairly certain that I wanted out from the industry entirely.
All I could think at the time was, What a waste.
Evidently I had picked the wrong major and lost six years of my life doing the wrong thing. Twenty-four years old, and I’d blown it.
Or so I thought.
Thus began my non-linear journey to figuring out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. And finally, two decades after finishing undergrad (at the tender age of forty-two) I have have at last figured out what it is that I want to do, and even better what I am uniquely skilled to do.
For now, at least.
From “oh crap” to “aha”
For someone who once believed her life would simply progress from A to B to C to D, etc., I am now the woman who has been to X, jumped over to O, landed on G, went back to A, and so forth. And with every detour taken, I’ve had that “oh crap” moment when I once again realized my miscalculation.
The funny thing is that for all my “oh crap” moments, I’ve also had an “aha” understanding, recognizing how one experience informed or added to another, but just not in a sequential or predictable order.
Let me explain.
When I realized that the accountant life was not for me, I decided to pursue a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Ever since I was a child, I loved writing stories and believed that one day — perhaps when I retired and was finished with my “real” profession — I would write a novel. Given my circumstances, however, I decided to go after an MFA not to fast forward my novel-writing ambitions but because I believed as only an accountant would that I needed something to certify me as being creative.
In the meantime, while I applied to multiple schools and waited for them to accept me (or not), I still needed to make a living. That was the first time I contracted out my services — as an accountant because it was the one thing I knew how to do.
Lo and behold, I got into an MFA program and I completed the two-year program with a new love of writing fiction. Unfortunately, without a manuscript to sell, nobody was going to pay me. So I took a part-time job as an accounting manager while earning a certificate in technical and professional writing. (Clearly, I was still of the mindset that higher education would ultimately solve all of my professional woes.)
As soon as I completed my certificate, my then-boyfriend (now-husband) and I both quit our jobs, sold our condo, and decided to travel the world for the better part of a year. Life is short, and frankly neither of us had a strong sense of what we wanted to do with our lives.
By that time, I was thirty years old and still very unclear on where my professional path was going. I did, however, know several things I was not: an accountant, a creative, a technical writer, or a travel writer (in hindsight I somewhat regret not at least trying to leverage my gap year into a profession).
Enter the nonprofit arena.
Find your unique skillset
There were days as an accountant that I would cry to my now-husband on the phone and say, “I can feel myself dying a little bit every day that I stay at this job.” (I was a melodramatic accountant.) It bothered me that I neither liked the work nor did I really care much for the company. When I turned my attention to the nonprofit sector, I at least hoped that I would feel some satisfaction from working for an organization that was bettering the world in some way.
Back from my world-wide adventure, I wrangled a job as a grant manager for an environmental advocacy organization. At that point, I firmly believed that I had wasted a good eight years of my life in accounting and given the numerous detours taken, I was becoming more and more familiar with Imposter Syndrome. Not once in all my changes had I met someone who had gone down the same path, experienced a similar experience, who could somehow validate the direction I was going. Working for a progressive grassroots organization that often took to the streets to impact change didn’t exactly help matters. (The education I received on social justice and activism during my tenure is another story entirely.) I still felt like I didn’t quite belong and that I wasn’t supposed to be where I was.
During my first week on the job — maybe even the first day — there was an instance when one of the program directors was explaining to my predecessor (who was still at the organization to train me) some changes that needed to be made on the proposal budget that would accompany the grant proposal they were working on. I could see the former grant manager’s confusion. I, however, knew exactly how to do what was being asked. That was my first glimmer of understanding how my past “wrong” experience might inform and augment my present.
I worked at that organization for almost eight years, during which time I was promoted twice. During my time there, I become recognized for my ability to work with numbers as much as much skills in writing compelling grant proposals. And since then, it has become a critical part of my process, when starting a new position or project to always understand the financial roadmap of where I’m going.
In my mind, I had two options for my path forward as a fundraiser. One, I could become an in-house director of development or, two, I could offer my services as an independent grant writer and fundraising consultant.
I did both. Or I should say — I do both.
As an independent consultant, I am the director of development for one organization I work with and the grant writer for another.
But lately I’ve realized that neither is quite The Thing that I’m most excited about doing or what I believe myself uniquely skilled to do. Ironically, it all comes back to my numbered past.
Coming full circle
Just to recap, in my twenty years of professional experience, I have honed my skills:
- In financial accounting
- As a storyteller
- As a technical and professional writer
- As a nonprofit fundraiser
- As an independent consultant
Maybe I truly am an accountant at heart because I like nothing more than an equation that adds up. After twenty years of “wasted” time or “wrong” moments, I finally see how I needed to experience each and every step to get to where I am.
And this time, even thought I still don’t know anyone who has taken my same path, I feel less like an imposter as I do an innovator.
The truth is that when I sat down to write this article, it was really to validate (to myself) what I’m about to set out to do, which is this: work with small to mid-size nonprofit organizations develop and implement mission-led plans that are financially grounded.
To most people, this is possibly the least sexy idea for a career. But for me, it’s perfect.
In my writing my story from start to where I am now, I realize that more importantly my path has been my own. While I’m not unique for having a path unlike anyone else’s — it’s the path I took that’s unique. And that’s the advice I’d give to anyone who feels like they’ve taken a bunch of “wrong” turns in their career and don’t quite know where they are going. Go back and recall why you made those choices in the first place, and you just discover where your unique path is taking you.
Because really, who wants an A to B to C life, when you can go from A to X to O and back again, and somewhere in the process realize it was never meant to be a straight line?
Perhaps it was a circle.
