I’ve felt encouraged to see more diverse career trajectories celebrated in the media over the past couple of years. Gone are the days when we’re expected to join a company upon graduation and only leave upon retirement. We’re quitting traditional corporate jobs to go freelance, we’re setting up our own businesses, we’re pivoting careers completely after a few years. We’re figuring out our own thing.
I’m glad that we’ve gradually stopped glamorizing sticking with the same company for decades or climbing the corporate ladder at big-name firms. These are trajectories which didn’t suit or serve so many people. But I’m wary that another type of grand narrative is slowly starting to proliferate as the way to be for our generation: the “tried the prestigious job, hated it, quit, and am now following my dreams”.
It’s easy to see the appeal of this narrative. It’s tidy, clear, and promises a happy ending for all those brave enough to take the leap. Of course, the reality of following your dreams is much messier. Dreams are ephemeral: hard to pin down in reality, and prone to changing over time.
What if you take the leap to a dream new job, and then realize that it wasn’t quite as dream-like as you made it out to be? What if your situation changes - be it financially, health-wise, or family-wise? Or, what if you realize that your goals and priorities have changed, and that the creativity, good pay, location, independence, or whatever it was you were chasing initially, are no longer as important to you as you thought?
Of course, most people think long and hard before making a big decision about their careers. Most of the time it probably does go more or less how they envision it. But even then, I don’t think a happy ending dream job scenario is a reasonable expectation.
For one, you never know what a job is really like until you start doing it. I certainly found this when I made the decision to quit my corporate job and go to grad school. To be sure, I did my research so a lot of things were exactly as I expected. I gained the increased flexibility, autonomy, and intellectual stimulation that were the major reasons for me choosing this path initially. But other things were not as I expected, and I have discovered new things about myself that make me view my work and career trajectory in a new light.
Put simply, I'm not the same person I was three years ago, when I made the decision to jump. We are always in the process of growing, learning, and discovering new things about ourselves. Just like the work environment in my first job made me realize I needed things like autonomy and intellectual stimulation, I am figuring out more of my needs, desires, and goals as I gain experience in my new career. But I still don’t regret my decision for a second.
This is a narrative I don’t see discussed as much, yet I bet it’s much more common than the ‘soulless corporate job to perfect dream job’ scenario. And I don’t think that I - or anyone else who feels they still haven’t fully unlocked their dream job, though not for lack of trying - have somehow failed here. I’ve always been perplexed by the idea that we’re somehow supposed to know what our perfect job looks like without trying different roles and exploring different fields and making a few mistakes and growing and learning through the process. If your twenties are a time for exploration, surely this is exactly what we should be doing?
Now, I'm not advocating for constantly jumping from job to job in some never-ending quest to find the one that perfectly fits all of your needs. Dream jobs don’t really exist. Even the most exciting position is bound to have some boring, difficult, or unappealing aspects.
But I think we need to speak more about the fact that the right career for you is more often a path than a destination. It's learning about what you like and need at each step, and figuring out how to tweak the path to allow for more of those things on your journey. Not all of those realizations need to be career-changing. Sometimes it’s learning how to ask for more or fewer responsibilities, a raise, or a promotion; sometimes it’s finding things that give you purpose and joy outside of work. It's about encountering and dealing with difficulties, and being honest with yourself about whether this is a moment to suck it up and tough it out, figure out ways of making it better, or whether it’s actually time to quit. The right career is perpetual motion, rather than an end goal. And you’ll probably make some mistaken detours along the way, but that’s part of the process too.
When we talk about work, we talk a lot about the mid-life crisis. The mid-life crisis is something to be feared and avoided by choosing the right career for you at an earlier point. But no matter how much we’re willing to jump, I think we rarely get to a point where we’re fully satisfied with our careers, at least not early on in our lives.
A lot of the time I feel like I am in a constant career crisis, always questioning what is and isn't working for me. But I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing. Once you stop probing and asking questions and start accepting things blindly, you slow down your learning and your growth. There might be a time when I feel content enough to just get on with my life, but for now I am hungry to keep pausing and reflecting and recalibrating. And I think that's a narrative to celebrate too.
100% agreed! I wish there was a better way to test out careers/different types of jobs without fully making a jump or commitment into that job, as it's a difficult thing to do after being in a different field and deciding to change direction. I love the part at the end where you reframe how to think about constantly being in a career crisis. Now I don't feel as bad about how I am almost always questioning my current path and pondering what I might want more or less of in my next job or career.
Omg, I thought I was alone! I so feel this, have had two fairly distinct career changes since leaving my first proper job about 8 months ago and I feel like I've expired my change allowance for at least a year. Where do these rules come from?! Is there something wrong or am I just impossible to please?! I wish I knew!!!