this thread really struck a chord in me too :) this is going to be long, in the hopes that some of you can get something out of it...
i originally went to business school and studied marketing undergrad. however-- real world marketing is not anything like the rewarding, fun, interesting, thought-provoking material that i loved in school. it was pushing papers, drudgery, and selling stuff that i didn't believe in. and while i had a job at the perfect company-- tons of opportunity, and unlimited growth potential and great coworkers- i realized that it wasn't enough. i ahd to like what i was doing.
the kind of person that i am, i knew that in order to take the time to make the change, i needed to make the space in my life to reallyt hink things through. so i quit my job. i ended up going to grad school to get a MA in clinical psych with an emphasis on drug addiction couseling. to make ends meet while i was in school, and allow me to focus on classes during nights and weekends, i took an admin assistant position that was strictly 9-5. it was for a super high end car rental company (lambos, ferraris, bentleys!) and the position gradually expanded until i was the CEO's right hand woman, working weekends, with tons of responsibility. the things i loved about th job were working with people, client relationships, and the logistics of getting all the cars where they needed to be hwen they needed to be. and i was really, really good at it. and i loved driving all the cars :)
it got to a point where my value to the company wasn't commeasurate with the compensation i was receiving, and it was starting to eat into my time to study and focus on grad school, so i went looking for a new job. now i knew some of teh things i was looking for: i wanted to be in a position where i was organizing and managing process. i wanted to be working directly with people and maintaining relaionships as a part of my job. i had always been intersted in construction and design and architecture, so i found a job on craigslist with a high end construction management company. i appleid as a receptionist but upon interviewing me, they asked me to be an assistant project manager instead, which was a way different paygrade.
as i worked my way into the job, i found that it was so exciting, challenging and fulfilling that i decided to rethink my career path of going into counseling/PhD. It was a lot of working to problem solve, get to the root of issues, and every day was different. I learned a lot about working with people and communication and tons about different trades, real estate, development, and everything associated with the business.
i stayed with that company for 5 years. longer by far than i have been with any other job. and honestly i always knew that iw as the type to be easily bored. so the fact that i stayed for so long was surprising to me, too. but as years went by, i became frustrtaed with the structure of my company, upper management, and i realized that i didn't want to progress much further than being a project manager. it was a ton of stress and again, not commeasurate with the compensation. at the same time, i found my interest in pole growing.
i could go on and on about pole, andi ts impact in my life, but long story short i realized that i have a huge love of all things analytical, scientific, and biomehcanical relating to the body, through pole and the way that i always thought of tricks. i've always been the type to think about why something works and how it works, and it was a natural part of my teaching and thinking process. so, as i became more and more frustrated and bored at work, i found myself spending more and more time and energy with pole. i applied for and was accepted to a MA program focusing on how we learn to use our bodies, biomechanics, and structural kinesiology.
finally i decided to leave my job. it stopped beign fulfilling, stopped bieng interesting, and i had mentally checked out. i planned on taking the semester off, teaching travelling pole workshops and focusing on school. i thought seriously about going to school full time and just teaching. but honestly, as appealing as that was, i knew that there was a huge, huge side of me that wouldn't be fulfilled with that. i love learning and love teaching but beyond that, i am an organizer, a task master, a manager. it's in my nature. and so i knew that i couldn't leave the workforce completely and be happy. on a whim, i applied to literally three jobs that sounded amazing... and ended up taking one of them.
people may not understand why i am working when icould be teaching pole and jsut going to shchool. to some, that is an amazing opportunity and it absolutely is. but the job that i have now is incredibly fulfilling. i use all the communication skills, all the people management skills, all the project management skills. i am constantly evaluating how things owrk, what is broken, how to fix it. i am in charge of the efficiency of the entire real estate development branch of my company, which is challenging and scary and hard and overwhelming at times. I come home every night completely brain tired and need to sit on my couch and not talk some nights. i'm surrounded by people who are incrediby passionate and interested in what they are doing and everyone is invested in the success of the company.
i've been through a ton of career changes in my life and these are some of the things i have learned:
it's not just about WHAT you are doing, but what SKILLS you are using and what SKILLS you want to be using. I can be a project manager across a lot of different disciplines. You can be a graphic designer in many different industries and each will bring a different type of challenge.
the first step in making a big change is building confidence. you can't interview and not be assured of your own self worth. i've never interviewed and NOT gotten a call back because i don't question for a second that i am an asset to every company i interview with, in some way. it's jsut about figuring out how to leverage the information you know and skills you have to be useful to differnet people or organizations. you have to sit down and really think about what you are good at. what do you want to get better at. what kind of jobs or skills or positions would help you to become more valuable and more of an asset to someone else?
by changing careers several times, i actually made myslef more interesting to a potential employer. i am showing flexibility, and quickness to learn. if you can provide a narrative that makes sense of the switches, they will accept and understand why you've done what you did.
sometimes you have to step into scary unknown and free fall. if you don't make space in your life, then nothing better can come along. some people are all about lining up one job before they leave another-- its really dependent on your personality type.
life is really short. time passes really quickly. you can be anything you want to be, but you have to take steps to make it so.
