The Trouble With Careers

Careers are curious beasts, they can spin off in weird directions without much warning. For example, you might come into work one morning to find someone has cleared out your desk for you, which probably means you have been made redundant (unless you have been found out for doing something illegal, in which case I have no sympathy). Or you might find out, as a colleage of mine did a few years back, that your body has said 'enough is enough', and announced through a stroke or heart attack that it is no longer willing to do what you have been asking it to do.

Sometimes, the change is positive, but the ramifications can be just as derailing. Take me, for example. You may have noticed that it has been around six months since I posted my last blog. This is because last November I had a career change - a big, unplanned, unexpected and unprepared-for career change that sent me spinning off in a new direction.

This new opportunity is something I have been calling 'the job of my dreams' since I first saw it posted. I simply had to have it. I went all out for it, even though I was not technically even allowed to apply for it - fortunately I was the only applicant! Maybe I scared everyone else off, or maybe this was a true moment of happenstance in my life.

The job itself - well if I told you the actual responsibilities you might wonder what all the fuss is about. And to tell the truth I would not probably be wanting to do this job for the next ten years - but it is what it represents that is so mindblowing. It is a culmination of everything I have been working through in my life, drawing on all my skills and interests, and challenging enough to maintain my interest. It is a brand new role, fresh and alive for me to put my mark on it, to show how I can create something and make it work.

Suffice to say that I have loved every minute of the past six months, I have not had one single day of not wanting to go to work, which is in itself a first. The best thing about my job is my team of 8 staff; the next is the management team that I form a part of, which is highly supportive and innovtive as well as providing me the time I need get on with my own job. The third thing is that there is a large a variety of components, and fourthly I guess that I am never bored - a big plus for me, as boredom is my enemy.

I do truly feel blessed to have had the opportunity at least once in my life to absolutely love everything about my job, and to get paid for it s well! Needless to say, with a more-than-fulltime job my work with private clients, along with my writing plans, have been temporarily shelved. I say temporarily because I know that one day I will go back to these, they are part of me now, even when I am not doing them.

So you might be wondering why have I called this post 'The Trouble with Careers'? I suppose I have been thinking about why careers are problematic for so many of us. When we have a great job, we worry about losing it. When we are unhappy with our job, we might fail to see and make the most of opportunities. We might even worry that we don't deserve a great career, or what we think is going to be a great career turns out all wrong.

Sorry if this all sounds a bit weird and complex, but what I really mean is that true careers are transformational - they change us, help us grow and become better people, and we make them happen by our attitude. This has reinforced what I call my life's work, which is summarised in another blog storypractitioner.blogspot.com - check it out if you want to see what I mean.

If I can backtrack a little to September last year - despite all the successes I had experienced in my career and life to that point, I was not a happy chicken. I was bored, restless, wondering if there was anything left in the world to excite me. I knew I needed a new challenge, some kind of project, but I had no idea what this looked like. I talked to everyone who would listen about this and got a lot of advice, all of which I ignored, and some job offers, which I rejected - I knew that I had to wait for the right thing to come along. And it did.

Was getting this job an act of desperation, and I am making more of it than I really should? (after all at the moment I am only on a contract for another three months). Was it just a lucky break, or true happenstance? Does it have something to do with being incredibly focussed? Or can we base this success on some strategic planning, networking and clarifying my career direction?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but I am loving my job, loving life, and loving me for probably the first time in my life. Am I fooling myself? Let me know, honestly, what you think?

If any of what I have said is meaningful to you, I want to know. For example if you have ever had (or currently have) your dream job - even if it was not a forever job, you know like that short term relationship that was a mindblowing experience while it lasted. Or is this something you likewise crave, so much that you are no longer counting down the days till your next holiday? And have you felt transformed in any way by your career? I'd love to hear from you.