Reserve the right to change your mind (and course)
A permission slip, for whenever you need it.
Welcome to the Career Pivot Diaries! This is where we’ll cover all things career change, including (but not limited to) going from entrepreneurship to 9-to-5, exploring new professional identities, and *finally* updating my CV. Most importantly, we’ll explore how to see ourselves as more than our work and find a sense of safety in choosing a new path while allowing room for creative play.
I’ll start the first edition of this newsletter with a story.
The protagonist: my grandmother.
Grandma, who’ll be turning 88 in a few weeks, has been one of the biggest influences when it comes to shaping my life philosophy.
She was an elementary school teacher, a part of a big family whose members were predominantly working in education (yes, this is where I got those genes from).
Grandma retired more than 20 years ago.
However, she still introduces herself as “teacher Radojka”.
She has been doing this ever since I’ve known her; a reliable habit she’s been keeping both in person and on the phone, whether she’s talking to a taxi driver or introducing herself to her granddaughter’s friends.
Being a teacher has been a part of her core identity for the majority of her life.
I used to envy her for that, oh so much.
Because here’s me (hi! 🖐🏼).
I turned 30 this year. To date, I’ve been:
A journalist/ blog contributor
A social media manager
An English teacher
An entrepreneur/ sustainability communication consultant
A copywriter for sustainability non-profits
And one summer in college, a balloon seller.
(I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but the above is the main skeleton.)
At no point did one of those occupations feel so close to my heart that I’d get an impulse to put them right beside my name. Introducing myself as “entrepreneur Andjela”, or “copywriter Andjela” felt foreign at the times when it put the food on my table just as it does now, when I’m adding new things to the occupation list.
I spent the majority of my life feeling bad about it. Why can’t I find THE thing, my thing? The (self) blame game intensified with the rise of social media and the whole “turn your purpose into something you do for a living” spiel. I felt late to the party, like I was supposed to have the whole thing figured out before I even went to the job market. What purpose? How?
And then along came this year and it felt like things finally clicked into their place in my head. A sense of clarity followed and propelled me to take action.
I’ll go into more detail on how 2023 changed the way I see work in future articles, but here are the main key points:
I have no clue what my purpose is and that is okay. I refuse the notion that we *must* find our purpose through our work and that we should limit ourselves to one prism through which to view our professional lives. If wisdom is what you get in hindsight, I might just find in a few years that my purpose was to remember peculiar stories and anecdotes of my loved ones or something like that. Or I might never find out what it is. That is also okay.
I accepted that I want to turn some of my piles and piles of interests into professions. Yes, it will make my CV look like a children’s coloring book, with all the pivots and L-turns. But it will make for an abundant life accodring to my own terms and that’s what I’m going for.
There is bravery and wisdom to be found in choosing one occupation, diving deep into it, and dedicating your whole life to perfecting skills related to it.
There is also bravery and wisdom in choosing to become a humble beginner yet again, at 30, 40, 50, and older, making new connections between all your previous occupations, and learning to see life from new angles.
I refuse to see either one of those options as inherently better or worse than the other. The key question is which one fits your personality better.
So no, I can’t really put an occupation in front of my name, like Grandma has been doing for decades. It doesn’t feel right.
But I can put “a creative”.
Creativity has many facets and I want to explore at least a few more occupations in my lifetime. And at the time of my writing this, I’m pivoting into the unknown, to an industry I’m not even sure that I’ll like once I see it from the inside.
That’s all right. I can always change my mind and learn something new later. 🙂
The TLDR version of today’s article: While some people spend their whole lives viewing themselves through the prism of one industry, others switch professions as their interests ebb and flow. No option is inherently more valuable.
So in case you needed it, here’s a permission slip: making big pivots is not inherently flaky, a sign of a quitter, or less valuable than staying with something you no longer like just for the sake of continuity.
You do you.
Wishing you a great day and am off to have a good one myself,
Andjela