Title

Ed's Letter

Ditching the "Straight & Narrow" Career Path

It's better to be a little bit frightened and try something new, than comfortably miserable and stuck in a career you hate.

 

It’s easy to hit a brick wall. All you need to do is not look where you’re going. But when heading a career, it’s even easier than that: just stand still (or aimlessly drift along) and the brick wall will actively seek you out. Many a promising career has abruptly come to a halt from a lack of planning and failure to find progress. But during your career, it’s also easy to find yourself interested in something completely unexpected, and end up turning that new interest into a lifetime’s work.

Once you know what you want to do, there are a myriad of books and articles available to you. But it is often only after recognising that something is of interest that it is actually possible to start this journey. How you find opportunities and navigate your career journey regardless of the industry you wish to work within is the real question. It is the question that many people struggle with, and it can occur at any stage of our working lives.

The notion that we should have an ironclad career goal by the time we leave high school is a dangerous and counter-productive myth. As a result of such thinking, people feel guilty when they don’t know what they really want to do, they pretend they do know what they want when they really don’t, or they stick with a particular career they loathe purely because they are qualified in it. It is truly awful to listen to someone talk about their career when they truly dislike what they do: the hurt, pain and suffering is real, and the money is merely something that assuages their discomfort rather than being a reward for a job well done. This problem affects people at all levels of the ladder, including those on high salaries that many people would assume are the great successes. Should we be surprised when people pack it up to do something that they say they’ve always wanted to do, despite the move meaning a massive pay cut?

We are more than our diplomas, certifications and sundry pieces of paper. As we have seen from the recent devastating floods in Queensland and Victoria, when a skill becomes essential to our survival, the value of a person’s abilities is more than the transitory prestige afforded any particular job title. What is important is the person’s passion and achievement in their chosen vocation. Sometimes, it can take a whole working life to discover that passion.

If a career is the path of a lifetime, the journey is no less worthy simply because the individual didn’t stumble across the “right answer” at the beginning of their foray into the world of work. Their journey merely took the scenic route.

 

Clayton Jan