I don't like my job anymore. What now?
Last Sunday I went to a friend's (and client) baby shower. It was a room full of people I've never seen before which means I engaged in a lot of small talk. I feel like small talk always begins the same way: 'where are you from’ followed by ‘interesting, and what do you do?' and the answer to the later can generally go two ways: it will either give you absolutely nothing to talk about - generally to me is when people mention jobs like 'lawyer' or ‘mortgage broker’ (jk guys, I love you no matter how much you intimidate me), or it will be the opening of a whole new exciting conversation (I'm looking at you artists, anthropologists and lovers of people).
Curiously on that baby shower, 3 out of the 5 people I spoke to ended up telling they are looking into changing jobs. And the majority of them is because they simply don't like their jobs anymore or, worse, they realized they never did.
As I mentioned on this post, I joined the statistics of people that re-thought their lives and careers during the pandemic and took the leap into leaving my 10 years career in corporate retail to become a full-time photographer. So I know all about the 'I don't like my job anymore’ or 'should I just try something else instead?!'.
And what I realized when going through the process is that before having the courage to change careers there’s another problem: not knowing what to do next. I’ve realized that like me, a lot of people just know what they don’t want to do, but aren’t at all clear about what they might wanna do next.
I started realizing that I might needed a change when my procrastination towards my work increased, when I saw myself celebrating important meetings being cancelled, and when I realized that I wasn’t bringing my best to crucial parts of my job that I used to really enjoy in the past. A good thermometer for my unhappiness at work was Sunday nights: the anxiety of beginning a new week would kick in and there was a constant feeling of no longer being good enough at a job that I was doing great for 8 years straight.
(It’s true that some of these realizations had to be told to me by my body as I was ignoring all the signals: anxiety crisis and extreme lower back pain, and the weekend after I finish my notice I had all these hives popping up on my skin. But here’s yet another topic for a different post - nervous laugh).
Once all the signals were properly assimilated I started to brainstorm around potential new careers - something that I could use all my years of business management and leadership so I wouldn’t risk having a pay cut. I called my friends from university as we still have a group chat and tried to pick on all their brains. I spoke to good friends, to previous mentor, to former colleagues. I stalked the LinkedIn profiles of people I admired professionally to see what they did and how they got there. I tirelessly browsed through positions on LinkedIn in the two different countries I’m allowed to work at. I received 8 different job alerts on my e-mail every-single-day. I took a few courses that I didn’t finish, joined a book club, cried to my partner, complained to my therapist, decided to just drop it all and wait tables at the cute coffee shop next to my house, than decided that I should probably try something else. My mind would go from ‘art direction at an advertising agency’ to ‘project management at a tech company’ and then ‘luxury retail’ in a fraction of a second. Until I decided to not change anything at all, as the process of deciding was exhausting enough.
So I bought a book, ‘A Job to Love’. As explained on the previous post, I actually bought it for a friend but was convinced to bring home a copy for me. And in one of the 3 times that I had to quarantine at home due to COVID I read the whole thing in 3 days.
Paraphrasing the book, 'with compassion and a deeply practical spirit, this book guides us to discover our true talents and to make sense of our confused desires and aspirations before it is too late.’ It begins by proposing a few exercises that takes you back to when you were a kid: what did you like to play with when alone? What part of that was your favourite? Can you point out what on that made you enjoy it so much? Then it builds up and takes you all the way to the deeply embedded life interests which, according to this article by Timothy Butler on the Harvard Business Review, are 'long-held, emotionally driven passions for certain kinds of activities. Deeply embedded life interests are not hobbies or enthusiasms; they are innate passions that are intricately entwined with personality. Life interests don’t determine what we’re good at but what kinds of work we love.’
The deeply embedded life interests include an array of things such as ‘Creative Production’, ‘Counselling and Mentoring’, ‘Influence through language and Ideas’, etc. Knowing which ones are yours is a very useful tool to kick start your career change brainstorming as they should be taken as top priorities when designing the next career chapter.
While doing this exercised I realized two things:
My current job is perfect for me: as a regional manager for Aesop in the western Canada I was exercising my most people oriented self by combining Managing People and Relationships with Counselling and Mentoring and as an added bonus I was also working with beauty and exercising organization (two things that are very important to me and if you know Aesop they are all about beauty and organization, visual clutter being a true crime in that world full of virgos - including yours truly) while aligning my personal values with the business.
What I also realized was that after two years of managing my team’s anxiety, mental health and resignation, I was also tired of this part of my life interests and it might have been time to try something else. I had noticed that I missed exercising my creativity and doing something for myself, while mastering my own time and having full autonomy. The need for changing jobs also came with a life decision of travelling more for the next year before settling down. And when I was putting all these pieces together it hit me: photography could be a great thing to explore.
What started as a hobby became a strong interest as photographing people still allows me to work with people and exercise connection and empathy (but without having to manage their performance thank goodness) while being creative and creating beauty. And in the middle of looking for Project Management courses and a very expensive MBA to complete, I decided to give myself a chance to thrive on my own.
It's May 2022 and it's been 5 months since I signed my resignation and one month since I started to dedicate full time to photography. One month is a very short period of time, but so far not a day goes by that I don't celebrate my new chapter - even when the financial anxiety hits hard and the negative self talks dominate my mind. I still have such a long way to go and re-discover myself as an artist, and a solo-preneur and also as the sole responsible for my professional growth, but the past part? Is to get to know myself everyday a little more and to appreciate every Sunday anxiety-free.
Stay tuned in this blog as I bring more updates on this chapter of my career
Obrigada,
Mafê.