All Change

6 minute read

A friend of mine recently compared her midlife career pivot with learning to swim for the first time at age 40 – necessary, but hair-raising. Certainly, the idea of a complete career U-turn terrifies me and, I’m sure, many others, yet the phrase itself is often bandied about with the same nonchalance a school-leaver might drop in her CV to cafés and clothes stores. It’s frequently presented as a switch that’s as straightforward to make as swapping your foundation or moving your gym membership. But a midlife career pivot takes nerve and tenacity, especially for women. According to the US-based Dame Magazine: “A midlife career change is risky for an age-gender group defined as caregivers, breadwinners and matriarchs. Those [women] in their 40s, 50s and 60s have potentially more to lose if their decision to change careers doesn’t pan out.”

Síne Vasquez, who pivoted from cancer physiotherapist to fine jewellery designer in 2017, agrees that adding to the midlife juggle by taking on something new can seem counter-intuitive. The mother-of-three’s motivation to change her profession was a mix of pragmatism and passion. “With no grandparents to help out with the children, and myself and my husband working the same hours with no option to work from home [her husband is a healthcare worker], flexibility around the kids became a real issue.” She had been studying jewellery-making part-time for several years and felt at this stage of her life that, “taking on something new and challenging was what I needed.”

She and her husband sat down and examined how their finances and quality of life would fare over the next few years if she made the leap. “It didn’t make a lot of sense financially, but it made sense to us in so many other ways. One of the biggest factors that came into play was how we wanted to live our lives,” she explains.

For brand consultant Sive O’Brien, leaving print publishing in 2014 after 14 years as a fashion editor was also driven by lifestyle factors. “When I came back to work after my second maternity leave, I wanted more flexibility, but it wasn’t on offer; plus there was a lot of travel involved in my job, which no longer suited me as the mother of a baby and toddler. I also began to feel that working on a fashion magazine, where clothes and make-up are so important, wasn’t the healthiest environment for me to be in as I raised my two girls.”

Though no less ambitious in midlife than she was in her twenties, Sive began freelancing as a brand consultant (she’d gained a Master’s degree in fashion marketing in her twenties), while studying digital marketing at night. She then took a job as a digital editor with a major online publisher where she put into practice everything she’d learned in theory on her night course. “I had planned to stay only a year, but I remained for two and a half because I was learning so much on the ground. I wouldn’t have the business I do now without this experience.”

Her business, Sive explains, is the outcome of an “organic” career pivot. Many women believe – myself included – that you must have all the answers in advance of taking the leap from one profession to another; that you must know exactly where you want to end up and how to get there.

Sive disagrees. “Print publishing was dying, and I knew digital was the direction I wanted to go in, but it took several years of trying out different roles within this industry – consulting, marketing, project managing, editing – to finally settle on what made me happy, and also paid the bills. She now mentors small businesses and offers brand consultations and virtual workshops, which help companies to clarify and solidify their brand personality and customer base. “I finally feel I’m doing what I really love,” she reveals.

American entrepreneur and author Ben Casnocha once said, “Opportunities do not float like clouds in the sky. They’re attached to people. If you’re looking for an opportunity, you’re really looking for a person.” Sive explains that one of the most important things she did when she decided she wanted to leave publishing was to meet people for coffee. “I met anyone I could think of who might give me some insight that would help me begin my journey. Everyone was kind and helpful, and I always came away with something: a nugget of advice, an email address, an introduction.” Síne also maintains that speaking to individuals within the industry or industries you’re thinking of moving to is invaluable.

This is where I will always struggle. As an introvert, I don’t pick up the phone and arrange a meet-up with the same ease many of my friends do, especially if it’s with someone I don’t know very well. I’d much rather hand over a resumé. But of course a piece of paper only presents a partial view of you. It makes far more sense to present the full picture in person. The reality is that career pivots pose different challenges for each of us. The trick is to be honest about which bits you’ll find most difficult and take steps to manage them.

One piece of advice both Síne and Sive offer to others thinking of pivoting is to hold strong to your values. While midlife poses many challenges for those intent on changing careers – Síne recalls being up all night with a new baby and the next day having to sit at a workbench for eight hours trying to master a new skill like metal-smithing – its silver lining is that as women we understand ourselves much better and have identified both what matters most to us and what makes us happiest – for some it’s working with people; for others, it’s fulfilling their creativity; for you, it may be mentoring young people or steering a start-up to success.

And while pivoting to bring greater value and meaning into your life is wonderfully worthwhile, if your reason to pivot is purely financial, that’s perfectly reasonable too. There are many women who would swap flexible hours for job security and a bigger pay packet. We each have different circumstances and different needs in midlife.

For Generation Xers in particular, the concept of changing careers at this stage of their lives is problematic because it goes against the teachings of our childhood. My Dad worked in RTÉ for 40 years. The job was stable and pensionable, and that was how I, and many of my peers, expected our careers to unfold – a couple of trial-and-error roles before settling comfortably into a long-term position from which we’d eventually retire.

But the world of work has changed. Millennials will be well-placed to navigate it, as they seem to have been brought up with a much more fluid concept of career. Us Gen Xers can only hope to get used to it because we all have so many more worthwhile years left in us to evolve and give. If you’re wondering whether you should pivot or not, think about how your job impacts your relationships, your downtime and your health. It should enhance and not diminish any one of them.

Amelia Earhart remarked: “You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.” Síne agrees, admitting that being taken out of her comfort zone has done her so much good. “I've been faced with new challenges at every turn, but I’ve really enjoyed the toughness of the learning curve.” Similarly, Sive tells me she has enjoyed upskilling so much that she continues to do so, signing up to courses and coaching groups regularly.

Both of these women didn’t just change industries, they transformed the nature of how they work, too, switching from being part of an office/hospital-based team to working at home alone. Their transitions are layered and more inspiring than any quote I can offer to finish up. Having said that, American journalist Bob Talbert’s words always resonate with me. “If you don’t build your dream, someone else will hire you to help build theirs.”

All Change

6 minute read

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