Your career is like a car, and you are the driver. You can steer it right or left change its course a little. You can press the gas pedal when you feel it is time to go or touch the brakes when you think you are going too fast. We get so comfortable driving the same car that we could never imagine trading it in for another, yet, sometimes we jump out to take a look at the engine; hoping it will perform better, get you ahead faster and give you more excitement. Guess what? The only way to get more from your career is if you change cars!
Here I am. Once again on the threshold of changing my career path. For the past few years, I have taken up an insatiable appetite for writing, and It has become my passion. A couple of years ago I would have never thought that I could make a career with it, until this year. After much deliberation, I decided to take another leap. Seeing a need and an opportunity to have a full-time copywriter at the company I work for (www.dovico.com), I took the plunge and suggested I leave the computer programming world behind to pursue a career in copywriting. Thankfully, my idea was embraced, and now, in the coming months, I will transition from a job that I was comfortable with into the unknown career in writing.
As I thought about taking on this new career-changing challenge, I realized that my new position is not one that has a lot of openings in the city that I work for. While I believe there is a burgeoning demand for copywriting, there is currently more demand for the career I am leaving behind. There is no safety in what I am about to do, but there is no growth for me in what I was doing before. I am willing to sacrifice safety for the happiness that my passion for writing will give me. I would rather spend every day being happy and a little uncertain than safe and miserable. My life is too short for that.
I see so many of my friends going through the motions at their current jobs. They spend valuable time working for companies that could care less about their well-being and advancement. “It’s for the pay they say” as they trudge their tired souls into work and put in hours until quittin’ time or better yet, FRIDAY! Day-after-day and week-after-week they look forward to the next day, the next weekend or vacation, and ultimately they look forward to that day when they can walk away in retirement. They elect to trade the most productive and youthful years of their lives for a future that is not guaranteed.
We cannot make sense of our careers looking into the future. Instead of miserably working through your day waiting for Friday, why not take that energy and push hard to work towards your passion? If you don’t have a love worth pursuing into a career, then relentless try new things until you do find one. If the engine in your career is keeping you from moving ahead and you are stuck, get out of that career and find a new one. It is easier to work through the uncertainty of a new job than it is pushing every day uphill the one that has stalled.