Age has a big influence over career decisions. The younger we are, the braver we feel. We’re willing to explore and take chances because we know we have time to try different career moves. I started working in libraries when I was sixteen years old, but I only decided to make it a career after I graduated from college. A big part of it was that I just fell into a career that was already there. I had the knowledge and experience, and I just kept going in that direction. Since full-time positions are a limited commodity in the library world, I had to wait my turn and keep working hard until I earned a spot.
Once I found that first full-time job, I felt locked into a library career. Why? Good pay. Insurance. Paid time off. Retirement. Stability. Supposedly, the American Dream was at the end of all my hard work, and therefore, I stayed as the library world changed around me. The library world supported me through various family illnesses, a car accident, and multiple family deaths. I will never criticize my supervisors or coworkers for the support they provided in difficult times. However, something in me began to change after all those experiences.
Somehow the harder I worked, the further away the American Dream seemed to get. I felt tired all the way down in my bones. I no longer had the drive which once propelled me forward. I felt confined and restricted. I had lost the passion for library work. I was moving from day to day in a daze and not even feeling like I was living. I was existing. It isn’t the same thing. It’s the difference between a lifelong career and a job. Library work had just become a job, and I no longer cared.
The main reason I found it so difficult to make a career leap was my age. I was in my early forties, and I was now able to understand the risks I would take entering a different field. Nonetheless, I decided to make the leap and try a few different jobs, but they were just jobs. They still didn’t feel like careers. I began to question my decisions, and as I was floundering around trying to make my writing a profitable career, I found a little nugget of historical information that gave me hope. Robert Ballard was 43 years old when he discovered the lost wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic (Andrews, 2017). Now this may just be a blip on someone else’s radar (pun intended), but because I had studied the discovery of the Titanic since childhood, this little gem made me pay attention. In my early forties, I realized I could start a new career.
The truth is I made a lateral leap as far as skills. Library work is about literacy, customer service, databases, research, budgeting, and acquisitions. I simply moved to the category of producing the product instead of obtaining, cataloging, and circulating the product. It isn’t that I lacked the skills for the career change, but I did need to look at my skills in a new light. I began to ask myself how I could continue to write and use my skills to pay the bills. I took my age out of the equation when it came to pursuing a career change, but I definitely use my experience as a marketing tool. I believe my age helped me see new possibilities, and I now feel that my age is an asset instead of a liability.
If you are considering this kind of career move, take the time to put your age into its proper place. What advantages does your age give you? What are the liabilities, if any? Are you willing to become a new employee again even if it means taking a cut in pay and starting over somewhere? Figuring out how to use your age, whether you’re 25 to 95, will help you move forward. Just don’t let it hold you back. It took me this long to figure out what I truly wanted to do, but I try to remind myself that I wasn’t wasting my time before. Instead, I was building skills and a sense of curiosity. Don’t let your age hold you back in your career decisions, and if someone else wants to use your age against you, remind yourself that isn’t the kind of person you want to work with or for. Every age has its advantages. You just need to find what your advantages are.
Reference:
Andrews, Evan. (2017, April 1). The Real Story Behind the Discovery of Titanic’s Watery Grave. History. https://www.history.com/articles/titanics-watery-grave-located
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Inspirational Verse for the Day:
Wisdom belongs to the aged, and understanding to the old. (Job 12:12, NLT)
All Things Subject to Change 