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A few years ago, I was having what some call a quarter-life crisis, but, ironically, lacked all the trademark signs of chaos normally associated with a true catastrophe. I was in a stable job that paid me a perfectly livable salary. I generally liked what I did, got to work in NYC, and had college students email me from time to time asking how I got my exact position. It was all good, and I was wretchedly unhappy.
Simply leaving my job for a different company within the same industry (and lightly boosting my income) didn’t seem like it would help — there was a deeper issue beyond slight changes in compensation or company benefits. And fully switching fields or going to grad school felt scary, too — I knew I’d risk making an enormous commitment to start from scratch, with no guarantee it wouldn’t make me feel even more stuck in the end.
Little by little, I started to look up resources that could address this problem, which I learned is actually extremely common. Reading books like “Designing Your Life” or combing through Ask a Manager blog posts helped me slowly dissect my role to discover which parts I actually loved (and which ones I really didn’t), as well as reassess my job hunting process as a whole.
I started to dig beyond our society’s common (and tired) refrain of “dream jobs” and “following your passion,” which I realized led me further away from good, fulfilling work. Several years (plus more books, blogs, and online courses) later, I feel like I finally zigzagged my way into a job that makes all those pieces fit together, but I also wouldn’t have known where to look if I hadn’t taken the time to really understand what I want from my career in the long-term.
It can be extra hard to get unstuck in your career during a pandemic when many of us are at home and day-to-day life can feel repetitious. But it can also be a good time to gently explore the deeper aspects of what you want to do, beyond currently existing job titles or perk-filled companies. There is also the strong possibility of new, more flexible jobs in the future, one of which might be a great fit for you — if you know to look for it.
