Latest / Many Things with Steph Libby / Turning Passions into Real Career Pathways

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Turning Passions into Real Career Pathways · Many Things with Steph Libby

Welcome back to Many Things.
I'm Steph, I'm multi-passionate, and I'm building my dream life one step at a time, and this is the podcast where I talk about all of it.
It's been an interesting week.
If you've been listening, I have been meeting with a career counselor.
We've been meeting, uh, once or twice a month.
Nothing crazy.
It's July now.
I started meeting with her in April, It hasn't been a long time, but it's something that I've mentioned here and there, so I thought it might be helpful if I kind of talked about my experiences and what it was like for me, and the things we covered, and the things that I've learned about myself along the way.
So that's what I wanted to talk about with you all today and kind of share my experience.
I was nervous to do career counseling.
I had some misconceptions, I think, around it as a process.
I assumed that the first thing they would tell me is that if you're unhappy, you need to invest in going back to school or get an expensive certification, which was a path that I had determined wasn't the right path for me back in November.
So I was nervous that that would be, um, you know, their, their big advice, like that was gonna be my big takeaway.
I was also nervous about the cost.
My career counselor typically charges, I think, two twenty-five or two fifty an hour.
Obviously, that's not, like, covered with insurance or anything like that, so that is fully out of pocket, and that was...
that's a huge expense for me.
Even meeting, a couple times a month, even once a month, that is a huge expense for me.
I had a little bit of savings set up.
Technically, I think it probably would have been my emergency...
part of my emergency fund.
But, I was feeling really burnt out in November.
There was a certification that I was pursuing, my project management professional certification, and I decided that just wasn't the right path for me.
I was feeling burnt out, um, and I knew I wanted to make a little bit of a pivot in either my current role or move into a different field entirely.
I thought about, well, what if I wanted to leave, marketing and agency life and move into something else.
So that was a big thing that was on my mind, going into career counseling, and that was one of the biggest motivators of moving into career counseling.
I know that there are lots of apps out there, and other, cost-effective services, but those seemed, like, really impersonal to me, and I wasn't sure, and they still cost something.
And I think what I needed was I really needed someone that, like, I could talk to one-on-one and have a real conversation with, and some of the apps that I had looked into just didn't seem like the right fit.
I was also, at the time when I started career counseling, I was looking at bringing in a career counselor to come into the place where I work, and host a lunch and learn around career counseling, Goal setting is a big goal ironically for our company this year.
A lot of our team isn't setting goals.
They don't know how to set goals.
I think some of our managers aren't sure how to help people set goals and all of that, but they're willing to invest in people's professional development.
But they're not seeing any movement in those areas because people aren't really sure what, what they're working towards, frankly.
So I thought bringing in a career counselor might be a good step in, um, kind of nudging people in that direction to start thinking about some of these things that they want to be doing.
So that was how I found the career counselor in the first place.
And she came, she did the, the session with the team, and then, we came up with a really interesting model of how the rest of the employees could engage with her for, a one-time consultation and do some assessments and then see if they wanted to continue on with career counseling after the fact.
I decided that that might be a good choice for me.
I felt like I was at, a real crossroads, and I needed someone who understood the job market and understood what other jobs exist out in the world.
And, my career counselor is, part life coach, part counselor.
Like, she's not a, "I'm gonna help you update your resume and update your LinkedIn, and bada bing bada boom, you're ready to go."
She does kind of approach it from a more holistic, lens.
And so that was really appealing to me because, I'd done that life audit at the beginning of this year.
So I knew the areas I wanted to work in.
I knew what areas, well, basically all my areas needed to be, uh...
needed work and improvement for sure.
So after I met with her to talk with the whole group, I just really felt like that would be a good step for me.
The cost part of it was still very terrifying.
The way I justified it to myself is, you know, five, six months prior, I was willing to spend thousands of dollars to take a test to get a certification I didn't even really want.
And if I just used that money towards this, to this career counseling, and could actually figure out what kind of trajectory I want to be on and where I wanna be, that would pay dividends later on.
And that felt like more of a justifiable investment to me personally than spending all that money on a, on a certification I didn't even want.
So in my head, I, I kind of worked out that I justified the spend for me.,
And I was very lucky because my career counselor, actually, I was very upfront with her and just said "You know, I don't know how many sessions I'm gonna be able to afford," this is, you know...
At the time, my boyfriend was out of work, so this is, like, a big investment for me.
Like, I really...
This isn't, like, extra money that I just have to spend willy-nilly.
This is, like, a real investment that I'm making.
So I don't know how many sessions I can commit to.
She actually was, very nice and gave me a sliding scale and bumped it down.
And so I ended up paying $150 a session, which is still so much money.
Um, and I think I ended up doing, like, maybe, like, 10 sessions with her.
So it, it was a lot of money, but I got so much out of these sessions.
And the first one my work paid for, so that was also very helpful, and very appreciative of that.
And but I learned a lot through these sessions with her, and I was amazed at how much I've learned over, just working with her for, four or five months.
The big question people ask me about when I tell them I've done career counseling, the number one question they ask is, Could you have gotten this advice elsewhere? The short answer, the easy answer is yeah.
Like, there's plenty of places out there, whether it's other apps or, just following, influencers and content creators.
Like, eventually I would've gotten all this information at some point.
I think it probably would've taken me much longer, and I think it probably would've taken me through to the end of next year.
And sometimes it's just nice for someone to say, "Here, here's a set of 12 activities that we're gonna walk through, and we're gonna do each one methodically, and we're gonna talk through each step of it, And I needed that I really did not need more research and more things to chew on and more background.
I just really needed...
I just really wanted answers.
That was really all I cared about.
Other people have different priorities, they have different needs, and they're coming into the sessions and this experience with a career counselor.
They, they are probably coming into it from a very different lens and different experiences and different points of crises, I guess.
But, but all in all, I would say, uh, to preface everything I'm gonna get into today, it was so worth it for me.
I am really proud of m- I...
It seems so stupid to say I'm so proud of myself of spending money on a service for myself, but, there was something I joked about early on with my career counselor, and I had said, you know, I've spent,, thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, tons of hours, years of my life in therapy, and honestly, it feels like what I needed the entire time was a, a career coach, was a career counselor.
I feel like the last four months or so have unlocked so many barriers in my mind that I have been constantly running up against, and it just feels like some of those blockages have been really cleared out, and she made me...
well, let's just get into it.
So the first thing we talked about was, she identified early on.
She was like, "Yo, have you ever heard of this term multi-passionate?", She called them multi-potentialites.
If you're multi-passionate like me, you know there's like a million different names for, someone who is- has a, a revolving door of interests, can lose focus pretty quickly, and once they've sort of mastered something or learned enough of something, they're ready to sort of move on to the next thing, and they sort of, not necessarily completely discard this thing that they've been working on, but, like, their focus, like, wanes, like, ebbs and flows a lot.
And multi-passionates like me, like, tend to have a lot of different, often diverse interests.
You will see a lot of entrepreneurs that are multi, um, passionates, and you'll also see a lot of creatives that are multi-passionate.
So, so that was, like, one of the first things that she mentioned to me was, being a multi-passionate person.
So that was one of the first things she mentioned to me was being multi-passionate, and at this point I had already heard the term, but it was still new to me.
I had sort of leaned into it a bit and had accepted that that is probably a big part of my identity and a big part of my personality, and something that I've always known is important to me in the back of my head, didn't really have a term for it, felt like this is just sort of who I am, but, like, who I am has to be inherently wrong because It felt, because everyone was telling me you needed to focus, you needed to specialize, you needed to make yourself smaller, You can't be interested in a million things and do all those things relatively well, you know, that kind of mentality.
So my whole life I thought there was something wrong with me.
I thought, like, I was a loser.
I thought that I lacked focus, I thought I lacked drive, I thought I lacked motivation.
Like, if I love all these things, why can't I just, like, pick one and plow through life with that as my sole focus? Like, why is that so hard? If I love all these things, why can't I just pick one then? Um, but that's just, like, not how my mind works, and I'm learning to accept that.
But that was one of the first conversations I had had with my career counselor, was around multi-passionate, um, personality traits.
And so that felt really refreshing, and I felt like that...
Instantly I felt really seen by this person, and I think that that set us up for a really good, it set us up for a really good interaction and experience with each other.
So that was the first thing where I was just like, "Okay."
That was like probably session one where that came up.
So that made me feel really, really good.
And that, it also just made me f- it put me at ease with my decision to invest in this career counseling because I felt like, okay, this person really sees me, this person's really gonna get me.
And all the things that I've tried to explain to other people my whole life, and they just go, "Shut up," like, "Just pick something," like, "Stop meandering.
Stop mulling it over.
Stop overthinking," I just felt like she gets it, like she's really gonna help me tackle this problem.
After that, um, you know, we kind of just had a conver- a conversation about like, "Okay, where are you at with your, you know, your career right now? Is it where you want it to be? Where did you see yourself when you were younger? How, what parts of this, what parts of this job do you like? What parts of it don't you like?" And we did that through a series of assessment tests that were very helpful.
So, um, for example, one...
And they're, they were, they were simple tests, but they really did force you, they really forced me to look at myself holistically instead of, um, in a compartmentalized way, which I feel like is how I typically look at myself and do self-improvement.
Like, I'm always looking at, like, a small area of my job or a small area of things that I like.
I'm not looking at, well, here are 25 dimensions of, of work, they would be 25 cards of 25 different skills, and I would have to put them into buckets, and I was limited to the number of cards I could have in one bucket.
And the buckets were something like- love it, hate it, neutral Absolutely never.
This is a total burnout skill.
It was essentially like those four buckets.
And I would have to organize them, and it was hard because, like, when you look at...
If I were to look at each of those 25 cards individually, a lot of them I'd be like, "Love it, love it, love it, love it."
But it really forced you to be like, no, you can't love everything.
You can't make everything, your number one thing.
You have to...
You can only choose five, and then the next one you can only choose eight, and the next one You have to categorize these things, and that seems so simple and maybe kind of stupid, and I'm sure there are people listening going like, "Okay, like, how was that helpful?" But especially for someone like me, I love everything, so to categorize anything, I see the value in skills I don't like.
I see the value in skills I do like.
And if I like something, it's always all or nothing, you know? So it's always been hard for me to, be okay with prioritizing certain things.
That's always been really hard for me, is like, um, putting a number to things, rating things, putting it, putting it into a scale, bucketing things.
So that was a challenge for me, I really had to think really hard.
You know, I'd end up with, like, 20 different things that I was like, "Well, I like all these skills.
And some of it's like I'm good at all these things.
Some of it was like, well, I'm not good at, but I love it and I'd love to learn more about it.
It just really forced me to get clear on my priorities and the skills that I really love and want to do more of and the skills that I just kind of like and all of that.
It's a hard thing to kind of explain, but it did just give me so much clarity.
It really forced me to be honest with myself and draw a line in the sand, which I hadn't really done before.
So that was all super helpful..
She got to know me and how my brain works and how I prioritize and think about different things through that process, through this process of, doing all these assessments.
So that was the first step.
And so then she was looking, and she was like, you know, um, she was like, "You know, you just have like a very unique combination of things."
She's like, "You're actually like..."
And this is kind of where some of the multi-passionate stuff, you know, conversation came up again, and she had said, "You know, you have like this very unique set of interests and skills and the things that you like and don't like."
And she was like, "You're actually like in a very, very rare category."
She was like, "A lot of people are usually either very like, um, people who love like the conservative skills like organizing, planning, um, and then they don't like the creative stuff."
And she was like, "But yours is like very 50/50."
And she's like, "That's not...
Usually someone leans more or less to one of those sides."
And she was like, "And they..."
But I scored very high in a lot of different areas.
So I scored high in some of these conservative skills, I scored high in investigative skills, and I scored high in creative skills.
And so, um, she, she had said like, you know, "I think that this is where this multi-passion stuff is kind of coming to play a bit too.
Like, the world really is your oyster, and that's why you're having such a hard time figuring out what you wanna do.
'Cause one, to a multi-passionate, the grass is always greener.
Like, you get bored very easily."
And two, um, one thing that came up a lot is that I have a really high drive towards, um, helping people, that that is one of my number one things, but I also wanna be a high earner.
And she said, you know, sometimes those, those values can, clash and conflict.
So there were a lot of interesting conversations.
So she was like, "Well, if you could do...
If you could leave your job right now, what do you think would be...
Where do you think you'd want to land? Like, what is something that's...
What's, like, your number two choice that's sort of floating around in your brain?" And, um, you know, if, if, if this is your first time listening, I went to school for creative writing.
I have a bachelor's and a master's in creative writing.
I, um, I also have a master's in education.
I thought I wanted to be a high school teacher, and then a college professor, and then a middle school teacher.
None of that really happened.
I've, I've taught adult ed writing classes and stuff,, throughout my, post, post-collegiate life.
But I'm obviously not in,, a field right now where I'm necessarily teaching people.
But over the last year and a half, I've taken over, some training, functions at my job, hosting the lunch and learns, and helping with professional development, all that stuff.
So that was also rattling around in my brain, and I said, "You know, the one thing that I've always regretted is not leaning harder into nonprofit work."
I had been on a board of trustees for, um, an arts-based charter school here in New Hampshire, and I served for its inaugural year, and I learned a lot through that experience.
And I, I think also because I had wanted to to teach, and I found little spots of that, to occupy myself in my adult life.
So one of the things I've regretted is not leaning harder into nonprofit work, and especially arts-based nonprofit.
You know, my whole thesis when I got my master's in education was around arts education and arts across the curriculum and things like that.
So I, I really felt like I wanted to do something that if I couldn't do something artistic myself as my day job, I wanted to be around creativity and foster creativity and be around people in the arts.
So she...
So we looked at that a little bit more.
Let's see if this is...
if this has some legs to it.
You know? Like, let's really look and see if this is a viable option for you.
And, um, so we...
So what she had me do was just go look at some job postings that are out there, and right now don't focus on whether or not they feel real for you right now.
We're, we're...
This is supposed to be an aspirational exercise to some degree.
This is just an info gathering exercise.
Look at the jobs that you would want to have, that interest you the most in the nonprofit space.
Don't think about it in terms of, like, a lens in terms of, like, this is what you're gonna apply to, um, or anything like that.
Like, so they don't have to be regional to you.
They don't necessarily have to be looking for remote people.
It's just about the job itself, like the context of the job, like the role, the responsibilities, the day-to-day functions, salary, things like that.
And she's like, "We're gonna, you know, have you pull like 10 of those job postings, and we're gonna analyze them."
So she had me go through and meticulously highlight every single word that was in these job postings, which was so painful.
There's nothing I hate more than reading through job postings, and this is how you know you're not meant to be a career counselor because that is the most boring thing on the planet to me, and to her it was like the most thrilling thing that she could be doing.
Like, she was like, "I love reading through job postings," and I just love...
She found the right field for herself.
Like, this...
There are very few people I think are like, "I think this is fun."
Um- But so we went through this exercise, and so I had to highlight, um, I highlighted in green any skills that were mentioned in the job posting, um, or any words or anything, just anything that I had experience with.
And then in blue, I highlighted anything that, um, I might not have deep experience in, but I'm, like, slowly gaining experience in currently.
And then in yellow, we highlighted anything that I don't have experience with at all, but I'm interested in it.
And then anything in red, we h- we would highlight as, a burnout skill that we've identified.
That was also part of some of the assessments we did, was identifying, like, what are my burnout skills? What are the skills that, um, even if they're essential to whatever I'm doing right now for work, very true, everyone has burnout skills, things that just really, really drain them instead of lighting them up.
They're the, they're the parts of your job you look forward to the least in doing.
You hate having to do it, and it's probably the, uh, skills within your job that make you the most resentful.
So we did a lot of work around identifying what are those burnout skills because, like, when you're making a career pivot, it-- avoid jobs that have those burnout skills if you can.
Uh, makes a lot of sense, that was another thing.
Like, I didn't think I had that as an option.
I, it...
The career counseling just made me feel very, very empowered.
It made me feel like I am in control of my destiny.
It made me feel like I am in control of what I choose to do next, and it made me feel like instead of career choices and jobs are just sort of happening to me and which for a long time that has felt like I, I felt like, "Oh, this opportunity fell into my lap, so I have to take it," or, um, "I've committed to something, so I have to stick with it," even if I, even if I'm just like, "This is not for me, and I don't wanna do this, and it's the last thing I wanna be doing."
I felt really empowered, um, doing these sessions with the career counselor.
I felt like for the first time I f- I really felt like I could really take the reins of my own career and my trajectory and Find this, find a space for myself, that I could really enjoy long term.
So we went through this exercise of highlighting these job postings, and it was so eye-opening.
Um, and what we realized is that I really love helping people, and I obviously really love the arts.
But what was really hard was that when we start, she's like, "Okay, well, like now let's like look closer at like how realistic some of these jobs are."
And it just felt like I didn't, I hadn't...
I have really minimal experience in the nonprofit world, and I have a lot of transferable skills, but there are some things that, like, just aren't gonna transfer super well.
The biggest thing, though, was a lot of these places were looking for people that lived local to...
They didn't want remote people.
They wanted people who lived local to, um, to their headquarters, and some of them were very small, some of them were bigger.
And it makes a lot of sense, right? Like, if you're running a Shakespeare theater, you know, theater, summer theater thing, you want someone who lives close by so they can be there to help orchestrate the summer theater thing.
Like, it, it's obvious, you know.
But coming from a corporate world where I've worked remote for six years, it...
I take for granted that there are still some places, especially in certain fields, where you have to...
You can't do the work remotely.
And so that came up a lot in looking at these job postings.
So that was a, a thing to really think about because, you know, uh, one of my other big dreams is that I want to get a lake, a remote lake house somewhere and live there full time, and that's gonna require remote work.
It's very, it's gonna be very hard to find a job that's, pays what I need to earn, is in a field that I love, and uses all my best skills, and have it be right where the, I wanna move to randomly because I'm basically gonna be forced to find, move to wherever I can afford a lake house to be able to do that, which is probably gonna be very remote.
So, so that was, like, an interesting thing.
So that was one thing that was, like, rattling in my brain of, "Okay, well, I really need to think about this seriously.
Like, I need to really think this is a big, this is a big red flag."
You know, like, this is something to really weigh.
And then the other thing that popped up that I added to that list was salary.
A lot of the posting that we're looking at were above me in title, like where I am currently.
It was above...
It would be a jump in title, but it would actually be a significant pay cut to take one of these jobs, and there was a job that was actually loc- fairly local to me.
It was like...
But it was still, like, over an hour away, and, um, it was for a program manager at this, uh, creative workspace, and they host classes for the community and all this stuff, so I was like, "This is perfect."
I was a great match for the job.
I had a lot of skills.
I went through the exercise of updating my resume, and my career counselor was actually an advisor to them.
And I applied for the job.
They wanted to interview me, and then there came this obstacle of, "Well, you have to come in and do an in-person interview."
And I said, "Oh, I'm looking for something, like, that's more remote."
And they flat out said, like, "We've, we've discovered that, that...
this position cannot be done remote.
There's a little bit of flexibility that maybe you could work, like, one or two days a week from home, but we need someone who's here because we need people to, you know...
We need someone here to help show the instructors and interested students who are signing up for the class.
We need someone here who can, like, give them a tour of the grounds and show them the classroom and that need them to be able to pop in and out and help set up for the events and all this stuff."
So all of it made very...
a lot of sense, so I just said, "Okay, like, I don't think that this is gonna work for me."
And when I talked to the career counselor, I told her, and she was a little disappointed that I didn't go through with the interview, and I said, "You know, it would've been good experience to, go through the interview," but it was one thing when I...
I already knew the salary was going to be, like, a $18,000 a year pay cut and probably not as good of benefits and that I'd be giving up a lot, and I also would have to be driving to work.
So that was just, like, another expense and point of confusion.
Like, me and my boyfriend are a one car family right now, so How would he get to work? How would I get to work? And if he's working south and I'm working east, like, how is all this actually gonna measure up? So it was just, like, a lot, and so it was like, okay, I'm taking a pay cut, plus I'm gonna put more miles and pay for more gas in my car.
Um, it just...
It- So that $18,000 pay cut was really becoming, like, a 20, 22,000 plus pay cut, in the sense that, like, I'm gonna be spending money to get to work where I'm not spending money to get to work right now.
So for a number of reasons that I kind of re-brushed that, um, that job aside.
But what was good and what I learned from it was it really helped me really look critically at this pipe dream that I've had for a long time, and also, like, all the guilt I had been carrying around with this pipe dream of mine, thinking that I had disappointed myself, I hadn't fulfilled on commitments, that I was wasting my life, wasting my time, um, that I had this picture in my head that there was, like, this grass is greener, picture-perfect life that was waiting for me over in this nonprofit world that I was just too much of a scaredy-cat to go after and get.
And it turns out, after going through this exercise with my career coach, applying to this job, and then realizing, like, this isn't a good fit for me, it really made me look at this, you know, fantasy that I had had and really start to pick it apart.
And I started to realize that, like, this fantasy that I was holding so much guilt for was just so out of the realm of possibility, and it was not gonna help me achieve other dreams I have outside of my job.
You know? Like, the...
It would set me back in my finances.
It would put more of a burden on my finances, which I feel like I'm already struggling enough.
Like, I don't need to add $20,000 plus more pressure onto a situation I'm already feeling a lot of pressure on.
And so it really made me look at something that I had been holding a lot of guilt and shame and regret around, and I let it go.
Like, when we were looking at all these jobs, we were like, "Okay," like, "you have to choose," like- You have to choose, like, is the money more important or is what you're doing more important? And then I was like, I- the money has to be a factor.
Like, I know that sounds a very Scrooge McDuck of me, but, like, the money does matter.
I'm a, I'm a, I'm, I'm a creative person, and I can be a little flighty, and I love, uh, a fanciful dream, but I'm also a pragmatist and a realist at the end of the day, and nothing about working, moving into the nonprofit space felt real.
It was, like, gonna be work.
I was gonna have to find ways to, like, beef up my resume and certain skills that I was seeing in these job postings that I did not have.
I didn't...
It's been a long time since I've had experience in a nonprofit space, so I felt like I was gonna need to, like, start volunteering somewhere else.
So it was like, in different ways it was adding a lot to my plate.
And then We started looking and saying like, "Okay, so you like this part about those jobs, and you like this part about your current job.
How can we mesh- If we were to mesh these two things together, what does that, what does that career look like?" And so what we came up with was something more around, the move that I'd already started to make at work, which was to move into more of a people org, company culture and learning and development.
Like, let's, let's explore that space a little bit more.
We ran through the same exercise that we did with the nonprofit space, and we...
She was like, find a bunch of job postings for these, for, all these different areas that you're interested in.
And pull a bunch of job postings from all these different areas and all these different roles, and let's compare them against each other."
What I found was that a lot of the culture-focused work really required like lots of experience, lots of, uh, certain certifications, like SHRM certifications.
They really wanted people that had, an HR degree, and they also wanted people who had worked in HR before.
I knew, and she had also confirmed, my career counselor had also confirmed that pivoting into HR in a lateral way is very, very hard.
Like to move from one field and then move into HR.
It's not like you're, if I'm a director at my current job, which I'm not, but like if I were a director at my current job, it's not like I can just transfer and be a director of HR.
Do you know what I'm saying? In her experience, she had found that a lot of people had to just start from the bottom when they were transitioning into HR, and that was something I did not wanna do and I couldn't do, because that just kind of put me back in the same spot that I felt like I was in with the nonprofit work, which was that I'm having to take a giant pay cut and start from the bottom and work my way up.
So that didn't seem realistic.
And so where I ended up was the one that had the most promise was probably the one I was most drawn to anyways, and had the closest tie to my skillset, which was pursuing learning and development, so being basically like a company trainer.
And you still get to...
You still...
There are still some through lines between getting to be creative.
There's some through lines between the project management stuff that I do now, 'cause you're managing a program essentially, instead of just a series of projects.
You're just, you're kind of just manage- You're a program manager, just without saying you're a program manager, but that's essentially, uh, you're managing the training programs.
And then it also was really exciting because it would also tie in my creative writing skills and my people skills and my need and desire to wanna help people, and it also would pull in my education degree, which I have not used and have felt really, really, really guilty and I felt like, man, I spent a lot of money on this degree.
I took out loans to get this degree, and I have felt like I have done nothing with it.
And I graduated that program in 2015, I think.
And so, you know, I haven't, like, done anything with it in, like, 10 years really, other than being on that board of trustees.
So that felt really good.
And I found out that a lot of them you can do it remote, because especially if you're working for a bigger company that have, you know, people around the world, it's not so much about delivering the training in person anymore.
They're...
A lot of companies are switching towards online training and on-demand training and self-paced training and all this stuff.
Um, but I was al- I'm also currently at my job, my current job, gaining a lot of skills that are needed for that kind of career path currently, and it's the part that I'm most drawn to in my current job.
So all these, uh, uh, all of this to say that, like- I was getting really excited and I felt that the, all these different pieces that I have not been able to connect together in a real serious way and in a thoughtful way and in a way that feels like it's actually not just a bunch of random things pushed and squashed together, but that it's coming together in a logical way.
I felt like I really had clarity and that was very exciting.
And so that's where we sort of ended something.
Oh, and, and I also found out that, you know, the learning and development salary is also comparable.
To what I'm currently getting paid, but also has a, a decent, pay scale for as you like get into it.
There were less barriers to entry, I felt like, to get into, uh, to transition into that field.
So it just felt like check, check, check, check, check, you know? It just felt like the stars were aligning, everything was coming together, and it felt really good.
And I, I'm someone who regrets every time I spend money on something.
Every time I've gone back to school to get a degree, I thought, "Man, what a fucking waste of money."
Or every time I buy a new piece of equipment for something, I thought, "Man, what a waste of money.
This career counseling, I thought for sure like, "Man, I sunk a lot of money into this."
I've, I've at this point, um, sunk probably like l- close to, close to fifteen hundred dollars probably, which for me that is a lot of money.
And I know that I could have been twice as much if my career counselor wasn't as nice as she was.
Um, but that's a lot of money for me to spend, and that's a lot of money for me to spend on myself especially, because I did feel like it was gonna be kind of a gamble.
Like I, I really was worried that it would just be, "Here's how to update your LinkedIn and stuff."
I didn't know that it would be quite as eye-opening and quite as an epiphany as what I had.
So that's been my experience with career counseling, and it was...
it's been so, so nice.
I-- We decided that we would, now that I'm on a...
I have clarity, I kinda know what I'm focused on, I have made a list of, um...
You know, one of the things that I've walked away with from these sessions is I have a clear list of skills and a clear list of...
I have a goalpost now.
Like I, I've been collecting skills randomly over the last three years, but now I feel like I have an actual trajectory, and I know what I need to accomplish, and I know what I need to get more experience in.
And a lot of it I...
So now I can have more thoughtful conversations with my employer about, you know, how, how do I accomplish these things in a way that feels meaningful for me but also feels meaningful for the company, so they're not just like letting me spin my wheels and not seeing any real return? 'Cause they're a small company.
They don't necessarily need one of these big, huge training programs.
But I'm also deeply rooted in a lot of the culture functions and some of these different aspects that I'm just really drawn to, lately it's not nonprofit work, obviously, but I do feel like it'll get me closer to things that'll make me happier in the long run.
I think it'll make a good use of my skill set.
I think it'll give me that thing that multi-passionate people need, which is to constantly be evolving and learning and growing and doing something different and trying something new and seeing what happens.
So I don't know.
I just am feeling it's scary because...
and overwhelming at times because I identified all these skills that I need to improve on and these things I wanna do better and these things I wanna learn, and it is still a pivot, um, out of project management into something new.
But I'm also really excited, and I feel optimistic, and I feel energized, and I feel...
I've spent a lot of my adult life, um, especially after college, really waffling around in indecision.
And finding it really...
I f- you know, I've, I've really found it hard to put a stake in the ground and have a real goalpost that I'm working towards.
And I fell into marketing, and I've just sort of...
I feel like I've just kept stumbling my way through it, um, up the ladder and into different areas, and none of it has felt particularly satisfying to me.
When I started this job that I'm in now as a project manager at a marketing agency, there was, for the first year, this sense of, wow, I've really found my niche.
I've really found this thing that people always talked about that I would find eventually, that I'd find this job that sort of marries a bunch of my skills together.
And that's all still very true.
Like, it does take care of that type A part of my personality.
It allows me to be organized.
It allows me to...
I...
A lot of the skills that I'm very good at and things that come very naturally to me, being a project manager, those skills are number one, you know? So it makes that stuff kind of easy, but project management in the marketing field does not challenge me in the sense that, like, I don't care about marketing.
It does not fuel me.
There are some people who live, sleep, eat, breathe marketing, and they love it.
For whatever reason, I don't get it.
That's not for me.
But what I'm finding is that, you know, moving into this learning and development, that could be, like, my, my second act, you know, of my career.
And it would still allow me to take bits and pieces of what I love about project management, get rid of the stuff that burns me out and the stuff that I don't like about it, marry it with the things that I've always been really interested in, helping people, learning, education.
I'm endlessly curious, and so Having an opportunity to constantly have to learn about different skills and values and figure out ways to teach people those things and come up with my own curriculum is so exciting to me.
Um, it's not the curriculum I thought I would be designing when I got my education degree, but it's still teaching nonetheless.
And I'm actually really, really good at teaching adults.
Like, I've always struggled to teach college, high school, and younger because I felt so intimidated by the age groups.
But when I'm just talking to an adult and, and teaching them stuff, I...
That is a sweet spot for me.
When I, I taught adult education courses, creative writing adult education courses, um, for several years after, um, I got out of college, and I really did well in that, in that, you know, teaching adults.
So it just felt like a lot of things are clicking for me lately, and that's really been driving me.
You know, I keep telling myself that we're only halfway through the year, you know, and I've already learned so much about myself in...
since January, since November, when this burnout was hitting me really, really hard, and it's so exciting and I feel It's so rare for me that I feel like pieces consistently fall together.
I- pieces fall together for me, but not in a consistent way.
Like, I'll have...
I'll be on a really good streak of something where it feels like, oh, I'm really getting my feet underneath me for, like, two months, and then something happens and I go, "What was I thinking?" Or, "This is not what I wanted," or something's still not quite right.
Th- stuff like that, and I just feel like, yes, I've, I've taken some lumps along the way.
You know what I mean? I've definitely had to overcome some stuff and get out of my own head and, and all of that, and I've had to take some leaps, and I've had to spend some money that I didn't necessarily wanna spend and invest in myself and some of those different things.
But it, it is so satisfying that some of it is paying off, and I'm so glad that I have been so focused on what it is that I want and trying to figure out what it is that I want.
Because I really felt like, and this is j- just, like, from November, but for most of my adult life, I've really felt like that is a huge Sisyphean task that I'm not going to be able to...
Like, I'm never gonna figure out what's gonna make me happy.
I'm never gonna find something that as an adult...
You know, I've always had in the back of my head novelist or bust.
You know? Like, if I'm not a novelist, I'll never be happy.
I'll never enjoy work.
I'm gonna rot in a job that I hate and just earn a paycheck and get no satisfaction from it.
And I feel like...
But now I feel like I'm, I'm finding that path forward, and I'm, I've, you know...
Uh, when I started this podcast, I used to do, like, a word of the week, and I kind of drifted away from that because it just didn't really fit the format so much or what was on my mind at the time, but I might go back to that.
I...
If I had to put, like, what was my word of the week this week, it would definitely be clarity.
I've definitely gotten a lot more clear on what I want, and I f- and when I have...
Now that I know what I'm going after, it makes it so much easier to, like, plan and figure out how to get it and prepare myself for the ups and downs.
Because when you're just sort of meandering through life without...
and feeling aimless, everything feels like a hit, you know, because you don't, you don't really know what to expect.
So I'm feeling super excited about it all.
I don't have a recommendation corner this week.
This episode's getting a little long anyways.
Um, but I guess my recommendation would be, like, look into career counseling if you haven't yet.
Even if you can't, even if you can't afford someone like I did, look at, you know...
Find some people you can follow online.
Try one of these apps that I didn't try.
Maybe they are better than what I'm thinking.
But if you're feeling aimless and adrift, look towards other people to sort of help you walk through some ways to structure how you're thinking about it and find your way through.
Um, all right, well, that's all I have for this week.
Um, I'll talk to you guys again.
I am starting to post every week again.
I have been posting biweekly, but I'm trying to make a commitment.
Uh, no, I'm not trying.
I am doing.
I am gonna be posting every week now.
I felt like I was my most successful and diligent with my podcast when I was doing it weekly, so there was no second-guessing and it's easier to plan.
It's more work, but I think it is just a better fit for me.
So I will be posting weekly on Thursdays from now on, so please check out the next episode and I'll see you there.
Thanks.
Bye.