I got fired last month… after nearly twenty years at the same company. It was the single most humiliating and upsetting moment of my life. I’m 50-years old. I’ve got credit card balances, a mortgage, a car lease, and one kid heading off to college. How am I supposed to make ends meet?
Yet even as it was happening, in the back of my mind I knew that I had been miserable the past five years. But my commitments left me too scared to do anything about it. And aside from that, what would I actually do? I knew I didn’t like what I had been doing, but that was about it. Now... suddenly, I had just been given the push over the cliff.
Curiously, something had convinced me to sign-up for the SkillCrush “Break Into Tech” program just a few weeks earlier. Maybe, somehow, I knew something was coming?
It’s taken every ounce of strength I have not to rush back into the workforce and take another job I could do, but that wouldn’t make me happy. That’s what everyone expects you to do. That’s what I expect me to do. Taking classes somehow seems like a cop-out. Like I’m not really serious about finding another job. And frankly, the future is so nebulous, I don’t know if I’m heading down the right path or not. But my classes have kept me going… and I’ve kept at it every day since. That must mean something.
I know there is someone else like me out there. Someone who is going through the same thing. But the way I see it.. we’ve been given an opportunity. It would be a shame to waste it. And yeah, we’ve got all these doubts and commitments hanging over us. But those risks are always going to be with us, in one form or another.
My advice to you is this: accept the risk. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be in a job that is both meaningful and fulfilling. And while that may mean breaking away from your comfort zone and accepting something seemingly less dependable, in the end it will be much more rewarding.