My Passion Didn’t Translate Well Into Paid Work - Now What?

By Sab

Have you made a go of a new passion as a career and then realised it might not be quite right for you? What next? In this blog post I look at ways you can move forward rather than retreat to your old career!

If the things you thought or hoped would be the next natural route in your career path actually don’t quite work for you when you trial them out, it can send you into a bit of a panic.  ‘If my true love of bird photography doesn’t translate well for me into paid work, then what can I do? I’ve got nothing else to go on!’

It doesn’t mean that you have to drop your passions from your life. It doesn’t mean you have failed or that you have to resign yourself to your old career, or that ‘the dream is over’ and you have to get back to ‘the real world’ of ‘standard jobs’.

Make Adjustments Or Look In Another Direction

Instead of giving up or retreating back to your old career, you can:

  • tweak or fine-tune the way you use your passion in work - whether it’s the actual job content (for example using 'gardening' as a passion some options could be landscape gardening, tree surgeon or horticulture teacher) or the way you do the job (eg running an online business, running a ‘physical’ business like a shop, being freelance, or being employed) or…
  • put your current known passions to one side (regarding paid work) for a moment and seek out fresh inspiration.

We are not one-dimensional beings and it is important to not get too emotionally tied to the idea that we can only bring one side of ourselves to paid work. Whilst of course we might have a strong natural talent for some things (for me it’s creativity), we also have other talents that maybe we overlook that could be used as the basis for a new career. For me, that could include creating clarity & order (decluttering!), testing out things and providing feedback (ice cream taster?) and cheerleading people (motivational sports coach).

Introduce new work ideas that you’ve never known about before

I started to research ‘fun’, ‘unique’, ‘exciting’ jobs to see if I had been overlooking careers that I could do. Whilst being creative is major fun for me, there are all kinds of other things that bring me fun or could bring me fun. Why not open the career change gate for them too?

I found the following sites all useful at opening my mind to work that I hadn’t previously considered:

Just for fun I took a notepad and jotted down any jobs or work that came up on these sites that I wouldn’t mind doing, or at least trying out. I didn’t take it too seriously. I didn’t consider training, or salary, just noted down what I’d give a go.

I was surprised by how many things I would say ‘yes’ to , and also how many other ideas I started to get from doing the exercise. Not only did I jot down ‘astronaut’, ‘waterslide tester’ and ‘snowmobile guide’ which were all mentioned, I also started to come up with ideas of my own: helicopter tour guide, ice cream taster, towing big wave surfers and wake boarders in a speedboat ;)

Whilst I’m not totally sold on becoming an astronaut or yacht valet, doing this exercise opened my mind up to considering other factors that inspire me aside from creative expression - being active, being outdoors, people I’d like to work alongside. When I had been purely focused on making my more obvious artistic passions become my work I hadn’t even explored these other sides of my personality, and it could be in these areas that the real seeds of my career change lie. There is much fertile ground in the other facets of my personality (adventurous, championing, interactive), which focusing on my creativity had really kind of cast into the shadows. I can still write my blog, share my art and take my dance classes as well as being a globe-trotting ‘honeymoon package tester’. The same could be for you, with whatever passions you have.

Summary

  • If you have tried making your known passion(s) paid work and it hasn’t felt right, don’t try and shoehorn yourself into making it work ‘because you have no other choice’ - either fine tune things so it works for you, or explore other work areas that could light you up, leaving your passion free from paid workareas of work
  • Remember that you are a multi-facted person and your career success could lie in any part of your personality, not just the one that you currently see as being most prominent
  • If you feel demotivated, stuck, or at a dead end, it is so important to get fresh inspiration. Just by opening your mind up to new, novel options will give you a better sense of perspective, can rejuvinate your career vision, reconnect you to parts of yourself that may have been lost or ignored, clearly show you that you do have options, and introduce you to new options that you couldn’t have come up with by yourself.

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