The perfect vs. the good
Career plans are all well and good, but has mine become a hindrance without me realising it?
This time of unemployment has raised big questions for me about what kind of work I’ll end up doing next, and how I’d feel about doing it. Most of the jobs I’ve applied for since October have been broadly in line with my background – journalism, PR, communications, marketing – and most of them have either ghosted or rejected me. This has all been a shock to the system, both because of the vast number of no’s I’ve received and because of the way they’ve had me re-evaluating my earlier career plans.
18-year-old Nat had a very clear idea of how his career, or at least the start of it, was going to pan out: he’d do his gap year, then spend three years studying journalism at his first-choice uni, then maybe head to London for further studies, before settling back in Bristol and working his way through the ranks at BBC Points West or ITV West Country. That was ten years ago, and about half of that plan has been realised since then. Will the other half ever come to pass? I’m not sure – and I think I’m still grasping that that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
To mark the end of our degree, my coursemates and I were each given an enormous wine glass with the words “UoG Journalism Class of 2020” printed on it. I’ve kept this glass in my room ever since, and I cannot tell you how many times over the past few months I’ve been tempted to throw it out of the window onto the patio below. Not just out of rage, but out of the feeling that I put so much hard work into those studies and now it’s all in vain – that that degree doesn’t guarantee a stable career the way I thought it would. That recruiters are seeing it there on my CV, along with the 4.5 years of full-time employment that came after it, and still deciding it’s not enough.
This has fed into a sense that my original career plans have been totally derailed and, as a result, I’ve missed my shot at a career I’ll truly enjoy. I think I’ve always known that I am more than the work I do, but for years it’s been impossible to picture myself doing anything other than what I trained in. I’ve held on so tightly to that one line of work – media – that the thought of doing anything else feels like a step backwards. Even more insidious is the fear that these are my only skills, the only things I do particularly well, so if I can’t make a living from them, then I can’t make a living from anything.
I’m just not sure those thoughts hold up, though. It’s true that the only full-time jobs I’ve had have involved writing and copy editing, but that doesn’t mean those are the only things I can do. I mentioned in my first post that I spent a year on a Christian community before going to uni – during my time there, I worked on the kitchen team, preparing food for community members and guests while keeping the kitchen clean. (If you’d like to hear a bit more about that experience, I’ve written about it here.) For most of my time at uni, I spent Wednesday afternoons volunteering in a charity shop in the centre of town, carrying out sales and preparing donated items for the shop floor. And more recently I’ve served on the PCC (Parochial Church Council) at my church and helped out with events it has hosted, as well as serving drinks at a local theatre.
Thinking about these experiences, there haven’t been many parts of them that I’ve actively disliked. What that says to me is I could be happy in a more admin-type role, maybe, or one that involved more direct contact with customers than I’ve had before. Those aren’t really the kinds of things that teenage me would’ve seen himself doing, but that shouldn’t be a reason to write them off completely. The gap year in particular saw me venturing away from the career plan I’d had in mind and trying something else, if only for a short time – and, crucially, enjoying it. Stepping out of that old paradigm again might be a bit scary, but it might also be what I need, if jobs in that field are proving hard to come by.
This has been a feature of my job searching every time I’ve had to do it – the need to balance enthusiasm for the jobs with realism about what’s actually out there. When I picked that first graduate job in early 2021, it was partly because I liked the sound of the role and partly because I just wanted to get on the career ladder as soon as possible. They were the first company to even give me an interview, let alone an offer, and I didn’t know how much longer I’d have to wait if I turned them down. Similarly, what led me to accept that doomed job a year ago was both interest in the role itself and disinterest in the one I already had – I wanted something new that made use of my strengths and allowed me to work in an office, even if it didn’t fit neatly in the journalism mould. In both cases, the need or desire for a new job meant I had to be flexible with what I was applying for, knowing that I might not find a role that ticked every single one of my boxes.
I was chatting with my cousin’s fiancée a couple of months ago, when she herself had just started a new job – she remarked that while it wasn’t necessarily her dream job, it was a whole lot nicer than the one she’d had before. That’s also how I felt about the role I lost last year, and how I suspect I’ll feel about my next one. Maybe it won’t satisfy all my career goals and ambitions (not that it’s really clear what those are anymore…), but I’m sure it could still bring me some level of joy, and it might even be a stepping stone towards something better than I’d envisioned in the past.
The circumstances in which I’ll get that job will obviously be different from those in which I got my last two jobs, but the mindset will be much the same. After months out of the game, there’s a big part of me that’s so hungry for the next thing that it’s not too bothered about what form it takes – I just want a job, damn it! And while I’m hoping it’s something where I can use my skills and do what I enjoy, I’m beginning to think that umbrella might be wider than I’d realised.