Say you’ve been plodding along at work for a while, but every morning you wake up and would rather gnaw off a limb than face a gig that doesn’t motivate you anymore. You’re 110% ready to get the heck out, but the terror you feel when you think about starting something completely different (personal goals to develop a renegade vigilante alter-ego not included) has you in a panic – we’ve been there.
You’re at the point of uncertainty where you start convincing yourself that maaaybe it wouldn’t be so bad to do this same job every day for the rest of your long, long, long life… right? Nah, mate. We’re here to assure you that all the panic, concerns and plots to run away to Peru under cover of darkness are all totally unfounded – it’s never been easier to start over and there’s no reason you can’t give it a red hot crack.
Seriously, whether you’re a pastry chef with a secret love of coding or a small town painter who dreams of making it big in the edgy world of data science (we’d watch that movie), now is the time. And honestly if your current job is making you feel like you’ve been stuck in a trash can for approximately forty-seven years, you need to make some changes ASAP.
Make the call to get outta dodge
Obvs the first thing you need is the motivation to make the Big Scary Decision to change what you’re doing. Maybe you’ve lost the love of your job or you’re keen to learn something else – or you don’t really have a plan at all and feel like winging it. When you’re done, you’re done.
Tell someone close to you that you want out so that you’re held accountable and they can hit you up in a few months time if you’re still making excuses (“the coffee guy next door will miss me too much” is not a valid reason).
Scope out folk who’ve already made it happen
Don’t just surround yourself with other people having a whinge about their work lives. Try and find pals who’ve made big changes and did not collapse under the uncertainty. They do exist – Amy Simmons used to be a journo with the ABC and thought she was pretty much set, but she had a shot to learn more and she took it.
A year on, she’d completed a Web Development Immersive course with General Assembly and now she’s living it up as a software engineer at Twitter. With 94% of General Assembly immersive course grads (who participated in the Career services program) getting industry gigs within six months of starting their job hunt, spending 10-12 weeks learning to be a tech fiend can legit turn your life in an entirely new direction.
Gain some sick skills
If you’re going to start looking at something completely different to do, you’re gonna want to be well equipped when it comes to your skills (because while impressive, your ability to set off the group chat with quality memes isn’t quite resume-worthy).
Tech skills are defs preferred all over the globe, so work on expanding your technological XP beyond social media and Word. Don’t forget to save everything you work on to build up a portfolio that you can shamelessly plug all over the Internet and at your family gatherings.
Then it’s on you, friend. You’ll have sought out help, picked up a few nifty skills along the way and finally be ready to venture out into the field you’ve realised your passion for. Might as well give it a crack.
If you’re keen to bail on your current career and have a career change but need to do some quick up-skilling first, head on over to General Assembly to check out the range of Immersive courses. There are stacks of options that will turn you into a tech genius, so you’ll be saying adios to your dodgy gig sooner than you think.
