If You Realise You Loathe Your Career, Here Are 5 Reasons You Should Jump Ship

Real talk: life is way too short to dislike your job. 

Real talk again: it’s never too late to jump (job) ship. 

Don’t believe me? Stan Lee didn’t create the Marvel Universe until his 39th birthday. Vera Wang hadn’t even dreamed up a dress before she was 40. Charles Darwin changed science as we know it when he was 50. And hell, Colonel Sanders (yep, the OG KFC guy) didn’t franchise his secret herbs and spices until he was 62. And everybody loves KFC. Best hot chips in the game, DM me if you disagree. 

That said, making a late-in-life career change can be intimidating. All of a sudden you gotta freshen up that CV, tweak your skill set and compete with the bright, young, things. But honey, you’ll always be a bright, young, thing. Never forget that. 

No matter your age, the anxiety around taking a professional leap is the same. But you know what’s also the same no matter your years? The desire to feel professionally fulfilled, and creatively challenged, and enjoy a solid salary, and not be annoyed by your work mates, and actually have some semblance of work life balance that allows you to see your real friends for dinner instead of staying back to tick off action items. 

If you’re not already convinced to chase your dream gig, here are five more reasons to check that fear, push it through bag drop and send it somewhere far, far away. 

You’ve changed

Don’t know if you’ve realised this but you’ve actually done a whole heap of growing up since you were 18 and slogging through final year exams in a haze of sugar and contraband caffeine (actually the last part still sounds relevant). I’ll bet you haven’t stuck to any other life decisions made during that life state so why should your occupation be one? Life happens, you’ve changed, go with it. Maybe you had no clue what you wanted to do back then and now you do. It’s fine, we make it work.

Your happiness matters

This is not a cliche, it’s a reality. Your happiness is all you’ve got. So why stick with a dodgy job until you die? There is never a better time than now to take your mental health seriously. Given the ridiculous number of hours we either spend at work, or thinking about work, you wanna make sure said work isn’t sucking the soul out of you. 

Passions don’t die

They just don’t. If you love music, bets are you’re probably always going to love music. If you love making tiny crochet hats for cats, bets are you’re probably always going to love making tiny crochet hats for cats. You can spend your life halfheartedly pursuing your passions or you could dive headfirst and give them a real go. Because a passion isn’t going anywhere. 

Upskilling is easy

More often than not a career change is going to require a little freshening up of your professional skillz. Luckily, it’s never been easier to get educated. Whether you want to go full time, part time or study online, upskilling is now super easy thanks to rad institutions like CQUniversity, who have a whole range of courses you can study flexi. Plus your prior experience could help you get in super easy, even to postgrad.

Age ain’t no thing

It really isn’t. Age is just a construct. Think of Greta Thunberg, she’s 16 years old and doing more for climate change than any old geezer in parliament right now. Being a mature age student? There’s stacks of support for you there, too.

You do you, beb, at any age.

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