Career Change at 50 ‘Can Be a Perilous Thing’

Altering a career course at fifty can be a perilous thing, and many people, if not most, do not traipse merrily down that path. The luckiest among us find their work fulfilling, and cannot imagine why they would leave. Others would follow their passions if they could, but college tuition, the mortgage, and the care of parents or children or both buckle them into their present work…Still others are simply scared – with good reason, because the job market does not necessarily embrace mid-career transitions.

— Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Life Reimagined

I embarked on a path to a new career at 48. It was more like entering a maze – I couldn’t see what was around the next corner, let alone envision arriving at the destination. I had doubts about whether I would have the fortitude to finish, and whether I actually even wanted to make a dramatic change and start over so late in my professional life.

I had established several decades of skills and experience as a journalist and public relations professional – fields that wouldn’t earn me a cup of coffee in the new career I was pursuing. I wasn’t just transferring and adjusting skills, as I did when I made the leap from journalism to PR. I was doing a total makeover, learning a new way of being.

“The brain likes its habits…and hates change,” Bradley Hagerty quotes a Harvard Medical School professor. “The brain despises conflict: It reasons that I may be happier over there, but I am earning a good paycheck here, and in general it resolves this cognitive dissonance in favor of the familiar. At the bottom of every dilemma is fear.”

To make the change I sought – becoming a mental health counselor/therapist – I had no choice but to return to school for a marathon master’s degree venture, and ultimately confront the fear of the unfamiliar and the insecurity of the lower earnings commensurate with starting anew.

At first, I merely dipped my toe in the water by applying to a program and enrolling in the first of 22 required courses. I nearly dropped out after breaking my leg before completing my first course and losing motivation, feeling overwhelmed by the long road ahead. I overcame ambivalence and registered for a second course a few days before the next semester began. From there, it was a step-by-step progression that would have registered in the hundreds on a Fitbit.

After 5 ½ years of classes and internships and another five months of bureaucratic license- application process, I have been hired for my first professional job as a licensed counselor at age 54. As Bradley Hagerty writes in her book about midlife, it has not been a merry traipse, though it has been rewarding nonetheless – the sense of striving and accomplishment, the satisfaction of learning and growing, the excitement of pursuing something new and meaningful that will contribute toward others.

“The role of people in their second half of life is not to build up for themselves, but to begin to give away their time, energy and talents,” Bradley Hagerty writes.

There have been costs accompanying the benefits. I left my job two years ago, largely because it was incompatible with the latter stages of the master’s degree program, where I had to serve internships for four semesters. That plunged me from making a comfortable living to pay for a mortgage, two college tuitions and care of children – just as Bradley Hagerty identified – to an itinerant work life in the Gig Economy, working lower-paying temporary, part-time and seasonal jobs. Breaking even on the monthly household budget, much less saving for retirement, went out the window.

Psychologically and emotionally, I felt unmoored. After all, what kind of responsible, mature man in his 50s would be working the same summer job alongside college students as a tennis teacher? Wasn’t I supposed to be at the peak of my earning power – indeed, the job I left provided me the highest salary I had ever made – instead of making the same hourly wages I earned in my 20s? All this so I could enter a new career at the bottom rung in a profession where beginning pay is notoriously low. Just to drive home the point that I’m a rookie, my license for my first two years identifies me as “Licensed Professional Counselor-Intern.”

Was I scared, as Bradley Hagerty suggests many midlife career deliberators rightly are, “because the job market does not necessarily embrace mid-career transitions?”

No…at least not so much to be deterred. I was more scared about looking back in a decade still with a yearning to try something new and realizing with regret that I missed my window. Once midlife careens on the backside toward older age, it becomes even harder to reinvent the self.

I also was entering a job market where there is a growing need, where men are relatively scarce and therefore actually valued for their gender perspective and traits, and where the accumulation of life experience and wisdom that comes with age is an advantage in helping other people with their problems – unlike some other professions, where older workers become dinosaurs because they can’t keep up with technology, trends, new methods and the requisite energy to stay on top. Or they are paid at the high end of the salary range, making them expendable in favor of hungry and more footloose up-and-comers.

Altering a career course at 50 certainly can be a perilous thing. There’s no guarantee the job market will unfurl a welcome mat for a midlife career changer or that the changer will be successful, however success is measured. I’ve managed to get through the front door; now I’ll find out for myself whether the new house I’m entering truly is my dream home.

A Tragic Tale of Alcoholism

Alcoholism is an insidious disease. Those with the hubris or self-delusional thinking to believe they can confront it and defeat it or manage it without professional help and community support, or who are oblivious, willfully or otherwise, toward recognizing their problem, invariably lose. That’s not to say that people with alcoholism who choose to go it alone are senseless, just that they are human and flawed, and as such, stubborn, prideful, in denial, and resistant to surrender. This is the tragic story of one of them.

*Names have been changed.

I received a text message overnight from Monty*, the head tennis pro at a community recreation center near where I was teaching tennis for the summer at a seaside resort. We had met early in the vacation season to talk about whether he had need for assistance and whether I could work around my schedule to teach at his club.

As a last-minute replacement hire, Monty also struggled to find housing for his three-month gig, which is prohibitively expensive and scarce at the shore.  So throughout the summer, it was common for him to text me to help him with his housing search or to let me know his teenage assistant wasn’t working out and to ask whether I had any availability to teach.

But this text was different. It was shocking, but unfortunately, not entirely surprising: “Adam, I heard your friend Kevin* is no longer with us. If it’s true, I’m sorry for your loss.”

I didn’t see the text until the morning, just before I started teaching for the day. When I got home, I searched online to see if I could find any confirmation of what Monty had relayed to me. I did. It was a sad, bizarre and surreal article in a Caribbean newspaper, but rang true to what I knew about my friend Kevin. Alcohol did him in.

The article described how Kevin had traveled to the Caribbean island from the U.S. Heartland in hopes of securing a tennis teaching job at an island resort. In unusually detailed reporting, the article also explained that Kevin was unable to land a job because he remained drunk all day and night, and had numerous cuts stitched up on his head from falls as testament to his non-stop drinking.  According to the article, Kevin drowned in shallow waters beneath a coastal town’s popular boardwalk, lined with restaurants and bars. By the time passers-by spotted him and pulled him out, he was gone. He was 61.

The Odd Couple

Kevin and I not only were roommates for summer 2016, but taught tennis alongside each other at the large coastal resort. We spent more time together than a married couple, especially since Kevin did not have a car. He said his car had some mechanical problems and that he did not want to take it on the long trip from the Midwest to the Atlantic shore. I took him at his word at the time, but now I suspect he might have lost his license due to drinking-related violations. It might have been one of those little lies he told others and himself to mask an unpleasant truth.

I took him on shopping and banking errands, restaurant outings and side trips, and we usually drove to work together, with his bike on the back of my car in case our departure times were different. He called me his “wing man” on social outings. We shared lunch breaks at the tennis center and barbeque dinners at home. When it rained, we sometimes taught side-by-side on the same indoor court. Together, we watched his favorite Midwestern teams compete in the NBA Playoffs and hockey’s Stanley Cup at restaurants until our cable TV got hooked up, then from our couch.

When I first made Kevin’s acquaintance by phone, I got the impression that Kevin, at age 60, was mellow and wise, a sage who would bring harmony to any situation. While that impression wasn’t entirely inaccurate, it missed the mark. From the moment I met Kevin on my first day at the tennis resort, when he burst through the clubhouse doors sweaty and pepped up from his bike ride to the facility, and zeroed in on me immediately as his new roommate, colleague and man he had communicated with by phone and email for several months, I knew he was more like the proverbial “real pistol,” a whirling dervish, belying his near-senior citizen status.

We were The Odd Couple – he the big-talking extrovert prone to braggadocio, the raconteur of uproarious stories, the unabashedly gutter-mouthed chatterer, the lifelong bachelor, the conqueror of beautiful women, the bon vivant, the energetic go-getter, the confident expert in his field; me the introvert, the married man with kids, the calm and contemplative one, the boring one satisfied to do solitary things at home and rest, the relative newbie at big-time tennis teaching who didn’t know if he fit correctly within the zeitgeist of the profession. But somehow, the yin and yang worked; we played off each other like Felix and Oscar.

I’ve Got to Get out of this Place

Kevin – who introduced himself as “Coach Kev,” the same as he was called by his students — got in touch with me in spring 2016, several months before we both showed up in the beach town as seasonal tennis instructors, to make my acquaintance and discuss strategies for searching for a place to live for the summer. We talked numerous times about our backgrounds and experiences, and our prospects for securing housing.

In the course of those discussions, Kevin revealed that he was an alcoholic, had attended Alcoholics Anonymous, had a sponsor, and had been sober for three years. He said he had been sidetracked from his tennis teaching and coaching career by an illness and death in his family, forcing him to return to his Midwestern hometown after globetrotting for two decades, bouncing around among eight states from the Southeast to the Mid-Atlantic to the Midwest to the Northeast, with an interlude in China.

In hindsight, I suspect that transient existence may have had something to do with Kevin’s battles with alcohol.

He was eager to get away from what he called his “gloomy” Midwestern home state and a grunt-labor factory job he worked while caring for his family member to “build a nest egg” to jump-start a better life doing what he loved. The tennis court was his sanctuary.

“Can’t wait to get out of here and to the beach!!!” he wrote in one email.

“Let’s work hard and have some fun and learn something about each other and the rest of the team this summer,” he wrote in another.

Fish Tales

I secured a room for rent in a homeowner’s house two miles inland from the beach, and connected Kevin with the homeowner Steve*, who rented Kevin the other available room.

The three of us became friends during the summer of 2016, engaging in fraternity-like banter about each other’s social lives, eating and shopping habits, athletic prowess, and quirks. Kevin told stories about living with a trio of Swedish girls while working in a ski resort town and adventures in Alaska, where he claimed to be a friend of singer Jewel. We all laughed at Kevin and Steve’s evening rituals of lawbreaking, when they would walk through neighbors’ property to fish in the adjoining private golf course’s pond and play the closest three holes as freeloading non-members, both activities prohibited.

Steve and I cracked up as Steve recounted Kevin’s reaction when admonished by a golf course superintendent that fishing was not allowed on the golf course.

“What do you MEAN there’s no fishing?!” Kevin bellowed incredulously to the golf course official, fishing line dangling in the water from the bank, as if those golf course fish were Kevin’s God-given right to catch.

I still have the hilarious image in mind of Kevin striding purposefully down our neighborhood street, wearing his floppy fishing hat and fishing vest with dangling lures and hooks, wading pants and boots, fishing pole carried erect, looking comically out of place amid the trailers and modular homes with no river or lake within proximity. Invariably, he would come home in darkness with a fishing tall tale, immediately pulling out his cell phone to show me photos of and describe in vivid detail his evening’s triumphs.

The Big Dog

On the tennis court, Kevin was intense and driven – perhaps too much so for a resort environment. He had a strong desire to demonstrate his knowledge and skill, and seemingly to show he was superior to other tennis coaches, The Big Dog, which appeared true but may have rubbed some the wrong way.

He sometimes became frustrated with lackadaisical players on his court during clinics, urging them, “Move, players, move!” Some liked to be pushed; others felt browbeaten – after all, they were on vacation, not training for Wimbledon. On occasion, when players failed to listen or couldn’t understand instructions, Kevin would turn his back to players and perform the religious ritual of crossing his chest and looking toward the heavens in mock – or in his case, perhaps all too real — despair.

Kevin was an excellent tennis coach, with a knack for explaining technique, strategy, shot selection and court positioning in simple, succinct and understandable terms. Players who were truly interested in improving their games gravitated to him, booking private lessons. Parents who wanted to help their kids compete at a higher level often sought out Kevin to be their coach for a week or two, or intermittently during the summer, deeming him the instructor who could produce the most results.

I learned a lot from Kevin about tennis coaching and teaching. I often watched his lessons and took notes on his sayings, advice, instructions and drills. Invariably, Kevin would bring his day at work home with him, recounting each teaching hour of his day, analyzing individual players on his court and their idiosyncrasies, describing what went well and what didn’t, and sharing his observations of other coaches, administrative staff and the entire tennis resort operations. He assumed the role of self-appointed management consultant and evaluator, seemingly unsatisfied to limit himself to his more narrow daily duties.

He would ask me about each of my clinic hours and students, and offer commentary on what he observed of my on-court performance. We often engaged in hours-long discussions on the finer points of tennis stroke production, doubles strategy and movement, ball-feeding patterns, purposeful drills, and how to keep clinics fast-paced, engaging and informative. He used his fingers to diagram and explain drills on our kitchen counter, moving them along the Formica® to demonstrate the flow.

His intensity and high standards often extended to the tennis club’s administrative staff, which caused him anguish when he believed they were lax or did not communicate well, especially about scheduling and booking issues. “They’re taking money out of my pocket,” was Kevin’s frequent refrain. As a result, tensions mounted between some of the young desk assistants, who may have felt intimidated or unfairly criticized, and Kevin, who expected a high level of professionalism. His reasonable but firmly delivered demands for accountability may have hurt him in the end.

Kevin was full of bluster and confidence. Even though he was 60, he approached the tennis teaching gig like he was 25, insisting with bravado that long hours on his feet in temperatures hovering around 90 were “a piece of cake.” Recognizing his desire to work and customers’ appreciation of his coaching skill, the club worked him hard. Some days, Kevin would start with an 8 a.m. lesson, and would finish with the 6 p.m. evening clinic, arriving home by bike at 7:30. The grind finally wore on him. “They’re riding me like a mule!” he would confess, sweaty and red-faced.

Voluntary and Involuntary Transitions

As the summer wore on, Kevin realized it was time for him to search for his next gig, as our tennis center dramatically cut its teaching staff after Labor Day. After several weeks of negotiations, Kevin proudly announced that he had secured a tennis teaching job at a large Florida facility. Kevin, who came from a family of eight siblings, called one of his brothers to share the good news, and became frustrated when he was met with skepticism and disapproval.

Late at night, after the phone call, he knocked on my bedroom door, wanting to talk. He lamented that his brother and other siblings didn’t share his joy in nabbing the Florida job, but instead seemed to want him to head back to his Midwestern home base and hunker down with something more stable and secure. He assured his brother that he was doing well, was happy and sober, and was excited about the new opportunity. Sad and reflective during our conversation, he seemed distraught by how difficult it had become to relate to close family members and their seeming lack of confidence in him and support for him, and needed an ear to bend. Coach Kevin was headstrong. He wasn’t the kind to do what others wanted him to do with his life, and resented the insinuations that others knew what was best.

Soon after Kevin scored the new job and his distressing phone call, things began to unravel. I’m not sure if a slip from drinking abstinence precipitated trouble at our tennis club or trouble at the club precipitated drinking. As far as I could tell, Kevin had done a fantastic job staying sober, resisting temptations, grinding on the tennis court and keeping himself on track all summer.

But in August, Kevin was let go from his job. He received a call one morning, and left home early for work. During busy morning clinic hours, when Kevin typically could be heard five courts away barking instructions and exhorting his players, Kevin was nowhere to be found. At lunch, the tennis director and head pro pulled me aside, as a courtesy since I was Kevin’s roommate, to let me know they had let him go that morning.

Relapse came fast and hard for Kevin, and with it, the ravages of alcoholism. Within a few days, his descent was so steep I couldn’t even recognize the Kevin I knew, from confident, energetic, strong and outgoing to weak, bumbling, indecisive and lost. He was a shell of his former self. For several weeks after his firing, with nothing to occupy his time, Kevin’s days revolved around drinking and were spent secretively in a drunken fog and the throes of violent physical illness, and in desperate but futile attempts to stop.

He knew he was sick and needed help, but refused to accept help from his roommates and a few other friends, always appreciating and thanking us for offers but never following through. He resisted regularly attending a nearby Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. He stubbornly persisted in his effort to slay the dragon on his own through sheer force of will, or maybe perversely preferring to wallow alone in misery as a form of self-punishment, shame and guilt. He startlingly and rapidly declined physically, lacking sleep and nutrition and looking like he had been in a barroom brawl from numerous cuts on his head, hands and legs incurred from falls, similar to what was reported in the Caribbean newspaper about his final weeks.

With prompting and help from Steve, Kevin got his act together enough to pack some of his stuff, buy a bus ticket to Florida, and hitch a ride to the bus depot with Steve for departure. But I suspected in his condition, his new venture would be doomed from the start.

An Unexpected Reunion?

Kevin and I left messages for each other several times in the fall, but had difficulty connecting. In messages and short conversations, it wasn’t clear exactly what he was doing, but I gathered that Florida had not worked out and he ended up back at his Heartland home base.

Then, in spring 2017, he contacted me to let me know he was making a comeback, literally. He was up for two seasonal tennis director jobs at a country club and the planned community recreation center along the same stretch of Mid-Atlantic shore that we both worked the previous summer. He offered me to be his assistant during my off times at wherever he landed, knowing that I was returning to the bigger tennis resort at which we both had worked the previous summer as my main job. I said I was interested, but couldn’t guarantee him anything, owing my allegiance contractually to my employer and working unpredictable schedules day-to-day.

He took the job at the community recreation center, keeping me updated on his programming plans and anticipated needs for an assistant pro. Once again itching to leave the gloomy Midwest behind, he arrived at the shore a good two months before the busy summer season began in earnest.

In one phone call before the summer season started, Kevin sounded particularly anxious and downbeat about his inability to find a reliable assistant, a lack of support and tennis industry knowledge on the part of the recreation center management, and the challenges of designing a schedule, implementing programs, establishing a budget and purchasing equipment. The responsibility all fell to him as a one-man operation, and he seemed to be feeling the pressure.

Downward Spiral

Within days, I got a call from Steve saying that Kevin had fallen off the wagon, had been hospitalized and had lost his tennis director’s job, replaced in an emergency hire by Monty. He hadn’t even made it to Memorial Day.

Kevin eventually caught a bus back home to the Midwest. I talked to him a couple of times while he was there. He told me ruefully that he “screwed up,” that he was depressed and about to enter a 30-day rehab program, that if he didn’t he feared he would die. But about a week later, I received a voice message from Kevin. In our previous conversation, he said he wouldn’t be allowed to have a cell phone in rehab. I concluded he had decided not to attend rehab at all, or bailed or got kicked out after a few days.

I didn’t hear from or about Kevin again for the rest of the summer, until I got the text late at night on September 1 from Monty, who had heard the news from the board president and manager of his recreation center/tennis club, where Kevin had preceded Monty as the short-lived tennis director.

In an odd and admittedly delusional way, I feel like maybe, just maybe, I could have changed the course of Kevin’s life and saved him from his drunken stumble to his death off the gorgeous island’s boardwalk. Maybe if I had been able to offer him more assurance that I could assist him in his new job at the shore, relieving some of his anxiety. Or perhaps if I had been in touch with him more frequently over the summer, providing him someone less judgmental than family members in whom to confide or vent fear and frustration. But I know that is unrealistic, fooling myself about having any power or influence over the death grip of alcohol and its captive. Without the alcoholic’s full surrender to the indomitable potency of alcohol and to a power greater than oneself, bystanders can do little to save the alcoholic from himself. Lord knows, Kevin’s many family members must have tried mightily to exert power or influence over the years, only to be rendered helpless in the end.

This is speculation, but my best guess is that Kevin had a tennis industry contact on the Caribbean island who encouraged him to relocate with the promise of leads for tennis teaching jobs. The newspaper article said Kevin stayed at a private residence on the island before moving into a hotel, a possible indication that drinking may have disrupted his stay with someone he knew.

Maybe Kevin wanted to make the ultimate escape, leaving behind the U.S. mainland, family, friends and acquaintances, and past job failures and bad memories, all together for a tropical paradise, where everybody is in good spirits, the slate is clean, and beauty abounds. Problem was, he couldn’t escape himself and his disease. Ultimately, it appeared, he ended up in a place where nobody – or perhaps practically nobody — knew him, where he could blend into the scenery and surrender, willfully or not, to his vice and disease unfettered, instead of to a higher power, without the watchful eye or emergency intervention of anybody who cared, a paradise that paradoxically turned ultimately into his own private hell.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Coach Kevin since I heard the news and found the article. It doesn’t seem real, but more like “fake news.” I keep thinking that I will hear from him again, about his next stop in his series of adventures, and to check in on me. But his disease was all too real.

Though he could drive me a little nuts with his hyper-analysis of our tennis teaching days and critiques of my performance – often backing off later saying, “Ahh, don’t listen to me…I’m just trying to help ya” – I appreciated Coach Kevin as a one-of-a-kind character. I’ve never met another Coach Kevin in my life – the intensity, the bravado, the humor, the sailor’s mouth, the entertaining stories, the wide-ranging opinions, the passions, the insights, the hard-learned wisdom, the friendliness, the complexity of his personality and being. He was one of those people you come across in life who you never forget, who makes an indelible impression. I was glad to call Coach Kevin my friend and I’ll always remember him, even though we were so different and entered each other’s lives late and for only a brief period.

I am deeply saddened by the loss of my friend. It would have been wonderful to keep in touch for years to come, sharing tales of new adventures and offering support and encouragement. The only solace is that Coach Kevin is free from the demon that he just could not tame despite what had to be many repeated Herculean, gut-wrenching efforts.

I imagine him looking down at me during my last few days teaching in the summer of 2017 and saying in his own inimitable, blunt-spoken way: “That lesson was miserable! What were you doing? I could have had that woman ripping topspin forehands into the corners in five minutes! Pow, pow, pow. Ahh, but don’t listen to me…”

 

Do the Limbo. Or, How to Be ‘Comfortable with Ambiguity’

I am in limbo. Complete and utter limbo.

However, the bar is not set low and I am not trying to shimmy under. The bar is high and I am aspiring to clear it like a Fosbury Flop.

It’s not supposed to be like this as a 54-year-old, according to societal expectations. I’m supposed to be settled, stable, predictable, a rock, boring in my steadiness. I chose another path, paved with uncertainty. It’s come with a loss of income, stability and predictability. But I expect the payoff will come in the form of greater life and career satisfaction, and income growth ultimately will follow as I hopefully find passion in my work.

My limbo status is largely of my own design and in small part due to the bugaboo of bureaucracy.

I have 11 days left until my second summer teaching tennis at the Sea Colony resort in Bethany Beach, DE runs out on Labor Day and I return home, jobless and anxious but optimistic. I have spent nearly two years in the Gig Economy, ever since a non-amicable parting with a former employer allowed me to place more focus on a master’s degree program in clinical mental health counseling and the two years of internships required to complete it, as part of a midlife career transition from public relations to counseling. I have been scrambling to piece together part-time, temporary and contractual jobs since I dropped out of the routine 9-to-5 world.

I graduated in May 2017, and expected that tennis teaching for 3 ½ months would provide the perfect bridge to the new career, allowing enough time for me to obtain the state license I need to be eligible to practice, get hired and begin work. But bureaucracy has brought that plan to a grinding halt, possibly leading me to the unemployment office rather than a counseling office, at least temporarily.

A long waiting period to get access to my “official verified” National Counselor Exam report has left my state license applications – and thus job prospects – in limbo, even though I have already been notified that I passed the exam. The blood pressure ticked a little higher each day over the last six weeks as I awaited an email notification from the national counselor certification body that my school transcript met all requirements, along with my exam score, for certification.

One former boss wrote in my annual performance review that I needed to be “comfortable with ambiguity.” That was corporate speak for an organization refusing to accept accountability for its disorganization, poor leadership and incoherent, vacillating strategy. Ironically, now that I’ve left that organization, the advice applies.

My immediate future is ambiguous. I don’t know where I’ll be working as a counselor, or when. I don’t know how long it will take state licensing boards to review my applications and grant a license. I don’t even know what state I will be living in, as I have applied for license in Maryland and South Carolina.

So, what have I learned about being “comfortable with ambiguity?”

• Take things one day at a time, as cliché as that may sound. Thinking too much about unknowns in the future produces excessive worry but no solutions.
• Pursue aggressive actions whenever possible to address things over which you do have control, such as making networking contacts, applying to jobs and following up on leads. Taking action tends to boost motivation, confidence and attitude.
• Detach from the cell phone and computer for periods of time. It’s tempting when living with job and income uncertainty to obsessively check for email and phone contacts, which increases anxiety each time none have come through.
• Have faith that putting what you want to attract into the universe ultimately will materialize for you, with persistence, patience and a positive outlook.
• Continue doing things you like to do (that are free or low-cost) to keep your spirits high and take your mind off worries.
• Squirrel away your nuts (money). Live cheaply (the Minimalist lifestyle) while dealing with ambiguity, to reduce financial pressures.

Limbo is not a comfortable place to be when you have financial and family obligations, when you feel like you should be occupying a certain status and you’re not, and when you like to plan and predict your life with a high degree of certainty. But for me, my current state of limbo is a necessary part of the process of getting where I want to be, just another stage of the journey, another bar to traverse.

Man in the Mirror: ‘Compare In, Not Out’

In the substance abuse therapy group I co-led as an intern, the group leader would tell members to “compare in, not out” when he detected a member analyzing whose addiction was worse than another’s, assessing who among members engaged in more risky or reckless behaviors or seeking salacious details about others’ misfortunes and misadventures.

The leader’s message to the addicts was as clear as the typical pre-school teacher’s emphasizing individual responsibility and self-control to easily distracted and influenced children focused on others: “Worry about yourself.”

It’s a simple message, but one that takes discipline and introspection to implement, whether for the purpose of changing addictive behaviors or many other goals or pursuits in life in which the temptation is to compare ourselves to the status, abilities, fortune and accomplishments of others. The era of social media has compounded the phenomenon of “comparing out” through the instantaneous access we have into the windows of others’ lives – their new jobs, kids’ achievements, lively social gatherings, adventurous vacations and other things of which to be envious.

We would be more satisfied with our lives if we would “compare in, not out.” To me, “comparing in” means evaluating myself according to my assessment of my own potential, my ability to strive for and attain goals I believe are worth pursuing, being happy with what I have at any given time rather than desiring what I don’t, and living life in a way that makes me feel positive about my actions, conduct and treatment of others, even though it will be far from perfect.

Still, living life without “comparing out” is a challenge for me, as I imagine it is for nearly everyone who hasn’t mastered some form of meditation or inner peace.

Right now, I am struggling against “comparing out” as I begin my second summer as a seasonal tennis instructor at a large beach resort tennis club, a “gig economy” interlude as I make a career transition to counseling.

Among the instructors, several of whom are year-round employees, it is apparent that I am ranked lower in the pecking order, understandably and justifiably as a seasonal staff member, similar to last summer. I know what I have to do to be successful is to conduct each clinic and private lesson to the best of my ability, stay upbeat and high-energy, engage clients in a friendly, interested and courteous manner, and work cooperatively with the staff as part of a team. But I still find it hard to resist comparing the assignments and the number of on-court teaching hours I get – which determines income — to others. Such “comparing out,” and the ruminations it causes, only makes me feel worse; on the other hand, “comparing in” when I give my all for a lesson or clinic, or assist a fellow instructor when needed, makes me feel positive.

My career transition from public relations to counseling is another area where I have to fight the lure of “comparing out” and instead “compare in,” basing my assessment on what I deem is fulfilling and achieves a sense of purpose. Though there is potential for income growth with the establishment of an independent counseling practice in the future, my first job in the profession likely will pay about half of what I was making in the public relations position I left. Eyeing the reality of my pending job search, it is challenging to avoid “comparing out” to other professionals in my age group who may be at the height of their earning potential and aren’t worried about scraping by. That’s when it’s important to “compare in” and realize I chose this path for a reason and I am fully responsible for my decision and the outcome.

“Comparing in” is difficult because it puts the onus squarely on us for our own successes and failures, our current condition in life, our decisions and behaviors, and, perhaps most importantly, the way we feel about ourselves and our own satisfaction and happiness. When we compare ourselves only to our own standards, goals, morals, ethics and beliefs, we strip away self-delusions and rationalizations and are forced to see only the “Man in the Mirror,” our only true compass.

15 Principles for Surviving and Executing a Career Transition

In two months I will complete a graduate degree in clinical mental health counseling that will have taken 5½ years to finish, enabling me to take final steps to executing a fairly drastic midlife career change from public relations. I had made a career change before, from journalism to public relations. Though still jarring, that transition was significantly more seamless than this one, requiring no additional education and using many of the same skills.

I have been seeking to derive more meaning and satisfaction from my career, as well as the opportunity to self-direct my future, embrace an entrepreneurial spirit, contribute value to society and work flexibly, creatively, collaboratively and independently. I explored life-coaching, completing a series of training courses, but ultimately didn’t pursue it. But the idea of helping people with psychological, emotional and life challenges stuck with me.

It took me about three years of mulling the idea to apply to graduate school for counseling and another year after acceptance to enroll in my first class. Twenty-one classes and three internships later, I’m on the precipice of a career transition.

It hasn’t been easy. As I started my internships, I ran into a buzz saw at my PR job. It was miserable, and at the same time the best thing that could have happened. I couldn’t have done both well simultaneously, along with graduate classes. I would have burned out. I left my job, and the security blanket of a biweekly paycheck. That was 18 months ago. Since then, I’ve lived a much more itinerant, unpredictable and frugal existence, cobbling together temporary, seasonal and part-time jobs, and unpaid or low-paid internships.

In brief, these are 15 principles I’ve learned about making a significant career change, concepts that are valuable to consider while mulling a change or while bulldozing through the trenches:

1. Long-Term Vision – A career transition won’t happen if you can’t envision a different future, if you are too overwhelmed by the daily grind and stressors to dream about a new life.
2. Delay Gratification/Patience – Depending on how drastic the change and the amount of education and training required, the transition could be a long haul rather than a quick fix.
3. Risk (Tolerance/Acceptance) – You will be giving up something known for something new, with no guarantee of breaking in, or even being proficient at or liking the new endeavor.
4. Self-Knowledge – Become clear on what is most important to you, your values, how much risk you can tolerate, and how hard you are willing to work to make a change happen.
5. Courage – You’ll have to be brave enough to take risks and step out of your comfort zone.
6. Confidence/Self-Assuredness – Consider how you will handle other people in your life, including those closest to you and colleagues in your current occupation, questioning or casting aspersions on your decisions. How much would a wave of skepticism and criticism deter you or affect your thinking and beliefs?
7. Identity – Leaving a profession, especially one you’ve worked at for years and in which you’ve achieved a certain level of expertise, status and success, can significantly alter how you identify yourself. Can your ego withstand such an identity loss, while building a new and different piece of your identity?
8. Research/Network – It will be important to determine the costs and requirements (and barriers) to entry into a new profession, as well as occupational outlook, such as job growth and salary projections. Soak up all the information you can about your prospective new career while considering a transition and in the transitional phase by interviewing people in the field, networking with fellow career changers and professors, taking classes, attending conferences and reading industry journals.
9. Commitment/Persistence – A half-hearted or uncertain effort will likely fail to result in lasting change, like my foray into coaching. The urge to give up may hit, especially early in the process. You’ll have to constantly re-evaluate your commitment, revisit why you embarked on the effort in the first place and resist inevitable doubts.
10. Embrace Uncertainty/Unpredictability – Become comfortable with not knowing and embracing the journey as an adventure. View unpredictability as making life more exciting, stimulating and challenging. Here’s where faith and spirituality can come into play.
11. Sacrifice – Be prepared to pay costs in terms of money, time, effort, perceived security and status (you may go from being expert to novice).
12. Hustle/Scramble/Diversify – A career transition may not be seamless, moving directly from a job in one career to a job in another. There may be an intermediary period involving education, training, internships and the like. You may have to jump off the cliff during this period – leaving security behind – but with a parachute. You just won’t be able to be sure where you may drift or land along the way. You may have to be aggressive in patching together a living from various jobs that aren’t career jobs, but serve as a means to your end. You may have to call on skills you weren’t using in your current career, or adapt your skills to different positions that work within your new goals. For me, that meant working summers as a tennis teacher and applying writing and teaching skills as a university writing tutor.
13. Flexibility – A flexible frame of mind complements the principles of identity and hustle. If you are not rigid in your identity, you can explore varied employment opportunities, living arrangements and lifestyles that can help you manage the transition. If you are open to a wide range of income-producing opportunities, you can minimize your reluctance to try new things – perhaps jobs you would have once considered beneath you — and ramp up your hustle to get them.
14. Financial House – Your transition will be easier and less stressful if there is Order in the House, the Financial House. As much and as far ahead as possible, craft a financial plan for the transition. Build savings cushions and tuition accounts, if education is necessary. Consider becoming a minimalist in your lifestyle choices, to some degree. A transition likely will come with some financial pain, including possibly a precipitous income drop from your previous career once you start in a new occupation, but planning and frugality can mitigate the potential pitfalls.
15. Negotiation – If you’re lucky, you’ll have a current employer who respects, or maybe even encourages and supports, your career-change endeavor (I wasn’t). If so, see how you can negotiate to get what you need – time, a flexible schedule, tuition assistance, remote work arrangement – while continuing to fulfill your employer’s needs. You may be able to hold onto your job and income much longer (I couldn’t), helping to bridge the transition.

 

 

Learning the Value of Work, Intrinsic Motivation

I put on a jacket I hadn’t worn in nine months, stuck my hand in the pocket and pulled out a forgotten, folded paper. It was a job application form that hadn’t been filled out for Grotto Pizza, a popular chain in Delaware beach towns that recently expanded into our Maryland suburb. My find triggered the memory of a conversation my wife Amy and I had with our son Daniel in the car on our way to dinner at the pizza chain where I had picked up the application.

The gist of the conversation that March 2016 evening was that we expected Daniel to work after he graduated high school later that spring. I advised that the new pizza restaurant was looking for employees and recommended he fill out an application. Daniel expressed resistance to working – or perhaps just to me suggesting where he should work or what he should do – advocating for a last summer before college of doing whatever he wanted.

It got a little tense before we got to the restaurant, Amy and I frustrated at Daniel’s nonchalant attitude toward working and earning money for himself. We were concerned about him adopting an attitude of privilege. For a couple of years, I had recommended to Daniel that he get certified as a lifeguard because we live in a community with 23 pools, or that he work at a summer camp. But he didn’t take up my suggestions. Lifeguarding would be boring, and he didn’t want to deal with younger kids, he said.

So imagine my surprise when a month after our frustrating conversation, Daniel announced that he had found a job opening on his own and had an interview scheduled at Shophouse, the Asian equivalent of Chipotle Mexican Grill, also owned by Chipotle. He had two interviews, including a group interview with the whole staff to evaluate whether he would fit in, and got the job.

A second surprise came at the end of summer 2016. Daniel easily could have decided it was nice having his first work experience, but he was done with that chapter and on his way to college. Instead, he decided he would keep his job while going to school.

He has been like a utility infielder at Shophouse, working the grill, preparing food, explaining the menu and serving food on the line to customers, and operating as cashier. He is working his way to a promotion to kitchen manager. I dropped in one night recently for dinner, where he made me a chicken with peanut sauce bowl. I watched him serve customers, thinking he had come a long way in working with adults and learning about the responsibilities of a job.

He is developing a good work ethic, always arriving to work on time, doing whatever he is asked to do and embracing the team concept of his employer. He also is learning about saving and the value of money, spending on things that are important to him but saving most of what he earns for the future. He earned straight A’s during his first semester of college while holding down his job.

I am proud of the way Daniel has embraced his job and the pride he shows in his work and earning his own way, while juggling a rigorous academic load. I am cheered that he is learning about the concepts of individual responsibility, quality of work, working as part of a team and his ability to direct his life with his choices, work ethic and attitude. He already has started applying for summer internship jobs in computer science, his chosen field. His self-motivation has blossomed.

Several times with my kids, they have gone on to do things I had wanted and encouraged them to do, but they did it on their own and in their own way and time, not in direct response to or because of my nudging or urging, or so it has seemed, though maybe my fatherly advice and wisdom had an influence. I’ve always told my kids that it is preferable when they do things out of intrinsic motivation – based on their own desires and interests – rather than out of extrinsic motivation, such as pleasing their parents and getting the old fogies off their backs. I’m glad they are learning this lifelong lesson, as Daniel’s employment endeavor indicates.

Joining the Gig Economy

I am a member of the Gig Economy.

I didn’t plan to join. It just evolved.

Giggers don’t count. We’re under the radar. The U.S. Bureau of Labor can’t find us for all its employment reports. We’re a step above underground. We exist in the netherworld between employed and unemployed, worker and slacker. Above all, we are free agents, with shallow allegiances, if any.

Nothing is secure. Nothing is long-term. Nothing is permanent. But then again, that applies to most traditional jobs nowadays, except for government employment. Those who convince themselves otherwise are fooling themselves.

If I don’t work, I don’t get paid. In my circumstance, sometimes even when I do work, I don’t get paid. There are no benefits – except the ability to say “yes” or “no” to anything, and to make your own choices, agreements and schedule. No paid vacation, no sick leave, no retirement savings programs, no health or life insurance. Not even any guarantee of hours or certain amount of pay per week.

Income is unpredictable. One thing that is predictable is that Giggers will constantly be scrambling for income, replacing one lost or concluded gig with another.

An October 13, 2016 CNBC report said employment in the Gig Economy is growing “far faster” than traditional payroll employment, according to a Brookings Institution study. An author of the report said the data showed a trend indicating a “potentially seismic reorganization” of the economy and employment arrangements.

Until a year ago, I counted. I was included in the Labor category “Employed.” For the previous 10 years, I held two traditional jobs, with a salary and benefits. As long as I showed up each day, I could get paid the same, whether I surfed the Internet all day and took two-hour lunches or hunkered down and grinded on the corporation’s mission. Not anymore.

At the same time I began the two-year internship portion of my interminable master’s degree program in counseling – a minimum 12-to-15 hour weekly commitment – my full-time public relations job started going south because of institutional disarray. My employer and I soon ended our union. I was suddenly without the safety net of the full-time, permanent gig, except for the frayed, patchwork, hole-ridden net of the Gig Economy.

I fell back on teaching tennis, which I had done during other periods of unemployment, and ramped up my hours as a counseling intern at an outpatient mental health center, something that was impossible to do while working full-time and which significantly aided me in meeting my master’s degree requirements. But my income was in the toilet.

I landed a great gig for the summer, between academic semesters and internships, as a tennis teacher at a resort in Bethany Beach, DE. But like many gigs, it was short-term,

A gig at the Bethany Beach, DE Bandstand, where I had a summer gig as a tennis teacher.

offered no benefits, and produced an unpredictable income stream. For the time I taught on court, I made decent money. If I wasn’t teaching – waiting around at the club for the next paying hour or bumped out of teaching because of too little customer demand and my low ranking on the pecking order of tennis pros – I made minimum wage. I taught a good amount over the summer – but also spent much time earning $8.25 per hour. The job ran parallel with vacation season, late May to Labor Day.

 

At 4 p.m. on Labor Day, the gig was up and my income ceased. Now I’m cobbling together an income from three sources – another counseling internship, where I’m lucky I get paid at all, but only at half-rate and only when erratic and inconsistent clients show up; a writing tutor job at Loyola University, where I’m a student; and itinerant tennis teaching. I’m working erratic hours seven days a week. And I’m still searching for more work – more regular and consistent tennis teaching to maximize income for my still-available, Swiss-cheese hours.

The nature of membership in the Gig Economy is to be in a constant state of searching and scrambling for the next gig, the most reliable gig, the best-paying gig for the time we must devote to it. We can’t rest, lest the hour glass runs out. We have to see beyond the horizon, because everything ends or fizzles out. We have to be chess players, thinking three or four moves ahead.

But membership in the Gig Economy has its advantages. I’m much happier with my work than I was at my last job. I have flexibility and control over my schedule. I have variety. I’m not bored at anything I do. I can move on when I feel like it with little angst. I like the direction I’m moving. I’m more free and self-directed.

I may hold other permanent jobs in the future, likely in a counseling capacity. But I’m also pretty certain I will be retaining membership in the Gig Economy for the rest of my working life in one form or another. It’s just a matter of putting all the necessary pieces together. I am a free agent, and I like it that way.

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Reliving Youth

Tomorrow I leave home for my summer job. It feels like I’m back in college, when I worked one summer in Nantucket, MA and another in Los Angeles. Except now I’m 53.

I’ll be working as a seasonal tennis pro at a large tennis resort in an East Coast beach town. I already had a taste of the resort tennis teaching life for my first long weekend in May. It was a welcome break from the career grind and mundane office environment.

This summer’s job reflects the saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” It certainly was not part of a long-term plan, but born out of necessity to change course, re-imagine life and re-adjust on the fly in response to circumstances.

At midlife, I’m embracing the idea that life does not have to be lived only one way. You can have a grind-it-out, 40-hour per week job, year-in and year-out. Or you can find another way to make a living in this gig economy, while trying to steal back more time, flexibility and independence. And with that, more purpose, meaning and passion.

I’m also embracing the philosophy of minimalism, or at least trying to limit my spending, cut costs, reduce my income needs and live a simplified life that maximizes enjoyment and meaning and minimizes stress. That’s what this summer will be all about.

My full-time employment in public relations ended in October 2015, for various reasons. One was that reality sunk in about the challenges performing a full-time job, working a part-time internship in a new field as a counselor at an outpatient mental health clinic, and taking graduate school classes in counseling, not to mention trying to function as a father and husband. I soon realized that trying to do all of these would be to do them all half-assed, and be constantly exhausted and over-stressed. My job had gone south anyway, so the break was a relief.

But I left that job with no clear plan on how to produce income while I completed the final two years of my counseling program, including two intensive nearly year-long internships. I fell back on teaching tennis, which I had done during previous job layoffs. I was lucky to pick up weekend hours with a Baltimore-based tennis academy. Then the idea occurred to me: Why not apply to resorts that need additional instructors for busy summer tennis seasons, while I was in between semesters with no internship or classes? With the help of a good connection, I landed the Sea Colony position.

I’m looking forward to it. It should be a great summer. Being at the beach in a resort town, working outside doing something fun, working with a team that has a passion for tennis, getting paid to help people improve at what they enjoy, meeting many people, making new friends. Hard to beat that, and sure as hell beats sitting at a desk in a stuffy office staring at a computer screen for eight hours a day.

Of course, it won’t be all fun and games. I need to make money to fund me and my wife’s living, my education and my two kids’ college educations. So I’ll have to hustle and promote myself to line up as many private lessons and clinics as I can, in addition to the many clinics the resort schedules every day. That should be great practice for the when I become a counselor with an independent practice.

A friend referred to this time in my life – a summer teaching tennis sandwiched by counseling internships, classes and part-time jobs with no full-time job as an anchor – as a “reset.” It sure feels like a step back in time for me, all the way to the relatively more carefree and low stress days of college. Make no mistake, there’s some scrambling and anxiousness involved. But I’m grateful for the respite, happy, excited about the challenges, and optimistic about the future. You can’t really relive your youth, but if you can add some youthful exuberance and new experiences to your life – and even some motivating uncertainty — you can recapture some of those feelings. And that’s healthy at any age.