It has been months since I’ve written at length about my decision to leave my full-time, decently well-paying job. I left my job after my sick benefits ran out after our 4th miscarriage in May. After months of recommendations from my counsellor and family doctor Mr. MPB and I finally decided I needed to leave a very high stress job in which I was working 70+ hours a week. Combining our recurrent pregnancy loss with my job, I was burning out. I need to focus on my physical and emotional recovery from our 4 miscarriages. I needed to focus on providing the best chance possible for our next pregnancy.
We are in a very fortunate position in that we can afford for me to not be working. We made the decision to buy a house that we could afford on one income, and further e have both worked very hard for a number of years and have saving that made this an option for us.
But, here’s the thing, I never intended to be a stay-at-home mom, let alone my current state a stay-at-home dog mommy and wife.
There have been many things about this break that I have enjoyed, one of my favourites has been that I’m not waking up at 3am in a cold sweat due to some imminent work problem. I’ve been learning to sleep again. I have also been taking the time to search for meaningful moments of happiness. Truthfully though, I think my husband has probably enjoyed me not working the most – he has not stepped inside a grocery store in months, he has not been spending time loading and unloading the dishwasher, and he has not been cooking nearly as much. I have been cooking the vast majority of our meals, and some days in addition to making supper, I even make him breakfast and lunch!
While I have done a bit of private consulting in the last month, it has been sporadic at best and now as we transition from trying for one more healthy pregnancy to fully focusing on adoption, I feel as though I should be returning to some sort of more regular employment.
The problem is that I have no idea what I want to do! All I know right now, is that I spent 6 years in university achieving multiple degrees and 8 years working in a profession that I want out of! Shit.
So, what do I do?! How do I figure this out? It has taken me months to write on the topic of my professional challenges because I’m finding the entire topic very anxiety provoking – just thinking about this puts me into a state of slight panic, I can literally feel my heart rate increasing as I type this.
I am afraid that I am going to end up going back to what I’ve been doing because it’s easy and I’m good at it, even though the work doesn’t excite me and the industry is slowly killing my spirit. And what if I cannot get a job I want in a different industry – it’s not particularly easy to change from one professional industry to another. Then I’ll be forced back into the industry.
I’ve thought a lot about going back to school. But, I am afraid if I go back to school to get another master degree or even a PhD, I will be doing it simply to delay making a real decision about my professional future.
Honestly, I feel almost paralyzed by my fear. Fear that I’m going to take the wrong job, or fear that I’m going to make a big change and still not like what I am doing.
So, being a classic type-a personality who needs to control everything, months ago I decided if I’m going to do this, I need to do it right. So, I hired a career counsellor. I was told I should stay in my current profession because I’m good at it – yup, that was a waste of $1500. Okay, that was a little harsh. Truthfully, career counselling was able to help me articulate why I did not like my job and my profession. Which means I can now articulate what I am unwilling to do:
- I will not travel more than 2 nights a month. I used to travel 3-4 days a week, and I will not accept a job that requires this type of travel.
- I will not work for a company that does not share my moral compass and ethical values. I need a company that stands by its nicely written corporate philosophies in practice, not just as a marketing practice.
- I will not work more than 32 hours a week on a regular basis. I do not want a full time job, and more importantly I will not work 70+ hours a week on a regular basis. I understand that during intense short-term crunch times I may need to work more, and I’m okay with that.
- I will not work overtime without fair compensation. I expect to be compensated fairly for my time.
- Who I work with matters more then what I actually work on.
The career counsellor also helped me identify what skills I currently use that I really enjoy and what I need to be successful in my next adventure:
I am skilled at group facilitation and public engagement, and enjoy the challenges of ensuring respectful dialogue on controversial topics. I am also skilled at leading team and motivating individuals to achieve project goals and objectives. I am skilled at and enjoy strategic project management, and I thrive when there is variation in the projects as I like the excitement of new experiences and knowledge. When I find myself in uncharted territory, I like to research alternative case studies, trends and best practices to help determine the best course of action. When immersed in a project, my actions are well thought out and deliberate. I need space and time to develop the strategic approach to solve problems.
My strongest interests are people, writing, learning and perusing new adventures. I want to lead and contribute to teams and conversations where I learn as much as I teach and that are respectful of the unique perspectives of all participants. I need to feel that I am contributing to the greater good and making a positive contribution to the world.
As a very social person, I need to work with collaborative teams, yet have a quiet workspace available for concentrated and focused activities. To further optimize my performance and be a good team member, I need a workspace that has natural light, is flexible in respect to my work hours and location and has a short daily commute. I require recognition in the form of time-in-lieu and quiet praise from those I work with.
Most importantly to be successful and healthy, I must hold true to my personal integrity and ethical convictions.
But, here’s the problem, while I have taken this break and met with a career counsellor, I still cannot identify what I actually want to do when I grow up! I am used to being able to sort through information and make an educated decision on what the best course of action is. Instead, I’m honestly lost and overwhelmed by it. It’s a strange feeling for me and I don’t know what to do about it.
Has anyone else been through a career crises? How did you figure out what to do?
Does anyone have any suggestions about possible industries I should look into? (note that i have intentionally not said what I currently do because I don’t want to constrain any possible ideas).
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Step One: Read everything imaginable on the internet. Google everything you can think of. If you are anything like me, you will become overwhelmed by all the negative stories and some good stories. You will learn all about the horrors of failed adoptions. You will hear the happy stories of international adoptions and open adoptions.
Step Two: Start talking to real life adoptive families. If you don’t know any directly, ask around. We have direct family in a different country who have adopted internationally so we have been able to learn from their experience. However, we really wanted to speak with a local family who has done a local open adoption. International closed adoptions are a lot different then open adoptions, and we wanted to better understand the all the details. We stumbled across a friend whose sibling has adopted. They offered to speak with us and after building up the nerve to phone them, they invited us over to talk. They were amazing and opened there home and hearts up to us. We learned so much from them, and I will forever be grateful for the information and comfort they gave us.
Step Three: Meet with an adoption agency. Meet with the people who truly know the process. Learn the actual process that you will have to go through – this will vary depending on the agency, your city, province, country, etc. Learn what you will have to do to even get on the official waiting list. How long will you have to wait once on the list? What type of decisions will you have to make – race, age of child, birth country, birth mothers drug and alcohol consumption, etc. What are the significant differences between international and domestic adoption? How much is adoption actually going to cost?
Step Four: Panic over everything you have learned. We became overwhelmed by all our fears and ultimately decided we needed to take a break from all of it. I assumed the break would include doing a bit more research and reading books. Instead it turned out I did not read the stack of books I planned to read, heck, I didn’t even read one. We didn’t speak about adoption in detail all that frequently. We didn’t obsess over our fear of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. We just didn’t go there. What we did do was focus on our decision to try one more time for a biological child – we spent our money and our effort getting a second opinion so that we could make an educated decision about trying one more time. Based on the preliminary diagnosis, we are more comfortable closing that door.
Step Five: Initiate the official adoption process. This is where we are now. We are meeting with the agency one more time to discuss in detail the international adoption options. We hope to learn about the process for an open infant adoption from the USA. Once we pick local or international we will have to attend a mandatory weekend seminar before we are allowed to do anything else. But, as I am always organizing things, we are officially on the list for January’s local adoption seminar and on the wait list for the December one. We are also considering taking the upcoming November International seminar which usually never fill up. So, we hope to make a decision one way or another right after we learn more about the USA route. We could be sitting in a seminar in a few weeks, or a few months. And once that is done, we get to jump right into all the official paperwork and processes.
Step Six: Official Application Process. I anticipate lots of paperwork, including our official application, medical checks, financial history, criminal and child welfare checks, etc. Ask friends/family to provide written references. There will also be the ever so important home studies and interviews with social workers. We are told this process typically takes 6 months.
Step Seven: Placement on official waiting list.
Step Eight: Wait.
Step Nine: Match with Birth Mother.
Step Ten: Become parents.
Step Eleven: Call our family complete, or start again at step five.
And because I love charts and graphs, here is my version of the adoption process. Simple, no. Worth it, I sure hope so!
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My Perfect Breakdown 