Winding Path of Change
Originally published on 15 June 2022
Career change sometimes means quitting a part of your identity. If you have been working in a particular field or had certain interests for a long time, then changing your focus is like saying goodbye to your past self. I have been grappling with that idea as I work on the Backup Plan, so I decided to deploy some futures thinking skills to work through this change.
In futures thinking, we usually work with ten-year timeframes because it gives you enough time to think about what you want to change for the future. You don’t feel pressed for time, and it also feels like enough time to make a change. We also like to look to the past to inform the future. This post does a bit of both, but slightly in reverse.
June 2012
This week ten years ago, I was 25 and moving to a different city for the fourth time in four years. However, this time it was for what I thought was going to be a lifelong career. The following week I would be starting as a Research and Communications Officer in Parliament for the Democratic Alliance (DA). It was a very different era; Lindiwe Mazibuko was Parliamentary Leader and Helen Zille was still a respectable leader of the party. I was on the most exciting portfolios with some of the most dynamic Members of Parliament at the time – James Selfe, Dianne Kohler Barnard, the late Dene Smuts, and David Maynier. I had never written a media statement in my life but thanks to two women who saw my potential, I had been hired for the position. Soon I mastered the job and was owning it. I loved all of it. I loved the thrill of political communications. I loved politics. I felt I was making a difference in South Africa.
I eventually moved on to Mmusi Maimane’s campaign to be Premier of Gauteng. It was now grassroots politics and campaigning. A completely different ball game from the halls of the Marks Building in Parliament but just as much fun. It all ended on a rather sour note that taught me I was still too naive for the world of political parties. I carried on dabbling in DA politics at the grassroots level for a few years after that but what that whole experience really gave me was the inspiration needed for my PhD.
Just a few days before I left for that journey, a dear, old friend of mine and I went for lunch as a little farewell. He had always been my rock, the person I went to for advice, and I was looking for some final words of wisdom as I set off on this new chapter. What he said to me has stuck with me to this day: “Alex, you always screw up your personal life but never your work life so, don’t worry, you’ve got this”. At the time of that lunch, I thought he was right, I’ve got this. I had found my purpose and I was heading towards a bright future in politics.
I have always felt like I have been jinxed since that lunch. Ever since that job with the DA, I have felt like I have screwed up professionally. I haven’t been able to find the right match like so many of my friends have been able to do. I held onto the belief that politics was my future for nearly a decade; always dabbling, doing a stint now and then as an analyst, talking about it with friends, considering returning, writing about it in secret but never publishing, considering lecturing politics, or waiting for the right political party to form. After all, I did a PhD in Political Studies, I better use it somehow.
June 2022
Alex of ten years ago who had just arrived in Cape Town full of dreams of how she was going to make a difference in South Africa as a successful young DA MP in the future would probably look at Alex now and think that she is a failure. Well, 25-year-old Alex, firstly, the DA has failed but that is not a part of this story. Secondly, one of the big goals was to get a PhD and that did still happen, even though that goal was set pre-2012. Thirdly, you worked in politics in a variety of forms and contributed to South Africa differently through your work at the university. Finally, you can’t predict the future. So, you’re ok.
David Epstein in his book Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World discusses the idea of having too much grit whereby people persevere at something even though it may not be the only fit or match and so do not sample other options. He points out:
No one in their right mind would argue that passion and perseverance are unimportant, or that a bad day is a cue to quit. But the idea that a change of interest, or a recalibration of focus, is an imperfection and competitive disadvantage leads to a simple, one-size-fits-all Tiger [Woods] story: pick and stick, as soon as possible. Responding to lived experience with a change of direction…is less tidy but no less important. (Epstein, 2019: 145)
I persevered with politics and sampled university life. Unfortunately, neither worked out for me. However, what I wasn’t seeing when I felt like I wasn’t finding the right match, is that both experiences were giving me the skills I needed for the next chapter of my life. You don’t need to remain stuck in a mismatched identity or profession that you chose in your 20s or 30s.
Change is not a failure. It’s a path.
The journey over the last few months has been to try to find my ‘purpose’. It should have been to find and accept change. I am now on that path. My friend was right a decade ago, I had it back then and I’ve still got it now. The only thing that is different, is a change of interest.
We go through multiple transformations in our lives – both professionally and personally. Learning to let go of a certain identity or belief of what you were supposed to do is a part of that change, at least for me.
June 2032: Path for Change
As I said, you can’t predict the future, but you can set goals for the future. It can be a small task that you want to achieve in your life or something big. It might take you on an unexpected, winding path of change as it did for me before. To help you on your way, I’m going to leave you with an excerpt from Jane McGonigal’s book Imaginable which you can read more about here:
I want you to try this, for real: go ahead and put a deadline, or some other small goal, on your personal calendar, for 10 years from today. Google’s and Apple’s calendar apps will let you schedule things 10 years in the future. While you’ve got your mental or digital calendar open, let’s try a mental time trip. Imagine it’s 10 years from today, and you wake up incredibly excited about … something. You’ve got a special event on the calendar. What is it?
To help you imagine this future more clearly, skip ahead in your digital calendar to 10 years from today. Now, fill in the blank space. What do you have planned, 10 years from today? Who are you doing it with? What will you be wearing? What supplies will you need? Why is this activity important or exciting for you? And how do you feel now that the day is here? Try to answer all these questions and imagine the day ahead as vividly as you can. Be sure to think about how you and your life circumstances might be different from today, and how those differences might change what you want or are able to do.
I know what I have diarised for myself on 15 June 2032, and, hopefully, the exciting reason why I got there.
Alex the Generalist
