When your career has been crushed
It may be awhile before we can do what we love. (Image by Victor Millan)
As our time of social distancing continues for the foreseeable future, many of us are realizing that our old lives aren’t returning.
When my husband and I found out that the Apprenticeshop was closing for the week, we decided to leave our tiny apartment and head to my parents’ house a couple of hours away. Nearly two months later, we are still holed up with my folks and the shop still hasn’t opened.
I’m lucky that I am able to do a lot of my work online — I was doing that before the pandemic hit. But what does a choral director or orchestra conductor do? What about a massage therapist? A hair stylist? A professional athlete?
From childhood, we identify “what we want to be when we grow up” in terms of identity: Nurse, fireman, teacher, cashier, server, artist, singer, doctor. But these solid, reassuring labels can trap us. If we think of ourselves as one thing only, we don’t see what else we could be and do. And when a time comes — like now — when doing our work is impossible, what then?
If we can look beyond our professional identity, we can see our work in terms of the knowledge and skills we possess. These insights and abilities can translate to other industries and contexts. We can find another way of serving people, and thus, another way of earning a livelihood or contributing to our community.
In Atlanta, several theater artists banded together to create the Atlanta Artist Relief Fund, meant to support their fellow out-of-work artists in times of crisis. They already had the project management and organizational skills to do this as a result of the ongoing administrative work they do as a supplement to their acting gigs, and now they could apply those skills in service to their theater colleagues. A few of them have now taken advantage of these skills to find additional admin work to tide them over while the theaters are shut down.
A colleague in New York state offered the skills he has learned running a commercial kitchen to offer free support to local restaurants in his area. He’s helping them to create online menus, simplify ordering, and rework takeout procedures to allow for minimal contact with customers.
For my part, I once thought of myself as a music teacher. However, over several years of teaching music lessons as a freelancer, I realized that I was building up some business skills. But every product or service I tried to launch was music-related, which limited me. I had a breakthrough when I realized that my skills could translate to a completely new arena. I started The Little Middle School in order to educate students across subject areas — and naturally, in doing so, I’ve gained a huge amount of knowledge and skill that I can use as fuel for continued personal and professional growth. Yes, it was a tremendous commitment of work and study, and it was worth it.
I do wish that I had the skills to be more directly useful in combating COVID-19. I have no training or experience in health care, public health, data analysis, logistics, manufacturing, or epidemiology. But I am finding ways to contribute, using what I know and can do. I have discovered a passion for helping people use what they know and can do in order to adapt their businesses and careers to our new economy.
The current situation has spared many industries and brutally impacted others. Hopefully, in the long-term, we’ll regain live performances, international travel, sports, dining out, and everything else we’ve lost. But the short term may be longer than we had hoped, and many of us will need to figure out what to do. As a result of our efforts, we may uncover new strengths and capabilities that can be useful to us even when we can return to our former identities.
How have you changed your work as a result of the coronavirus pandemic? What are you learning? What help do you need? Who wants to get together to share ideas?