I used to talk about changing my job for a long time. I was not happy in my old role, I felt that my life was getting further away from my dream future with every day spent in that office. At the same time I felt immensly guilty-in this "age of unemployment" having a fairly paid job at an internationally recognized, vibrant and exciting company should have been a dream come true. And yet it wasn't. But I kept on waking up every morning to go to work, against myself and against something deep inside of me screaming "there has to be more to life". At the time however, the only alternative were problems at home. Finally, I snaped. The events in the office took an unexpected turn and I realized that I cannot sit there passively and wait for things to magically change by themselves. I started dreaming of change, craving it with every cell of my body, until I finally found the courage to decide to look for another job.
Changing career is much more difficult than we think. We tend to advise those who complain about their jobs to "just change it". True, you don't loose much just looking around and sending CVs, but when you finally go to an interview and get that dream offer, suddenly the fear starts knocking on your door. Am I making the right decision? What is the new place going to be like? Can I be sure that I will be happier in my new role? For most of my life I've always been the kind of person who welcomed change just for the sake of it, I traveled the world at the spur of a moment and moved countries without any hesitation, yet suddenly, I was terrified. After a sleepless weekend of weighing pros and cons of each of the options, I decided to accept the offer and move to a new city for a job that I wasn't exactly sure about. Reason? I knew my old situation far too well and I didn't want to hang around just in case a miracle happens and things become different. Simple as that.
So within a space of a week my world revolved 180 degrees- I was going to move out of my flat and move it with strangers for the first time in my life, I was to move to another city, different county even, to start a job I had very limited knowledge of except for it being in the sector which somehow "felt right" ever since. And as scary as that change was, there was not a single day I regreted my decision. I know it will sound cliche but I feel like a new person, like someone returned me the wings I lost a while ago. I cannot describe the joy of spending a truly relaxing Sunday as opposed to worrying already about the inevitably approaching Monday, or the feeling of lightness when you wake up each morning and you are happy to go to work instead of dreading to leave the bed.
There was a small price to pay for this change for the better, however. Whenever life starts spinning out of control and you feel like you're on a plane which is speeding downwards and then somehow you end up landing safely, you are likely to find that you lost creativity somewhere in that chaos. During the whole period of transition and getting in sync with my new life I found my brain occupied with so many practicalities, so many worries about building my social and personal life from scratch in a new place, learning loads of new things every day to meet the work requirements, that there was not much space left for creativity, for my writing, photography or dance. Suddenly I became a living example of Maslow's hierarchy of needs in practice.
If you are busy trying to satisfy your safety and belongingness needs, alongside building your self-esteem in the new workplace, your mind has no energy or motivation to move on to the next stage and pursue cognitive and aesthetic needs' gratification. It requires time to settle down in the new reality first before it allows you back on the road to self-actualization. So don't be hard on yourself. Don't be scared that you lost your creativity and motivation to work towards being the best version of yourself. Sometimes we need to let our destiny to be a bit creative before it's our time again.
