Bernard O'Shea: I didn’t know writing for a living was going to be this hard

Bernard O'Shea: 'Changing career can be scary. There are some questions you should ask yourself if you're thinking of making a job move.' Picture. Brian Arthur

When I consider my working life so far, I think of Frank Sinatra singing That's Life. “I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king”. 

If I were to sing it, it would be “I've been a barman, a bad musician, a researcher, a comic, a writer and lots of unusual embarrassing things.” 

Since lockdown, I’m my kids' official dropper-offer, a picker-upper, and lunch-maker. I used to be busy out on the road gigging and making TV but a choice had to be made. My wife has a full-time job that is remote. I don’t.

However, I made a decision about my future career long before Covid 19. I knew I wanted to concentrate on writing whether it was for media outlets, agencies, companies or publishers. What I didn’t know was that writing for a living was going to be far tougher than I thought.

I had visions of me sipping prosecco cocktails while laughing outrageously at some hilarious quip I just typed on my MacBook in the back garden. I’d look on as my children played in a lush wild meadow around a maypole reminiscent of the old “Timotei” ad and I would sit back thinking, “life's great”. It hasn’t exactly worked out that way.

The first thing I noticed is that the time you have to yourself before school pick-ups moves fourteen times quicker than normal time. In fact, I’m convinced the physicists working on the hadron collider made this happen and you can be guaranteed that the second you start typing a word on your laptop that’s work-related your children will either fall, start fighting each other, or burst into an impromptu Italian Opera about wanting a yoghurt.

The biggest realisation I faced was that the vast majority of your work isn’t writing at all, it’s looking for work. I thought that aspect was just confined to entertainment. In short, it's not easy to change careers.

The traditional working life is now nothing but a distant hologram in our memories and with lockdown, thousands of people have retrained or gone back to college. But this trend was happening anyway. Covid has just accelerated it. 

According to the job site, Indeed, they cited that people born between 1957 and 1964 that traced their work history through to age 52 shows that people tend to change jobs fewer times as they grow older. 

From ages 18 to 24, they change jobs an average of 5.7 times. Between 25 and 34 years old, they change jobs an average of 2.4 times. The average goes down again to 2.9 jobs between ages 35 and 44, and then to 1.9 jobs between ages 45 and 52.

I spoke to Ronan Kennedy who’s a Career Coach and Business Mentor. He specialises in career planning, executive coaching and self-employment preparation. I asked him what is the first thing a person should think of when changing careers.

“The first thing is to identify what you really want. Another way about thinking about this is to ask yourself what is “success” for you? 

"For some people that might be a lifestyle like working remotely, for others it might be getting the hours down to 9 to 5 if they feel they have been overworking before. Others might have certain financial goals that they want to achieve. For lots of people, it's more time with the family or a different type of work/life balance. So in essence, what’s your vision for your working life,”

What struck me about Ronan straight away was that he concentrates on you, the individual. My Instagram feed is clogged with posts of business types giving life advice and portraying strong images of what “success” is supposed to be. It was welcoming to hear someone say “what is success for you?” 

He went on to say, “The second thing is to understand your skills, to be aware of the value you can bring to a company because that is what’s going to give you the options in terms of what kinds of jobs you can go for and the income you can hope to earn. After that, then create an action plan that is feasible and implementable.”

Those words “feasible and implementable” rang true with me. 

When you're working in one trade or job for most of your life, it's terrifying in your forties to think of changing what you do. 

I look at the millennial workforce and employers and think they will look at me like some Doc-Martin-jumper-wearing relic. It's not as if I can put a baseball cap on backwards and skateboard up to the bosses in Facebook and say, “Hey dude what’s up, wanna give me a cool new job?” 

Time is the most precious commodity to me now. However, Ronan stresses that “giving yourself a reasonable window of time, three months for example, when you can access your options and make the best choice for you. You might need space to think and you need time to create a new network.”

He pointed out a common issue that nearly everyone I know has encountered in their work-life whether changing career completely or just getting a new job.

“You really feel for somebody if they try to keep going for as long as they can and then they just get to a breaking point one day and feel “I absolutely have to change today or I have to change this week”, and then the decision becomes between quitting or taking time out or deciding on a totally different career and when you are under that sort of pressure, it's very hard to make a decision in your own best interest.”

It's that breaking point that has most people rethinking their chosen path. Whether it's burnout or simply living to work, the balance goes. I know from my personal experience of being self-employed that there is a constant pressure of constantly looking to where the next paycheck is coming from. It’s nice to be your own boss but you end up working more days, not less.

I remember having lunch with a friend of mine and he told me that a workmate of his was leaving his well-paid job to become a comedian. When I asked him did he have a plan he told me, “No, it's his passion, he loves it”. It wasn’t my place to give out advice but I felt like screaming “NOOOOOOO”. 

It's nice to follow your passion but believe me, making money from it is an entirely different thing. This is echoed by Ronan when he talks about the practicalities of a 360º career shift.

“Going from a complete change of career, you might have to factor in not earning the same amount of money. You might have to go back to college or do a training course but also I think you have to make sure that those big changes give you want at the end of the day. Let's say for example if somebody was in a job and they felt a bit isolated and they changed job you’d want to make sure that you don’t feel isolated in the next job as well. Be careful to make sure you're going to meet your needs and values.”

But then again big changes are possible. 12 months ago I never would have thought in a thousand years that I’d be writing a weekly column for a newspaper or reading white papers on cyber security and food trends but I’ll definitely take Ronan’s advice and take time out to plan my next big career change.

Professional Grand Prix Driver or technical writer; it's a toss of a coin really.