Recently a young friend, not yet 30, who already has multiple degrees as well as very impressive job and military experience under her belt, posted something about needing to "figure out what I want to be when I grow up." Well, I've got news for you Jen - you don't have to! At least, not in the way that our grandparents did, where they trained for a job right out of high school, then stuck with it for their entire lives. Perish the thought!
What's the most wonderful thing about our extended life-expectancy? The opportunity for reinvention! We have time to concentrate on different priorities, depending on our life-stage (nest-egg building, parenting, self-expression and fulfillment) and can adjust our career path accordingly, if the glove no longer fits. Plus, the broader your set of job skills, the better your chance of supporting yourself should you ever choose to leave the urban jungle, or should you be caught in a disintegrating economy (ahem!).
In their book Moving To A Small Town: A Guidebook For Moving From Urban To Rural America, Wanda Urbanska and Frank Levering remind us that in major metropolitan areas, a great many jobs are narrowly defined, but in small towns, very few are. Thus, broadening one's resume' by adding new, and developing existing, skills is the best means of building long-term professional security. "Often, people in small towns don't do just one thing, they do seven...piecing together an income from multiple jobs." Take my friend Joyce, for instance, the nightclub singer/comedienne/stained glass artist/shop owner, or, my nephew Kevin, the electrician/chicken rearer/goat wrangler/master barterer/God-only-knows-what-else, who was bound and determined to get out of Dallas and carve a life in the country, and by golly, he did it. Kudos to you Kev! I couldn't be prouder of you.
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