2021: An (un)expected career change

In January 2021, I commenced my 16th year as a fully qualified RN. I held a Nurse Educator role at my local hospital. By July 2021, I had a new career in Instructional Design.

My guess is that you're reading this article because you might be contemplating a career change. I'll explain how and why I made this change when I wasn't considering it for another couple of years.

Technically, it all started five years ago...

I have wanted a career change for at least five years now. The problem was, I didn't know what to do, what I wanted to do or how to do it.

My husband was leaving the military to pursue a teaching career (which didn't happen in the end), and we were parents of two children under five. This left the financial ground a little rocky as neither of us knew where our income would come from if we were changing careers.

So instead, I started blogging about paediatric nursing topics as I felt super passionate about kids feeling a sense of control and ownership over their medical treatment.

My blog took off after only four articles, and I began receiving offers from worldwide to speak. I felt really uncomfortable with the attention and didn't know what to do.

I decided to monetise the blog by offering continuing professional development to other nurses. This exposed me to running a website, designing a website, managing social media, community administration and managing a learning management system.

I thought I could build this business to a point where it would replace my income.

I was incredibly naive.

After five years of running myself into the ground trying to get the business to work, I decided to cut my losses and close it down.

Enter January 2021.

The year started out like any other.

Lofty ideas.

Anticipatory excitement.

Wild hopes.

Then my husband's employer made him redundant.

Then they didn't make him redundant.

Then they gave him a fly-in-fly-out job.

Then they didn't.

Then they made him redundant again.

Then they didn't.

Then they gave him a job 1.5 hours away. You get the gist.

After 5 months, I lost it.

The constant changes left me wondering if I was going to have a nervous breakdown. As if the pandemic hasn't been enough!

With every change in his work circumstances, I felt profound anxiety and stress because every change affected my workday.

No sooner had I created a Plan Y, I was back to the drawing board starting Plan Z 5.0.

My line manager was empathetic to my problem, but she left little to no room for me to slide my hours to start later and finish later.

I felt backed into a corner, and I didn't really want to be a nurse anyway!

I scrutinised my skills.

One of the things I found helpful in building my career leap confidence was to scour the job boards. Every job opportunity was considered, and I waited eagerly to be inspired by one.

This process also meant that I had to reassess my skills and be realistic about meeting their candidate skills wish list. If there were gaps, I looked into what it would take to get those skills - the courses I'd have to take and the financial cost of doing so.

I discovered what I loved.

I also thought about everything I enjoyed in life and business and realised that I wanted more creativity.

This formed my first value, which I go into a bit later. Ultimately, nursing was sucking the life out of me because there was little to no room for creativity. I was stuck in a profession that needs protocols and scientific evidence before a change is adopted. When that change is introduced, it happens in a very prescriptive manner.

When I realised this, I thought back over my life and realised that I was always a creative being, but this wasn't encouraged in my family. My Mum always told me that I wouldn't earn enough money if I became an artist. I've now realised that happiness and joy in life is not about how much money you make but rather about nourishing your soul by doing what you love.

I defined my values.

I had already established that it was vital for me to find a job with more creativity - my first value. This had already narrowed my job search by about 10 million. But I needed to define what creativity meant to me personally.

I landed on digital creativity - creating video, audio and still assets to use for a purpose. I also enjoy music and painting, although I am happy with keeping these latter two confined to my hobbies.

The last vital thing I had to consider was what income I could settle for and the working conditions I wanted. This came down to flexibility in work hours and a minimum salary that would still provide us with financial stability - my final two values.

I went over my household budget and realised that I could take a financial hit to achieve job satisfaction. This was my final green light.

I used my values as non-negotiables. If I was going to change careers, I had to have these things.

I improved my skills.

Remember how I said earlier that I scrutinised my skills? After learning about what I need in a job, I kept my eye on the job board and discovered Instructional Design.

I already held post-graduate qualifications in education, so I just needed to build my skills in online course development to move into that career. I had experience from my business and already knew the programs they used in the industry. I discovered and enrolled in the Instructional Design MicroMasters from the University of Maryland on edx.org to learn more about the best practices and network with others in the industry.

Then one day, I saw on a forum that someone had recommended skills in User Experience (UX) Design. I looked into this and LOVED the idea of UX Design. I could see many parallels between UX and Learning Experience (LX) Design, so I enrolled in a project-based course that ran for six months.

This improved my confidence in gaining employment in Instructional Design, LX Design and UX Design all at once.

The right job came along.

I was still working in my Nurse Educator role when a job came past my desk for a Learning Development Advisor within the organisation I worked. The role description described an Instructional designer with a bit of face-to-face facilitation. I decided to apply and was offered a permanent position part-time. I was nervous about the $40K pay reduction. Hence, I counter offered a temporary contract for three months so that if it didn't work out, I could return to my Nurse Educator role.

They had me at 'flexi-time'.

On the first day, my new line manager told me about their flexible work hours and how I could work from home and work in the office. Basically, I could work any time between 6 am and 6 pm so long as I averaged 7 hours and 36 mins per day for the fortnight. This meant that I could be both a Mum and an employee.

They gave me full creative license over the courses I developed and encouraged me to learn new software to improve the look of my courses.

Everything I valued and wanted had been met beyond my expectations.

So, I made the leap, went permanent and never looked back.

Have you made a career leap? How did you approach it?