The social phenomenon of Life Change is growing all over the world. I’ve just returned from New York where it is trendy and normal to change careers or paths after living an entire life on one track.
Back home the movement is just beginning, and I’m surprised to see how many people like me there are out there, walking with fear and excitement towards a new life: motivated by passion. Many of us have time on our hands now that children are older and are wanting to live life to the fullest having spent a lot of it on the treadmill as pinpointed by Tim Ferriss in his hugely successful Blog and book The 4-Hour WorkWeek
There is my friend Kirsten a yoga teachers who has become a science teacher in her late 40s; my friend Ruthie a mother of three who has written and directed her first play and just had it performed at Nida; my partner Stuart who went from an engineer to physical therapist in his early 40s; and my ex husband who became a finance journalist at 45. There are journalists like me who have been phobic about new technology now retraining in multi media lest we get put out to pasture in this brave new cyberworld. There are several Facebook sites dedicated to the topic.
We reinventors are young and old, corporate souls becoming artists; artists becoming business people, changlings who are retraining and going through the humour and humiliations of moving from being “in control” in one world, to totally “out of control” and at the bottom of the pecking order, in another.
In an effort to reinvent, Boomers and Gen Xer’s are flocking back to Uni’s and schools. Although I’ve done a lot of study in my life, this is my first time back at University full-time since I was a girl. I am learning to use a camera and editing equipment, learning to blog and Tweet. And despite 30 years of experience as journalist, currently as a columnist with The Weekend Australian, the journey I’m on is as difficult as it is exciting.
All of us are moving forward with trepidation but more importantly with a huge sense of relief; that life doesn’t have to confine itself to one country, one identity, one love affair, one career. Rather, it is a moving fluid feast of multiple personas and lifestyles. The ancient Greeks believed we were polyphrenic; made of multiple personality subtypes not just one. Like Odysseus we do not have but one captain in charge of our sailing ship, we have a crew of many living inside us – the joker, the romantic, the fool, the adventurer, the warrior. Such a world view was reflected in their gods; not one monotheistic figure-head rather a range of gods reflecting love, war, joy and Dionysian delights. And so too are we full of different identities. How wonderful at this stage of our lives to be attending to another facet of ourselves and feeding it with such nourishment. To be reinventing ourselves!
Please share your stories of reinventing yourselves with me, not just in career- but a new life after a long marriage; a new country; a new faith. I will blog regularly with helpful information that I’ve sourced as a journalist, and personal observations of this journey.
Looking forward to hearing from you
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