A change of direction

The Millie of a life-time ago!

Son #2 in Melbourne has been talking to us about wanting to change the direction of his working life. He's always been passionate about film-making (particularly editing), but has never actively pursued it as a full-time career. His current job is well-paying, however he hates it, but it has allowed him to build a good nest-egg of savings. Now at 28 he thinks that moment in time has arrived & its now or never to take that gigantic leap of faith & study full-time.

In thinking about his decision & what advice to give him, I started to think about my own career path. At 17 I desperately wanted to become a journalist. However, there was no tertiary degree at that time (1973), the only way to enter the industry was through a cadetship with News Limited (who owns our daily newspaper) & with only 2 places per year & over 3,000 applicants, I didn't have enough self-belief to even apply. So as many of us did then (& to my parents relief!), I went nursing. I enjoyed my 3 years & came out at the end with a qualification, & sort of accepted that this was to be what I would do for the rest of my working life.

In my post-grad. year I developed an interest in Intensive Care/Coronary Care nursing, & did the tough post-grad. Diploma. Then an unexpected move into the highly-specialized area of Cardio-Thoracic (Open Heart Surgical) Intensive Care came along. From the very first moment in that environment, I knew I'd found something I could really love & give my all to. So that was it, I was hooked.

That is where I stayed for the next 10 years (in between all the babies!), studied for & gained my Cardio-Thoracic Critical Care degree & continued to love it totally. However, in late 1990, a chance conversation with a senior colleague altered the course of my work life forever. She recommended me for a non-clinical position that I'd never considered, & yes, much to my amazement I secured the position.

So for the past 18 years I've enjoyed an amazing ride in an area that was so totally out of my comfort zone! It has allowed me to experience some incredible moments, travel the world, meet my heroes, make life-long friends from my client base, constantly challenge myself & be on the forefront of some amazing ground-breaking technology.

So I guess in counselling Son #2, my only option is to advise him to go for it! After all, I took that step (albeit shakily!) & my life changed forever. I would be so interested in hearing your stories - if you are doing something very different to what you planned to do originally, the chance encounters along the way that led you there & those 'interesting' forks in the road that confront us & present opportunities in the most unexpected forms.