I Think I’m Having an Identity Crisis

A Perfect Storm of Career Change and Coronavirus

So, what have you been up to today? she asks.

I start to answer. Err, well… I mean, I’ve been doing some stuff…

Inside, I’m panicking, struggling to grasp something tangible. Anything…

I’ve been busy. Right? Haven’t I? I’ve been doing stuff.

What have I been doing?

What is it that I do??

Who the hell even am I???

In many ways, whether we intend to or not, we often allow ourselves to be defined by our jobs. Consequently, when we walk away from a career, even if we have no doubts about it being the right decision, it’s common to experience some sense of loss. We may lose a sense of status, lose the feeling of self-respect that comes from knowing that we have the expertise, that we are valued, that people ask for our advice. We may lose our sense of purpose, attached to all those things we need to get done this week, and of how we are seen by our friends and contemporaries. We may feel a loss of confidence and security resulting from a loss of regular income.

This is especially pertinent if we leave one career without a completely clear path forward to the next. Modern career change advice often proposes the application of Design Thinking to the process: come up with lots of options and allow yourself a time-limited period of managed experimentation for each option, in turn, giving yourself the chance to learn new skills and test new directions. Many of these directions will not end up being ones we wish to take further, but that’s ok, we haven’t invested a lot of time or money into each. It’s all part of the process: every time you test a direction, you gain experience, make connections and learn something about yourself and what you want. You slowly but surely fill in those areas of loss and build momentum.

The success of this strategy for career change relies on progress. It needs us to be able to do new things, connect with new people, put ourselves in different situations, for short periods of time. We need to see how we react, what feelings are evoked, what we sense in our gut. It’s based on our ability to learn throughout the process. To test, to learn, and to move on to the next stage quickly.

If you throw a poorly timed global pandemic into the equation, it’s quite possible that any feeling of progress in examining these tentatively defined new directions may stall completely. The process of experimenting with new ideas and testing options is one that is hard to implement when so many businesses are closed, when so many people are struggling for work, and when travel and close interaction are not possible.

Almost a year ago, just as Coronavirus was starting to become an issue in the UK, I was finishing up a piece of work in my ‘old’ career as an environmental consultant. I’d been working part-time, from the boat, over the winter and was happy that this piece of work was coming to an end. I had money in the bank and my first summer of bike guiding lined up. Although I didn’t have a firm idea of how things would progress past the summer — not least because income from bike guiding would be significantly lower than my previous income and so was likely to be only one part of my future work — I felt positive, and that I had options. Guiding would give me experience, at least some income, and I would learn a lot. I would have time to experiment with other directions simultaneously, and I would always be able to fall back on a little consultancy work in the winter if needed.

As it turned out, the bike guiding was canceled, and the main client I’d been doing consultancy work with over the past few years suffered a downturn as most oil and gas operators put projects on hold. And we’ve been largely unable to travel, even within the UK.

In some ways, 2020 was the perfect time to work on those projects that I’d not got around to before, many of which are related to finding new directions, but as the year passed it become harder and harder to maintain a sense of progress. In a year of having all the free time in the world, and despite having felt that I was busy — I also felt increasingly unproductive and ineffective.

Yes, I’ve moved the bike packing blog to a new platform, made a new website with a print shop, partly decorated the boat, grown a lot of vegs, had the van converted, written an article for Bikepacking.com, worked on a couple of articles/photos to appear in print this year, got a drone pilot qualification (nearly two, but the second can’t be completed until we’re out of lockdown), and lined up more bike guiding work for this coming summer.

And it’s good to see that all written down in one place; to remember that there have been some positives. But in terms of real progress… of actually moving forwards, it felt so incredibly slow. As I slowly started to eat into savings, none of these things earned any income of note. As I wanted desperately to move forwards, none of them gave me actual experience. It felt like months and months of acts of slow preparation. All of these things took so much longer to progress than I could have anticipated, and many are ongoing, with the next steps not possible until life takes at least a few steps back towards normality.

There are many articles written on how our productivity has slowed in this time where our world has mostly shrunk to the four walls (and for some of us, hulls) of our homes. That lack of stimulation has led to a lack of motivation. And I understand this; it’s a tricky time for achieving things.

But it’s not just that progress has slowed. Layered on top of this is, I think, the fact that I’ve now had a long period of time where I haven’t been able to define myself by what I’m doing or what I’m going to do.

I hadn’t really thought of this as an issue until it started to surface during certain conversations. I’ve taken large periods of time off before, but I’ve always been coming from a period of work, or perhaps preparing for, or on, a bike trip. Towards the end of those trips, I’ve been lucky enough for work to usually present itself again, and even if it was work of a kind that I knew I wanted to leave behind, it was still there. It offered some certainty.

So, I’ve always had a purpose (even if it was one that I wanted to change), some kind of direction. But right now, I often feel that I don’t have any of these, or at least that it must appear to others that I don’t.

There are recurring questions in everyday conversations that are normally answered without too much thought, but which I’m now struggling to respond to.

The barista in one particular coffee shop asks very specifically, What are you up to today?

A neighbor asks, Have you been busy? Are you working?

I’ve come to realize that I now pause, stuck for words. In the past, I would have had some kind of answer about how busy I was at work, or that I had some time off, or was preparing to go away, or was having a pause between one job and the next.

But now… even though I feel busy, even though I’m spending time doing, researching, or thinking about all the things on my list, somehow none of it really feels like it’s…valid. I seem to instinctively play down what I’m doing. I refer vaguely to it as doing some stuff for me.

Even when a friend asks, Fancy a ride tomorrow?, and I’ve planned to do things that I really want to get done, I struggle to say that I’ve got work planned. It’s as if, because I’m not doing this stuff for anyone else, and I’m not currently getting paid for it, it doesn’t really count.

And because much of this is unfinished, short steps in different directions having turned into slow, drawn-out accompaniments to a year in limbo, it feels like it can’t be all that important. The lack of progress seems to have frozen everything in time, removed any urgency, indefinitely.

Right now, I’m not really an environmental consultant, and I’m not really whatever the next thing is. I’m just here, in some kind of limbo. For the first time I can remember, I don’t know how to what I’m doing, what I’m going to do, or who I am.

If you’re reading to the end hoping I’ll have some sage words of wisdom about how to pick things up, how to effectively move a career change forward in a world where what we can and can’t do has changed so much, I’m sorry to disappoint you! I don’t know the answers, and I don’t have a special 5 point plan.

All I can think to do is to keep trying to push on with the things on my lists, even when it feels like wading through treacle, even when it feels as if the endpoint of each item is so ill-defined. All I can hope is that when this passes, and as things start to return to some kind of normality, I will start to regain a sense of progress, momentum, and identity.

And that when I’m asked What have you been up to today?, I’ll actually be able to give an answer.

I’ve written a follow-up story to this one, about how our identity is actually something that we can choose, and how changing our beliefs and taking actions based on who we want to be in the future, is fundamental to becoming that person. You can read it here:

Thanks for reading! I’m new here but intend to post every day for the month of February 2021. After that, we’ll see…!

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I also write about long-distance, off-road bike journeys on my blog and have some of my images for sale here. Perhaps I’ll see you over there as well as here.