💼 Thinking about switching careers, kind of scared

Fourteen years in the same field and somewhere around year eleven the satisfaction just quietly left the building without telling me. I noticed it properly this March, sitting in a client call I could have run in my sleep, doodling on a notepad instead of listening, and realizing I had stopped caring what the client decided. Monday mornings now come with a dread that used to only show up before exams, a heaviness that sits in my chest from around six in the evening on Sunday. I keep thinking about switching into something else entirely, maybe UX research, maybe teaching at a design school two of my old juniors now work at, and the thought is exciting for about four minutes before the fear shows up: starting at the bottom again, earning a third of what I make now, sitting in a training room next to twenty four year olds who already know the tools I would be learning from scratch, and having to explain to my own parents why fourteen years of seniority suddenly means nothing on a new resume. A couple of colleagues found out I was quietly looking into a short UX certification and reacted like I had announced I was moving to another country, because from where they sit my career looks stable and enviable, which makes it harder to explain that stable does not always mean bearable. I have started shadowing a friend one Saturday a month just to see the unglamorous parts of the new field before I romanticize it further, sitting in on user interviews that run three hours and pay far less per hour than what I currently bill. Maybe I am just tired of doing one thing for fourteen years and calling that tiredness a career crisis, which would be a very expensive way to admit I need a holiday.

Not sure the dissatisfaction is always about the field itself, sometimes it really is just needing some kind of change after doing the same thing for years, exactly like you wondered about your own situation.

Colleagues reacting with surprise because your career looks successful from the outside is such a strange and frustrating part of this, since it makes explaining the actual dissatisfaction feel almost ungrateful somehow to people looking in from outside.

Competing with people younger and quicker with the new tools held me back for almost two years before I made a similar switch. What helped was learning the new skill on weekends first, quietly, before resigning, so the fear had less room to make the decision for me.

I also went through a career change myself after a lot of careful thought, and in the beginning it scared me too. Looking back now, it feels like it was the right decision for me at that stage of life. Just make sure you plan beforehand, savings and building skills for the new field before making the jump. All the best with whatever you decide.