When I graduated from high school in 1968, I did not have a career goal. I wanted to get a job and become independent, completely free from the control of my parents. And I knew that I wanted an office job.
As I looked for employment, I immediately hit a barrier. I was only seventeen and almost every employer had a minimum age requirement of eighteen. I was able to find only one company that would even consider hiring me.
My career began on September 3,1968 with The Bank of Nova Scotia, now Scotiabank. In 1970 I made a career choice, to become a professional accountant. In hindsight, it was a very good decision, good alignment with my natural abilities. I continued to work while studying accounting on evenings and weekends. Six years later, at age twenty-five, I obtained my professional designation, Registered Industrial Accountant, later changed to Certified Management Accountant.
In the 1970s, my credentials combined with a healthy economy enabled me to quickly climb the ladder of success. In 1978, still only twenty-seven, I became a Manager. I soon set my sights higher, a career goal of becoming a VP Finance for a business with at least $100 million in revenue.
But recession hit Alberta hard in the 1980s. I was able to find stable employment with a large Cooperative with opportunities for career growth. However, my upward trajectory hit a plateau.
I experienced a midlife crisis and re-evaluated my career goals. I made a shift into the nonprofit sector and to a small organization, something my younger self would not have considered. I quickly realized better alignment with my values but it came with a cost, lower earnings.
About the time I turned fifty, my career collapsed. For about five or six years I was in survival mode, not only in my career but in life generally. Somehow, I managed to not give up.
And I was able to recover. And I got the best position of my career, Chief Financial Officer of the Mental Health Commission of Canada. It was a great job but very stressful. After three years I was burned out. I attempted to transition to a non-management role but that did not go well. In January 2010 I was terminated without cause, effectively ending my career after 43 years.
I tried to find some work as a freelancer but that did not amount to much. In 2011, after working for 43 years, at age 60 I considered myself retired. Summing up my career in one word, it was mediocre.
Reflecting back with hindsight, I can make a few generalizations.
In the first half of my career I was ambitious. I was often thinking about my next promotion, always trying to climb the ladder. But my ambitions probably exceeded my abilities, not an easy lesson to learn.
While I had a strong aptitude for accounting and finance, I did not have a good temperament for management, also not an easy lesson that I was slow to understand. But I had a very strong attachment to my identity as a manager.
While I essentially had only one career, I had a lot of jobs. That gave me a lot of experience with a wide variety of organizations. But that also resulted in me often feeling unsettled.
One theme in why I left my job was my difficulty coping with stress. Some of that was from being in very real stressful situations which would have been challenging for most people. But my poor coping skills and lack of self-awareness were also a factor.
I do not miss the working world at all and I love being retired.