Midlife career choices: how are they different from other career choices?

Library Trends, Spring, 2002 by Candy Zemon

ABSTRACT

IT WAS 1963 when Candy Start began working in libraries. Libraries seemed to be a refuge from change, a dependable environment devoted primarily to preservation. She was mistaken.

Technological changes in every decade of her experience have affected how and where she used her M.L.S.

Far from a static refuge, libraries have proven to be spaceships loaded with precious cargo hurtling into the unknown. The historian in the author says that perhaps libraries have always been like this. This paper looks at a midlife decision point and the choice that this librarian made to move from a point of lessening productivity and interest to one of increasing challenge and contribution. It is a personal narrative of midlife experience from one librarian's point of view. Since writing this article, Candy's career has followed more changes. After selling the WINGS[TM] system, she has taken her experiences and vision to another library vendor, Gaylord Information Systems, where she serves as a senior product strategist.

INTRODUCTION

Initial career choice is usually driven by youthful dreams, personal interest, personal talents, market availability, geographic preferences, and likelihood that the career will support one's lifestyle. It is a forward-looking choice. In some ways, it is the most open of all career choices.

Lateral and interim career choices are usually made for personal reasons (having to move, for instance) or because the current position has an unpleasant atmosphere, declining prospects, an incompatible boss, or because a better opportunity opens up elsewhere. These are generally future-oriented choices tempered and driven by accumulated experience.

Midlife career choices are a different matter. Boredom, plateau blues, family changes, success, fewer family obligations, burnout, restlessness, and mental fatigue all tend to drive career choices at this point. These are generally here-and-now choices.

The fact is that midlife choices are made from a position colored by both experience and mortality. This foundation makes them different from earlier career choices, more final in some ways, less "responsible" in other ways, more frightening, more liberating, and ultimately less predictable.

Not every midlife career choice is driven by dissatisfaction or unhappiness. There are many librarians who are flourishing in their positions and who have no intention of changing direction. For them, their career is blossoming as desired, and they are enjoying the fruits of their training and choices. Midlife career choices for them tend to be choices in maximizing returns along the current path.

Others find themselves in midlife suddenly and unaccountably restless, bored, dissatisfied, disconnected, tired, fed up, irritated, depressed, or otherwise short on the job satisfaction they want. For them, midlife career choices loom large. The current path is usually not the one they wish to continue following.

Yet dissatisfied librarians are usually old enough and prudent enough to realize that they have assets tied up in the status quo--retirement is within sight, family obligations exist, health and retirement benefits are increasingly important, and they are beginning to be concerned about age discrimination.

What choices exist for the dissatisfied librarian in midlife? Accept the status quo? Endure somehow until retirement? Revel in emotional guerilla warfare? Join a gym? Do outside charity work? Run for political office? Mentor a younger worker? Take up a hobby? Retire early? Write that book or novel or play? Take an extravagant vacation? Spoil the grandchildren? Learn a new language? Start a collection? Redecorate the house? Relandscape? Buy a sports car or motorcycle? Start all over again in something completely different?

Wait a minute--what was that last one?

That's what I did. I left a comfortable, established, and successful position as a librarian at a major library automation vendor for the dubious joys and undeniable excitement of starting a new business and learning to be both its president and a programmer.

For me, it was absolutely the right thing to do. At least, so far. Check back with me in a decade ...

THE CONTEXT

I began working in libraries as a high school student in 1963. At that time, it was a fully manual environment, with a form for every purpose and a well-choreographed workflow. I was fortunate enough to work in a library for six years and, over that time span, to be trained in all aspects of library work--from shelf-reading to reserve room to serials to interlibrary loan to original and copy cataloging. This foundation has served me well.

I enjoyed the quiet, well-ordered deliberate bustle of the library. I viewed the library as a very pleasant refuge from a changing and challenging world.

I received my M.L.S. from the University of Michigan in 1973, after finishing an M.A. in my intended career--medieval history. I never intended to be a librarian. My youthful vision of my future was as a medieval historian, tenured, publishing happily, and doing on-site research projects in various rare-book collections around the world.