Yeah, about 25 years. I don’t really mean learning new hard skills like, python or R. Those are easy enough to learn (or ask the resource manager to find someone to staff). Everyone can use some career mentorship though.
But with the past year of Covid, dealing with my wife and her 60+ hour a week career and our small kids (not to mention my racist hick inlaws), it’s a lot of stress and frustration. I’m starting to feel kind of like a cross between Michael Keaton’s character in Mr. Mom and Jack Torrance from The Shinning. My wife is always stressed and short with everyone. And the kids are constantly DADDY! DADDY! DADDY! DADDY! And it’s not like starting a new job will make any of that go away.
I see. Yeah, that’s a lot to deal with all at once. I’m sorry you’re going through all that. I’m not a ‘look on the bright side’ kind a person so I’ll spare you the glass half-full platitudes. You don’t seem like someone who’d fall for them anyway.
Can’t make a job opportunity come soon enough. Can’t make you’re wife less stressed, or your kids less needful of attention. Can’t even remove yourself from the situation and focus on other things (like work) for any length of time. Probably can’t even get to a decent gym for some exercise, right? It’s a hard place to be and I’m sure it’s soul crushing. You just have to keep going hoping you’ll find a way to break the vicious cycle. I think a life coach might just add to your frustration by pointing out things that ought to be working for you but aren’t right now.
If talking helps you sort through things, I still think talking to a sympathetic but otherwise impartial therapist might be your best option right now. One that won’t point to your failings or gaps but help you work through them just the same, at your own pace At least that’s a step you can take irrespective of every other thing that’s going on in your life and over which you have no direct control.
Again - no easy answers; but you already know that.
So as it happens, I actually did speak to a career coach today. I happened to be glancing through some of the ads I get spammed with on LinkedIn and Facebook, which led to one particular coaches free webinar, which led to me signing up for a free initial phone meeting.
I mean he seemed competent and aggressive in the right ways. Not cheap though. Between $3,500 and $6000. Seems like a lot of money to help me with my “unique value proposition”. Plus a lot of it seems to be about spamming “decision makers” on LinkedIn.
Did he mention anything about “establishing your own brand”? Because that’s the sort of helpful advice that should earn him a hard kick in the groin.
Not specifically, but he had the same basic core concepts. The idea is that you establish yourself as this “unique offering”. Then you try and get in front of hiring managers and CEOs to circumvent the recruiting process.
I at least investigated the idea a couple of years ago on LinkedIn. But all of the proposals were much more expensive than I had hoped they’d be, and I was afraid that all I’d get for my money was a bunch of platitudes and obvious crap, so I didn’t explore any further.