I’ve got a confession to make: For the first time in my life, I’m enjoying work.

I realize that’s not exactly a shocking admission for those out there who find their work to be fulfilling.

But I’m well into middle age and have been working for the better part of three decades. And it’s only in the past few years, since I started my encore career, that I wake up and truly look forward to the day ahead.

Wearing a Costume to Work

It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed the various jobs I’ve held over the years. I feel privileged to have worked across multiple sectors: academia, the government, the media, non-profits. Each job I’ve held has been an enormous learning experience, not to mention the source of life-long friendships.

But I never felt 100% myself in any of those jobs. It always seemed as if I were wearing a costume to work. And waiting for someone – possibly myself? – to rip off the mask and reveal the real me cowering underneath.

Taking Time Off for Self-Discovery

After I was laid off from my last job, I made a determined effort to sort out this whole work thing once and for all. To do this, I formed a sort of chrysalis around myself.

Much like the butterfly, who needs to form a hardened, outer shell so that it can finish growing before it emerges, fully formed, into the world, so too did I feel that in order to properly check in with myself, I needed to check out with others.

I stopped talking to other people about what I wanted to do with my life and spent more time pursuing a range of activities designed to help me gain clarity on my professional future. I even uploaded the image of a chrysalis to my Facebook page to be sure people knew where I was ‘at’ psychologically.

It worked.

One of the many things I did 3 summers ago was to spend time as a visiting fellow at a local university. Mostly, this meant writing my book in a different environment. But it also meant attending seminars around campus on topics I was interested in, blogging here and there – as well as fantasizing that I’d been cast in a remake of Brideshead Revisited...

But the more I began attending workshops by assorted academics around campus, the more I found myself subconsciously re-structuring these talks in my head.

Why didn’t she start with that slide? I’d wonder. Or: Wow. This is a potentially interesting topic, but I’ve been sitting here for ten minutes and I still don’t know why I’m here.

The same thing happened with blogs I would read that were written by academics from all over the UK. The content would be brilliant. But the blog itself would read more like a short essay or – worse – an academic article, footnotes and all. Somehow, all these great ideas weren’t translating into engaging content.

One day, sitting in the back of a lecture hall, I realized I could help.

Back to the Future

I launched my own communications consultancy. The goal is to help people write, speak, and lead more effectively.

To do this, I offer a combination of personal coaching and group workshops. So far, I’ve worked mainly with the higher education sector, although I’m beginning to branch out into the private sector as well.

It is, in many ways, a perfect combination of the assorted skills I’ve honed over a lifetime: writing, editing, coaching, and public speaking, with a bit of improvisation tossed in for good measure.

But my new business also draws heavily on all that social science training I got back in the day – the side of my brain that craves order, logic, and coherence.

There’s nothing weird here at all – except, if you had told me 20 years ago when I left the higher education sector that I would be back teaching at the university level – and enjoying it – I’d have laughed you out of the room.

And yet, here I am, going to the library and preparing lecture notes and helping students of all ages improve their writing and communication skills.

More importantly – and to come back to the beginning of this post – it’s fun!

Molting Into the Integrated Self

So maybe the punchline here – if I can beat the butterfly metaphor into the ground – is that molting in adulthood doesn’t have to be about a radical break with the past.

I had always thought that professional reinvention meant doing something I’d never done before.

It never occurred to me – although it should have – that for me to be happy at work, I’d need to do something that was not only authentic, but integrated.

That the secret to professional fulfillment lay in integrating my manager and maker selves; to incorporating, as the saying goes, “something old and something new.“

One thing’s for certain: I’m no longer wearing any costume.

What kind of fulfillment do you find in your current job or post-retirement business venture? Have you decided to reinvent your profession after 55 or 60? How do you plan to do that? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.