Money v. Fulfillment.
August 16, 2016 6:00 PM Subscribe
How do you handle moving away from a career that you love which is totally unsustainable, towards work that provides a living but appears fairly (personally) unfulfilling?
Up until a week ago, I had spent the last 8 years working in fancy-coffee, with most of that time being as a coffee roaster. I was let go for some ridiculous family-business-toxic-workplace stuff that had been slowly evolving for a long time. Coffee's been my life for a really long time, and I really liked it. Working in coffee was extremely satisfying to me personally and ticked off just about every one of my boxes. Doing production work and incrementally, slowly getting better at something over the course of years is my bag. Having a product I can stuff in my face is awesome. Light travel to Latin America is awesome. Working quietly focusing on a task for 15-minute intervals to maintain consistency is awesome. Having face-time with industry folks and the public to do tastings, awesome.
For reasons that are unknown to me, coffee roasting has become incredibly fetishized and romanticized as a profession. Seemingly every dude in their 30's wants to quit their day-job and become a coffee roaster (or a brewer, or a winemaker, etc...). The market is fracturing into a million little pieces, with dozens of established companies moving towards roasting their own coffee to cut out wholesalers and the like. It's a really crazy dynamic, and it's making finding any sort of work in that field incredibly difficult.
Even if I were to find a job in the field, it doesn't pay remotely enough to operate in our city. I've made laughably little money doing what I do (it's been fine because I've been the primary parent-on-deck for our kid, and my job has largely allowed that to happen). In that sense, it's been kind of terrible. There's no growth, unless I want to move towards importers or NGO work, and both of those would require either moving to another city, or extensive education.
My wife and I had ideas to have me open a small shop of my own, but we're both pretty risk averse, and just straight up don't have the kind of start-up funds to get going without pretty seriously risking our financial security (we've been reduced to zero before, and would rather not be there again if we can do anything to help it). I don't have a network nearly large enough to find any sort of angel investment, or intense familial support.
I'm geographically tied to the Portland area, because my wife is our primary breadwinner (and actually just got a phenomenal job a couple months ago). Her professional network is centered around here that we can't really move without taking a huge step back for her. So unfortunately, seeking greener geographic pastures isn't an option. I could conceivably find plenty of work in just about any other large town or city on the west coast, save SF...but moving isn't a choice.
So I've hit an impasse, and I need to start looking for work outside my field. Get retrained and start over. My question isn't so much "what kind of work do I look for." I've got vague ideas there (but I'm still fairly clueless and only slightly directional...I'm sure further askme's will point more that direction), and I'm looking into a trade apprenticeship (namely inside-electrician work), and in the meantime I've got some interviews.
The question is more, 'how do I psychologically move away from this field that I really love?' I took a great deal of pride in my work, and have always had a tendency to let my career dictate a pretty large swath of my identity. While I'll always roast my own coffee, and do my own thing at home for friends and family, there's a pretty big jump from "I do this for 40-50 hours a week, and get paid to do it" and "this is my hobby." There's a scary-big gap in fulfillment there and I don't really know how to handle the transition away from it.
Up until a week ago, I had spent the last 8 years working in fancy-coffee, with most of that time being as a coffee roaster. I was let go for some ridiculous family-business-toxic-workplace stuff that had been slowly evolving for a long time. Coffee's been my life for a really long time, and I really liked it. Working in coffee was extremely satisfying to me personally and ticked off just about every one of my boxes. Doing production work and incrementally, slowly getting better at something over the course of years is my bag. Having a product I can stuff in my face is awesome. Light travel to Latin America is awesome. Working quietly focusing on a task for 15-minute intervals to maintain consistency is awesome. Having face-time with industry folks and the public to do tastings, awesome.
For reasons that are unknown to me, coffee roasting has become incredibly fetishized and romanticized as a profession. Seemingly every dude in their 30's wants to quit their day-job and become a coffee roaster (or a brewer, or a winemaker, etc...). The market is fracturing into a million little pieces, with dozens of established companies moving towards roasting their own coffee to cut out wholesalers and the like. It's a really crazy dynamic, and it's making finding any sort of work in that field incredibly difficult.
Even if I were to find a job in the field, it doesn't pay remotely enough to operate in our city. I've made laughably little money doing what I do (it's been fine because I've been the primary parent-on-deck for our kid, and my job has largely allowed that to happen). In that sense, it's been kind of terrible. There's no growth, unless I want to move towards importers or NGO work, and both of those would require either moving to another city, or extensive education.
My wife and I had ideas to have me open a small shop of my own, but we're both pretty risk averse, and just straight up don't have the kind of start-up funds to get going without pretty seriously risking our financial security (we've been reduced to zero before, and would rather not be there again if we can do anything to help it). I don't have a network nearly large enough to find any sort of angel investment, or intense familial support.
I'm geographically tied to the Portland area, because my wife is our primary breadwinner (and actually just got a phenomenal job a couple months ago). Her professional network is centered around here that we can't really move without taking a huge step back for her. So unfortunately, seeking greener geographic pastures isn't an option. I could conceivably find plenty of work in just about any other large town or city on the west coast, save SF...but moving isn't a choice.
So I've hit an impasse, and I need to start looking for work outside my field. Get retrained and start over. My question isn't so much "what kind of work do I look for." I've got vague ideas there (but I'm still fairly clueless and only slightly directional...I'm sure further askme's will point more that direction), and I'm looking into a trade apprenticeship (namely inside-electrician work), and in the meantime I've got some interviews.
The question is more, 'how do I psychologically move away from this field that I really love?' I took a great deal of pride in my work, and have always had a tendency to let my career dictate a pretty large swath of my identity. While I'll always roast my own coffee, and do my own thing at home for friends and family, there's a pretty big jump from "I do this for 40-50 hours a week, and get paid to do it" and "this is my hobby." There's a scary-big gap in fulfillment there and I don't really know how to handle the transition away from it.
Is there a conference you could go to or something? Meet similar people and ask them how they did it.
posted by oceanjesse at 8:06 PM on August 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by oceanjesse at 8:06 PM on August 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
You should blog and share your coffee-knowledge with the world. This is something you can do while holding down a better paying job. Also, if you can write, consider writing for a coffee trade magazine?
As per coffee profession, coffee shops are expensive...but what about a coffee truck or alternatively having a coffee stand in someone else's store/shop (so overhead is cheap)? Just making suggestions - I don't really know about these things.
posted by Toddles at 8:21 PM on August 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
As per coffee profession, coffee shops are expensive...but what about a coffee truck or alternatively having a coffee stand in someone else's store/shop (so overhead is cheap)? Just making suggestions - I don't really know about these things.
posted by Toddles at 8:21 PM on August 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
I took a great deal of pride in my work, and have always had a tendency to let my career dictate a pretty large swath of my identity.
I suspect that this will remain true, and that your pride and identity might shift toward being a great electrician. You picked a good field for that, IMO -- electrical seems to have a lot of people who are like "we're the ones who do things Right" (because of the safety issues, I assume). Throwing yourself into your new field might help.
It might also help to regularly hang out with people who know you as a coffee roaster. That might help you feel you haven't lost that side of yourself.
posted by slidell at 10:02 PM on August 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
I suspect that this will remain true, and that your pride and identity might shift toward being a great electrician. You picked a good field for that, IMO -- electrical seems to have a lot of people who are like "we're the ones who do things Right" (because of the safety issues, I assume). Throwing yourself into your new field might help.
It might also help to regularly hang out with people who know you as a coffee roaster. That might help you feel you haven't lost that side of yourself.
posted by slidell at 10:02 PM on August 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
I moved from 10+ years in books to working in digital marketing, basically out of desperation for a job and to crawl my way just beyond the living wage. What I learned - which, I sort of already knew, and suspect you do, too - is that if you're in a workplace where you're listened to and get treated with dignity, you can learn to love/like most of your job. And you've identified so many abstract things you're good at - those are transferable to loads of roles. I liked helping people find stuff out; now I do that by making websites easier to use. I liked putting things in order and making that order look presentable; I can do that with Excel charts now (sad, but true - I have grown to love this part of the gig). The joy of hard work is still there, no matter what the work is, and while I used to crave being a "book person" as part of my social identity, I'm now happy enough with myself that I don't feel the need to be Ms. Smartypants all the time.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 6:36 AM on August 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Gin and Broadband at 6:36 AM on August 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
I spent 15 years in restaurant kitchens, moving from dishwasher to prep cook to line cook to sous chef to executive chef. Along the way I got an Associate's in Culinary Arts, and while I was never going to be a superstar, I was a very skilled craftsman at my work and took a lot of pride in what I did and in doing as good a job as I could. And then one day I realized that I was being crowded out by people who were younger and willing to work for less, and that I was just sick and tired of never having health insurance and driving rattletrap cars and living in shit apartments and just barely making a living wage. So I re-educated myself and got a job working in IT as a low-level tech support grunt. I spent 12 years doing that, eventually moving into skilled system admin positions, and have spent the last six years as a technical writer. So I know the fear of losing the thing that you've based a lot of your identity on, and also know what it's like coming out on the other side.
As Gin and Broadband says, you can learn to love or at least like most any job as long as you enjoy where you work and who you work with. The organizational skills I learned in the kitchen have served me well in IT, as has the fact that no matter how stressful any IT situation seems, it's never going to be as stressful as a full house on a Friday night with another 100 at the door waiting to be seated, and it's only 6pm. You will be able to take the skills you've learned in your current career and translate those into assets in anything you want to do.
Is writing documentation as fulfilling as putting a perfectly cooked entree on a plate that I know is going to immediately satisfy a guest? Absolutely not, and to be honest it took a while to really let that go. Does writing documentation pay me $50,000 a year more than I ever made as a cook and allow me the free time and ability to pursue other hobbies and interests? You're damn right it does, and that's helped me see that my job doesn't have to be my identity because I can now be interested in things outside of work, which is hard when you're working 70 to 80 hours a week.
I think you'll find that the fact that you take a lot of pride in your work will eventually be your key to happiness, no matter where you end up. I'm the same way, and I find that no matter what I'm doing (I've worked in warehouses, kitchens, and IT) I try to do my best and take a lot of pride in doing my best, and that actually makes me happy. As long as I had a job where I could apply myself (and make a decent wage and work with decent people) I think I'd be happy doing most anything.
posted by ralan at 9:17 AM on August 17, 2016 [5 favorites]
As Gin and Broadband says, you can learn to love or at least like most any job as long as you enjoy where you work and who you work with. The organizational skills I learned in the kitchen have served me well in IT, as has the fact that no matter how stressful any IT situation seems, it's never going to be as stressful as a full house on a Friday night with another 100 at the door waiting to be seated, and it's only 6pm. You will be able to take the skills you've learned in your current career and translate those into assets in anything you want to do.
Is writing documentation as fulfilling as putting a perfectly cooked entree on a plate that I know is going to immediately satisfy a guest? Absolutely not, and to be honest it took a while to really let that go. Does writing documentation pay me $50,000 a year more than I ever made as a cook and allow me the free time and ability to pursue other hobbies and interests? You're damn right it does, and that's helped me see that my job doesn't have to be my identity because I can now be interested in things outside of work, which is hard when you're working 70 to 80 hours a week.
I think you'll find that the fact that you take a lot of pride in your work will eventually be your key to happiness, no matter where you end up. I'm the same way, and I find that no matter what I'm doing (I've worked in warehouses, kitchens, and IT) I try to do my best and take a lot of pride in doing my best, and that actually makes me happy. As long as I had a job where I could apply myself (and make a decent wage and work with decent people) I think I'd be happy doing most anything.
posted by ralan at 9:17 AM on August 17, 2016 [5 favorites]
Seconding nightrecordings. Roasting coffee may not pay well, but consulting new fancy-coffee places on best practices and sourcing certainly will. I'm willing to bet most of those 30 year old dudes who have quit their day job would be happy to pay to learn how to do this part right, since it's critical to their success.
It's takes a while to build out a full client pool, but the plus side is that you can do this as much or as little as you have time for. Also, consulting has minimal overhead, since all you need to do is create a nice-looking website (wix or sqaurespace is fine) and start networking. I'm sure there are conventions and conferences that these people go to. You go too, with a stack of business cards and some samples of beans you roasted.
posted by ananci at 6:20 PM on August 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's takes a while to build out a full client pool, but the plus side is that you can do this as much or as little as you have time for. Also, consulting has minimal overhead, since all you need to do is create a nice-looking website (wix or sqaurespace is fine) and start networking. I'm sure there are conventions and conferences that these people go to. You go too, with a stack of business cards and some samples of beans you roasted.
posted by ananci at 6:20 PM on August 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
I can not more highly recommend the book Flow. One of the points the book makes is that you need to leverage a day job to make the most of the rest of your time.
posted by jrobin276 at 4:49 AM on August 18, 2016
posted by jrobin276 at 4:49 AM on August 18, 2016
This thread is closed to new comments.
Something that jumps out at me: you have a lot of experience doing this, not to mention (it sounds like) doing it well.
Have you considered sharing your expertise as a consultant? Or educator? Perhaps even online, through instructional blogging or YouTube videos? You could offer your services for a fee, or with the support of advertising revenue.
I always hated that smarmy saying, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." You sound like you are a person who aspiring coffee roasters and sellers would be honored to learn from. Harness that. Embody your expertise. Share it and, heck, make some income off of it, even if it's passive income. I think you could (potentially) find that equally rewarding.
posted by nightrecordings at 6:20 PM on August 16, 2016 [7 favorites]