From banker to pastry chef. Or from marketing tycoon to market trader. From designer to inventor. From furniture maker to teacher. I now ask you a question of conscience: do you also sometimes long for a different profession?
The marketing tycoon who became a market trader, he's a friend of mine. And the designer who became an inventor too. The state secretary who became a bus driver, we all know him. Fred Teeven, after all. The banker who retrained as a pastry chef, I invented him. I liked the alliteration. But he will undoubtedly exist. Or she, of course. I don't engage in word politics.
Back to the topic: there are a lot of people who secretly long for another profession. But there are not many who dare to make the complete switch.
You do?
Typically, men and women with such a desire find the risk of change too great. And that is understandable. However, it is not a good idea to bury such a secret desire – the healthy urge to do something completely different – under a thick layer of earth.
If you ask me, at least. And you don't ask me, but you read this story. And that's pretty much the same. If I may say something sensible about it, it's the following:
Two different areas of expertise are better than one.
The banker who dreams of a job as a pastry chef can – in my opinion – simply remain a banker. Perhaps he or she can go to the MBO for a half day a week to learn the trade of pastry chef.
I know a professor who did it that way. A half day of pastry baking at the MBO in exchange for a half day of teaching. Not to go full-time pastry baking, but to be able to do it. That is something different than a total switch, but it is satisfying. Making something with your hands instead of coming up with solutions for complex problems.
My point is this: your current career – your profession, your expertise – doesn’t have to get in the way of your secret desire for a new profession.
Accountancy and goldsmithing. Lawyer and cartoonist. Dentist and teacher. Why not?
I am even a great advocate of it. You strengthen your familiar didactic talents by adding your other talent to them. The professor I know, who weighs. The accountant, who forges. The lawyer enlarges the unique characteristics of man to the limits of the absurd. The dentist improves.
Do you have a secret desire for another profession? Invest in yourself. Please give that desire space. And find a way to combine it.
Hans Ruinemans, boardroom monk