Why You’re Never Too Old to Learn…Until You’re Too Old to Learn

They say the average adult changes careers five to seven times by the time they retire, and if that’s the case, then I feel like I’m a bit ahead of schedule. If there was a careerist equivalent to AA I think I would have to tell my fellow members that I had fallen off the wagon…again. When calling my closest friends, discussion always comes to back around to the question, “But what is it you do again?”

I started out so certain with what I was doing with my life — I was going to be a writer, a novelist. Having heard that it was a difficult profession at a young age, I decided to start early and get a jump on it by writing my first novel at the age of 16. Imagine my surprise when there was a book contract by 17, and a fully-fledged, hot-off-the-press novel in my hands at 20. However, even before the book was published, I knew I was heading into a doomed industry. Behemoth publishing houses with increasingly long names were merging, smaller publishers were going out, and unless you were a New York Times Bestselling author, you had a second job.

That certainty started to waver when the publishing house that had released my first book didn’t want my second, when my agent (rightfully so) acknowledged that it would be difficult to sell the newest novel and we parted, and I graduated college. It became clear to me that I would have to learn a new set of skills (“skills” being concepts that were not really pedagogical to a small Liberal Arts college). It was before coding bootcamps and online learning. Short-form content that automatically ranked on Google simply because it was published was what people with communication skills did. It was what you did if you wanted to “be a writer.”

The one characteristic I truly 100% admire in myself is my ability to learn. I am a quick learner and a thorough learner. I engage with my chosen subject matter like the montage of your favorite sports movie, which has been my greatest strength for the past 29 years of my life. I’m an emulator and an observer, meaning that it looks like I’m good at something within an afternoon even though it has taken weeks of careful, deliberate study in order to appear that way.

Whenever I feel lost, I turn to knowledge as a way to master that fear — the fear of not knowing what the hell I am doing and where I am going. It’s the guiding force that serves as a constant when I feel as though my life is about to collapse again. If I can learn something and become good at it, then maybe no one will know how much I am struggling. Maybe I can fool the world.

I became a travel writer and blogger when blogging was easy and you didn’t need to be a marketer in order to do so. SEO was a foreign language, funnels and an unfathomable number acronyms were still things that could be avoided. I told myself that story would always be the thing that made me relevant in the job market. I could always tell a good story. I can always tell a good story.

Then the stories started requiring that pesky word again, “skills.” So I learned them. I dove into oddly-named algorithms and marketing schools. I took copywriting jobs where I had to remind my boss that Australia was not located in Europe and I knew when WordPress was about to release an update. I studied for the GREs on the side so I could escape into learning about Victorian literature rather than spend my days reformatting articles so they were first-grade reading level. I felt like a snob even though though everyone around me made a much more impressive amount of money.

SEO writing for tech companies was next, because it was easy and paid the bills. I could do it while traveling and blogging, even though blogging was becoming more information-based and opinions didn’t rank on search engines. At least I could distract myself with riding a camel in the Sahara or partying in Seoul. I invested in a Master’s. I was really good at making life look like it was going exactly how I had planned it. Avoiding the job market in the United States was as easy as choosing not to book a flight back there.

I took a job at a travel publication once my newly-minted husband and I returned to New York to live. By then, it had been six years since graduating college, and my resume looked like a patchwork quilt with holes in it and I was grateful to anyone who would look at it — let alone finding a position that aligned with my interests. I had a team I loved, tasks that utilized my skill set, and a chance to express opinions as the head editor. But my boss was causing my coworkers to go to therapy, and I was constantly Googling terms like, “how do you know if your manager is abusive” and “what to do if your boss calls you incompetent.” Eventually, my absolutely wonderful new husband told me that it was like I was floating in another atmosphere. Patching up the resume wasn’t worth my mental health.

Back to travel blogging. A month later, a disease called Covid-19 started circulating. A month after that, the travel industry had collapsed. Now, I’m back to learning again — another course, another industry, another fortune into supplementary reading so I can be good at my new skill set when looking for a job. I’m taking feedback at nearly 30 that reminds me of workshopping my short stories as an undergrad. Shouldn’t I know more now than I did then?

I embrace the motto “never stop learning” because you have to in order to survive in this day and age. I am by far not the only one to have to make a career change or two or ten, and a pandemic has disrupted countless others’ lives and what they do for work every day. We are all still learning — I just wonder if it gets to a point where you are no longer faking competency. When you suddenly feel as though you got it right.

When finally, the story makes sense.