Lately, I’ve been sitting with an uncomfortable realisation. This is very much my reality right now. My career doesn’t feel like it’s moving forward anymore. It doesn’t feel like it’s collapsing either. It just feels… sideways. And I’m trying to make sense of that while living inside it.
This isn’t something I’m writing about with hindsight or clarity. It’s what I’ve been living through these past months. Waking up, going to work, doing what’s expected of me, while quietly questioning whether this path still makes sense for me. I don’t feel dramatic about it. Mostly, I feel unsettled. Restless. And if I’m honest, a little embarrassed by the question that keeps looping in my head: how did I get here, and why does it feel like everyone else has figured this out while I’m still reassessing?
At 42, that question hits differently, at least it does for me. There’s more self-awareness now and far less patience for pretending. From the outside, things probably look fine. But inside, I can feel that my career isn’t climbing anymore. It’s drifting. And I’m trying to understand what that drift means while I’m still in it, not after I’ve neatly escaped it.
In your forties, you’re meant to be doing well financially. Or at the very least, professionally settled, if not in a specific role, then in an industry. That’s the assumption, anyway. So when your career still feels uncertain or like it’s drifting sideways, it doesn’t just feel inconvenient. It can feel like you’ve fallen behind, even when everything looks fine on the surface.
Which is why I keep coming back to the same thought.
Surely, I cannot be the only one.
Why a Career Change at 40 Feels So Different
What I’ve started to believe, based purely on how this feels in my own body, is that career dissatisfaction in your forties is different. Earlier in life, uncertainty felt temporary, even useful. Now, it feels heavier because I actually know myself. I know what drains me. I know what sharpens me. And that knowledge makes it harder to ignore misalignment once you can feel it.
If you’re in this place too, my honest opinion is this. You’re probably not broken, lazy, or ungrateful. You’re likely just no longer willing to climb any mountain that’s put in front of you. That’s why the idea of a career change at 40 feels so loaded. It’s not about starting over for fun. It’s about refusing to keep investing energy in something that no longer gives anything meaningful back.
For me, the hardest part has been realising that I can’t unsee what I now know. I can feel when I’m merely performing competence instead of actually growing. I can sense when I’m busy but not stretched. And once that awareness arrives, pretending becomes exhausting.
This is where the career ladder narrative starts to fall apart, at least in my mind.
I don’t think careers are always meant to move neatly upwards. I think some of us are wired differently. The metaphor that makes more sense to me now is map-making. When I look back at my own path, I don’t see chaos. I see information. Each move taught me something specific: this environment drains me; this role only uses part of my brain; this place made me resilient but didn’t give me a craft.
To me, that doesn’t feel like failure. It feels like data.
And I’m starting to think that what looks like a downward slope from the outside might actually be a necessary pause. A valley where you stop long enough to ask better questions.
The Real Ache Isn’t About Status. It’s About Craft
Here’s the truth I keep circling, no matter how much I try to intellectualise it. For me, this isn’t about wanting a better title. It’s about wanting a craft.
When I’m honest with myself, I can see that I’ve spent years unconsciously auditioning different toolkits. Corporate roles gave me structure and analysis. Living abroad sharpened my adaptability. Writing gave me language and perspective. At the time, these moves felt scattered. Now, I can see that I was searching for tools that felt like an extension of who I am. Tools I could one day master well enough to say, without hesitation, this is what I do.
This also explains where my envy actually sits. It isn’t money or seniority. It’s clarity. I find myself admiring people who can point to their work and name it. The chef. The designer. The maker. The person whose skill is tangible. I don’t think I envy their success as much as I envy their relationship to what they do.
That’s why, in my view, so many conversations about a career change at 40 aren’t really about change at all. They’re about integration. About wanting all the experience you’ve accumulated to finally mean something coherent.
That realisation sharpened during a conversation I haven’t been able to shake.
I admitted to a colleague that I already felt burnt out. Not because the work is terrible, but because it doesn’t demand enough of me. Almost instinctively, my attention kept drifting to another department where the work is unmistakably a craft. Physical. Skilled. Demanding. Respected for what it produces, not how it sounds.
When the head of that department asked, “Are you sure you really want this life?”, my answer surprised me with how quickly it came. “I’m already in this life,” I said. “I might as well learn a new skill.”
That response came from a tired but very honest place. And when he said my husband must be proud of me, what stayed wasn’t the compliment. It was the recognition. He saw what I was reaching for.
Since then, thought has slowly started turning into action.
I’m still very much in the middle of this. Nothing is settled. But I’ve said out loud that I want to move into the kitchen and train as a chef. Not because it’s glamorous or sensible on paper. In fact, that’s part of what scares me. It’s because it’s the only place where I can imagine committing fully to a craft I’d be proud to stand behind.
I love food. I love making it. And in my opinion, taking something you love seriously isn’t reckless. It’s honest. For the first time in a long while, the discomfort feels purposeful, not draining.
What I’m Learning While Still in It
I don’t know where this leads. I’m not pretending to have the answer. But what I do know is this. Staying where I am, simply because it looks fine from the outside, no longer feels truthful.
If your career feels like it’s going sideways instead of up, I don’t think it automatically means you’ve failed. I think, at least sometimes, it means you’re finally paying attention. A career change at 40, as I’m experiencing it, isn’t about reinvention. It’s about choosing alignment over appearances.
I’m still living this moment. I don’t have a neat ending yet. But I no longer believe the sideways path is a mistake. For me, it feels like the necessary descent from a mountain I was never meant to climb. One that finally allows me to stand at the base of something that might actually be mine.
And honestly, I don’t think I’m the only one.
