Am I doomed to have no career?

[OwlInTheMoss]

Does anyone have any suggestions of what I could do to earn some money?! I feel pretty useless right now.

I am in my 40s with 2 kids. Ideally I need to work flexible, part time hours to fit around the family's needs including one child with ASD who often needs a lot of my time. Working from home would be perfect.

I work hard and am friendly and learn quickly. I like doing jobs that feel like they make a positive difference to the world in some way. I'm interested in plants and literature and art and people and making things.

I did well academically and I have a language degree from a good uni, but don't speak any language well enough to use for work.

Pre-kids I did support worker type roles, but these are too emotionally heavy for me now.
I did admin jobs as a student which was ok, though my knowledge is out of date.

The last few years I've been working as a gardener, which I absolutely love, but I've done something painful to my back, am currently off work, and I just don't know that this is going to be a suitable career option in the long term.

I don't need or want a high-flying career and DH earns enough to carry most of the financial load, but I definitely want to be contributing.

Feels like I am wafting about getting nowhere and constantly going back to the drawing board.

Could you set up as a garden designer? You could work from home and take on as much, or as little, as you wanted?

Civil service ? Wide list of potential departments. Some may interest you. Flexitime in lots of departments.

I was also going to suggest garden designer. I have a friend who does this and makes a good income. You do need to live somewhere where people have money to spend on garden designers though.

I would suggest you get a temp job in a University or your local council. Both those often have their own temp pools. I know both of these places in my local area offer flexible contracts with flexible hours - it is really common for people to temp a bit at either our uni or council - and you can try all sorts of things and see what fits.

Can you do a few (free) online courses, get your PC & admin skills up to date and set yourself up as a virtual assistant/PA?

I think your main issue will be that you are asking for rather a lot - WFH, part-time, flexible, with no admin, support or emotionally heavy roles.

Salesforce admin ? There was a great thread about returners into IT and some people quickly earning ££. Will see if I can find it.

You sound a lot like me op! I have been dreaming of becoming a gardener but also worry about how I’d fair long term. I’ve been looking at the civil service as suggested by a PP. I like nature and plants so I have been looking at natural England and Forestry commission, also the Environment agency. Jobs seem to be very flexible but also I’d feel like I’m doing something worthwhile. I think I’ll need to start fairly low down and work up but that’s fine for me, as like you dh main earner currently.

Garden design as per other suggestions. Planting schemes, advice, project management of installation: you could offer different levels of service, so not necessarily reliant on clients who need the full whack. I am also always willing to pay silly money for nice seeds. There’s also huge scope these days for virtual design – it’s getting really big in interiors, doing Zoom consults on everything from paint schemes to full house design, and I can’t see why gardens should be any different. People send you a rough diagram of garden, with north marked, you ask lots of questions about soil, light, budget, how much energy they’re willing to expend on maintenance, you design the planting scheme and recommendations. If I didn’t love gardening myself so much I’d definitely consider it, the same way I’d pay for a kitchen designer.

@IamSmarticus but isn't this what we all want? Or at least those with families and stuff that prioritise work.

I'm asking for the moon on a stick I know!

Being self-employed suits me at the moment as I manage my own workload and hours.

Garden designer - I've considered this, and I've worked alongside designers before so have a bit of insight. I do live near enough to an affluent area where I could find business. However I think it's a really different skill set to what I do, and it takes away the hands on plant bits I enjoy and adds in some very stressful things like managing contractors. Clients can be very demanding and a big project could take up a lot of my time - which is fine when things at home are settled but it often feels like things are lurching from one disaster to another!

Working from home suits many people, but it is not 'the easy option' and is not compatible with having sole care of a child, unless that child is old enough and mature enough to be left to her own devices during your working hours.

@Plantspalms if you do want to be a self-employed gardener I have found it remarkably easy to get into - I always have more work than I can take on, and have just used word of mouth to get jobs. It's honestly the best job I've ever had, I feel so sad the thought of not being able to continue.

Hopefully my back will recover soon but with my age now it's likely I'll suffer future injuries and issues.

I absolutely agree with this. Loads of temp admin jobs at the uni I work for. Loads of permanent admin jobs too, both part time and full time, all of which are hybrid roles so you can work from home part of the week.

Have a look at jobs.ac.uk

If you’re good at languages and like people, arts, gardens, literature, etc, basically a broad range of stuff, have you thought about freelance copywriting? You could try to specialise in garden stuff as an area of expertise. Avoid social media copywriting though as it’s a round-the-clock shitstorm and everyone I know is trying to get out of social media management and content creation.

FWIW I don’t think WFH, flexible, part-time, not-heavy is the moon on a stick – we’re all sold the lie of the 5-day 9-5 working week with overtime on top and working through lunch breaks as being the standard, but it’s just bollocks, the capitalist circus designed to keep us busy.

My kids are in secondary school full time I just need to be about for random and all too frequent crises, meetings with school etc. So if I'm working from home this is much easier to manage.

Obviously with gardening I'm not working from home, but I am self-employed and keep my hours low enough that I can rearrange them around family stuff.

Teacher. Horrible profession (I used to do it) but some people love it. Funding for language PGCEs is good (childcare covered, living costs funded etc) - I was a science teacher and my training paid more than my first year salary. Lots of holidays, you could be part-time, you can boost your income with tutoring. Pension is good, sick pay is good, parental leave is good - the benefits are good. You'd just have to not care too much about commitment to the school because that's what drags teachers to hell. You need to be thick-skinned with the students and parents too. Tonnes of people in their 40s do teaching and you don't need much of your language to be good for it (because the kids only need about three words by GCSE). Find a good school who understand you'll need to dash off in emergencies and you'll be grand.

If you wanted to incorporate the gardening/art/literature more then you could go into primary teaching. The funding to train isn't good but (I think it's still the case) that you can train for secondary and get the funding and then just work in primary once you qualify.

@RunnerBum I am absolutely not thick-skinned enough to be a teacher! But thank you. It is something I have thought about in the past.

Will have a look at uni admin and similar, thanks for those who suggested that. I do have a large university nearby. Copywriting could be a potential, though I suspect it could be one of those things that sounds great but turns out to be tricky to actually get into.

You sound like you would be a good carer

Do you want a career or a job?? My friend works in a lovely little cafe from 9:30 til 2. Perfect for school times! Anything like that nearby @OwlInTheMoss

@pigwood I probably would be a good carer, only all my caring energy is taken up by my family. I need something that's not emotionally demanding, or I will get overwhelmed and be no use to anyone.

@Cuddlywuddlies if I had no kids I'd like some kind of career that was engaging and fulfilling, but the reality is probably what I am looking for is a job! Kids will leave home at some stage and it'd be nice if I was then already working in something I enjoyed. But I'm open to either for now. They're bottom end of secondary so good few more years of them being dependent.

If you like working with kids, lots of primary schools have their own plots now, could you look into helping with one of those? Or a forest school worker? I haven’t a clue whether teachers just do this or if it’s a specialist from outside, but worth investigating. Your writing and spelling is good so copywriting/editing for a gardeners interest type publication also an option. And (bit left field here) I worked with someone once who grew and sold tiny edible flowers to fancy restaurants for extra cash. She was busy!

I think your main issue will be that you are asking for rather a lot - WFH, part-time, flexible, with no admin, support or emotionally heavy roles.

I agree.
Everyone wants this but it’s often not possible.
If these jobs do come up then they’re inundated with applicants.

I also think you’d be surprised how many WFH jobs aren’t flexible and you can’t just have an appointment and then catch up on work later.

I would keep looking for WFH jobs but I would also look for jobs out of the home, as these can often be much more flexible than WFH ones.

Also a lot of jobs don’t actually advertise as WFH roles, my dh is an engineer in pharmaceuticals and he works from 3 days or more a week. His job description said nothing about it. A lot of roles in his company can wfh.

Some jobs will likely tick off more of your wish list in reality than when advertised. Apply for a job that otherwise sounds like you could do it and be honest about what you're looking for at interview stage. You might be surprised how open they can be if you are the right candidate for them in other aspects.

Good luck!