Giving up a corporate job for a traineeship

[Somuddled]

I've done my job for 11 years. Mostly enjoyed it but it takes WAY too much from me. I am a shell of the person I know I could be. I have nothing left each nigh and it needs to change. I have found a traineeship that I really want to do instead. So how the hell do I pitch this in the application form? I have 2 pages (so circa 1000 words) in which I need to address why I want the traineeship, why I'm looking for a full career change and to demonstrate why/how I meet their criteria.

Anyone else had a drastic career change? How did you land the new job you want?

I've just done it, after 20+ years doing something that I gradually became more and more disillusioned with.

Obviously much depends on the field you're looking to go into, but in my case I focused on the transferable skills I'd acquired in my career and any relevant experience, however vague. It helped that I had also started studying for a relevant qualification in my spare time, which demonstrated my commitment to the career change. As for the 'why', I (truthfully) said that the events of the last year or so had led me to evaluate a lot of things, including whether I wanted to be doing the job I was doing for the rest of my working life. I had considered the elements of my work that I enjoyed/was good at and how they could translate into a different field, then researched the options for getting into that career.

HTH. Good luck!

Oh thank you for the response. The what you have explained the 'why' brings out what have been tumbling round my head but not quite making sense when I try to articulate it. I'm working on the application today and think that for now I will ignore the word count, get all my thoughts and examples written out then work on sliming down. It's a horticulture traineeship I am going for which I think will be highly oversubscribed so really need to make my application shine.