Midlife career pivot

[Skillz123]

Has anyone pivoted? Changed career? How'd you do it? Was it worth it? Here's my situation.....

41f, married, 3 children. Live in the southwest. Work 30 hours a week would like to work less. Planning consultant hybrid private sector. £45k and potential bonus of £2-3k. No management responsibilities. 15 years experience undergrad and masters degrees.

I really dislike planning. I find it boring. Its not particularly rewarding. But I have no idea what else to do. I need to really earn the same (more would be nice).

I am perimenopausal and on hrt. This is relevant as my friend says this is midlife crisis and my hormones. Says I should focus on life outside of work and just see it as a means to an end. I reckon I could do that if I worked 3 days a week. But I dont!

Id like to do something more rewarding. Potentially some creativity but im not good at art or anything creative in that sense. Flexibility is really important to me and ive recently changed to this job and its turned out as unfortunately less flexible than my last.

I dont know what im asking really. Is this a midlife crisis? Shall I just get on with it and find things outside of work to fill the rewarding void?ę

£45k for 30 hours a week is pretty good going. Retraining wouldn’t get you that same level for quite a while in most industries. I think you’re just sick of work no matter what it is tbh.

Ex planner here too!! Was in regeneration so pivoted to project management. A lot of transferable skills between the two jobs I think. Project management training is fairly minimal.

I earn £54k now with small amount of bonus, so earning more than my planning job but with a worse pension (used to be local gov) so I think it works out about the same.

I think so too actually! So maybe rethinking our budgets and reducing my hours slightly may be beneficial.

Thanks for your reply. I did 10 years in local government and looking back on it i probably enjoyed that more although life was different (less children different area of the country).

What do you project manage?? Im so interested to hear more?

I am a PM in an engineering company, my husband is in the same sector so that helped me learn a lot of the lingo.

I work closely with the engineering lead on the projects. I’m responsible for making sure the team delivers what they said they would, removing blockers for the team and help them align their priorities and timeframe so they don’t get in each others way. I also have budgetary responsibility, so my grant funding background helped massively as I can do a great cash flow.