Tag Archives: Career shifts

How You’ll Know When It’s Time to Let Go

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Ego, irritation and exhaustion are the watchwords of this story — the emotional and physical habits that work against us as we age. TLDR is the cheeky abbreviation for “too long, didn’t read” (yes, I learned that from a Millennial), so if you’re stopping here, try to guard against:

  • Self-importance (the conviction that only you know what’s best).
  • Sanctimoniousness (feeling thwarted when others counter what you believe to be right).
  • Overdoing it (because you believe you can control the outcome).

I want to tamp down these tendencies in the autumn of my life. Quitting work at age 68 may help me do that.


Image by freepik

I have talked about retirement so often in this blog that my friends and family just dismiss me: You love being busy. You’ll never quit working. The first statement is true. The second has changed, which I never anticipated during my decades as a careerist.

At the end of August, after months of hand-wringing and internal debate, I finally left the last of my part-time jobs. I embraced the word “retirement,” even as I struggle still with what it means.

Getting there has been a journey:

  • Three years ago, in September 2022, I resigned from full-time employment after I turned 65 and archly declared that no one should view me as “retired,” given the two part-time positions I’d taken on.
  • Six months later, in March 2023, I described those jobs as a “glidepath” toward retirement and interviewed two peers who were taking similar approaches.
  • A year into the gig work, in September 2023, I described how part-time professional work pulls more on your intellect and energies than a job you leave behind once the shift is over.
  • In July 2024, more than a year before official retirement, I wrote about the decision to draw Social Security at age 67. It was another step closer to the inevitable. And toward acceptance.

Finally, this past February, I gave six months’ notice and developed systems that would make the transition easier for my successor. Here’s how I reconciled my instinctive desire to keep working — despite the privilege of financial security — with the reality that it was time to move on.

The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.

Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Jung

Once ego takes over

My final job was as managing editor of Streets.mn, an online publication that advocates for “people-centered communities”: bike and pedestrian infrastructure, public transportation, vibrant public spaces and more abundant housing throughout Minnesota. The quarter-time position was the only paid job within the volunteer-based organization. I worked with board members who had full-time responsibilities elsewhere, with unpaid contributors who had little professional writing experience, and with copy editors who were donating their time and had varying degrees of commitment to learning the fine points of AP Style.

The work was rewarding and challenging — a big stretch for a part-time gig, with the responsibility of publishing a new piece of well-reported content every weekday. The board would warn me from time to time that donations were down and cut my hours for several months at the end of 2024. And yet I remained motivated and immensely proud of the work, getting to my computer every workday before 6 a.m. to ensure we met the 7 a.m. publication deadline.

Dedication morphed into ownership as I passed the three-year mark. I thought less about what “we” were accomplishing, together, with this reputable publication and more about how “I” had transformed it into a well-oiled machine.

My successor approaches the role differently and is contributing her own strengths. In the four weeks since I left, I have ceased to check the website every morning and note the copy-editing changes I would have made. (A friend challenged me to stop; just stop.) Time to separate, to let go and, for my own peace of mind, to abandon the notion that my way is the only and obvious answer.

Endings are a little overrated. When the ending is here, it’s here, and you just move forward.

WNBA all-star Diana Taurasi, who retired in 2025 at age 42

Restless, irritable and discontent

My insider joke, more relevant a year ago, was that I didn’t want to become the Joe Biden of Streets.mn — the oldest person in the room at board meetings, writers’ gatherings and readers’ happy hours; the leader who couldn’t accept that she was aging out.

Collaborating with younger people helps keep me mentally fresh. I’ve recognized that since I turned 60. Still, as my quit date got closer, little irritants kept popping up that I could only attribute to a generational divide:

  • A Macalester College student who wrote for us occasionally texted me after our coffee meeting to suggest I use AI editing to reduce my workload — apparently unaware of all the years of experience and mentorship it required for me to get good at this.
  • A guest on a Streets.mn podcast episode declared that “all cops suck” in Minneapolis, and the host agreed, as though it’s a verified fact. I don’t believe that to be true, nor is it my experience with police. But maybe those are the uninformed musings of an older white woman.
  • Though I often told writers that an editor’s job is “to make you look good,” I grew weary of polishing stories that lacked focus or solid reporting. I wondered whether my obsession with word choice, fact-checking and well-crafted sentences was outdated in an era when fewer people read books — or read, period — and when TikTok users see “celebrities” and “influencers” as a legitimate source of news.

A former college professor, a woman whose work was her calling, told me she knew it was time to retire when she got tired of dealing with students. Exactly.

We do best when we learn how to have both work and rest in our lives.

Women Rowing North (2019), by Mary Pipher

The body’s wisdom

I kept notes during the first month of my retirement to track how this life change feels physically and emotionally. I was sick the first few days: stomach problems, little appetite, a newfound love of naps. After consulting WebMD and freaking out at the possibilities, I came to recognize that my malady was pure exhaustion.

I am grateful every day that I enjoy such good health at 68. I can’t imagine life without biking, walking, yoga classes, physical mobility. Yes, these are the “golden years.” But how long can they last?

Two weeks ago, my cousin had to cancel our plans to meet at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, and I had an entire day unscheduled. I cooked and listened to podcasts, took a bath and read, baked spoonbread in two pans and shared one with a neighbor who has suffered a broken collarbone. I never allow myself this luxury of time.

“When transitions happen and identities change, one of our great challenges is to find a new sense of meaning and purpose in our lives,” writes psychologist Mary Pipher in the 2019 book Women Rowing North, which is written for the phase of life I’m entering.

Image by freepik

This is my chance, finally, to put family first. To cultivate and honor friendships, the intentional family that has stood by me. To spend time with my first grandchild and be present for my grown sons. To retire not only from a career but from achievement and doing, from broadcasting accomplishments on LinkedIn, from filling up my calendar because it helps me feel important.

Time is fleeting. That’s a reality for everyone, but only in old age do you know it to be true.

Executive Volunteers Bring Professional Moxie to Nonprofits

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Back in 2006, when she was 52 years old, financial services executive Paula Meyer read a book that changed her life — and launched her into founding a nonprofit organization that is changing the world, one child at a time.

The book, Just Enough by Harvard University professors Laura Nash and Howard Stevenson, posits that the most balanced people among successful “high achievers” integrate four aspects of their lives: happiness, achievement, significance and legacy.

Meyer was happy and had achieved much in her career; her family and volunteer work added significance to her life. But legacy, “leaving something that endures after you are gone,” was not yet part of her personal and professional portfolio.

Then she went to Africa.Ngong-Road-Logo

There, in Nairobi, Kenya, Meyer saw such a depth of poverty and need — children orphaned because of AIDS, struggling to survive — that she was inspired to co-found Friends of Ngong Road along with Peter Ndungu, who was orphaned at age 11 in the slums of Nairobi.

The nonprofit organization, now eight years old, seeks to transform the lives of boys and girls equally through education, daily nutrition, caseworker support and an arts-and-crafts summer camp that gets the children out of subsistence living in tin shacks.

Its organizational structure and strong financials — a seven-member board of directors overseeing a $650,000 annual budget and a nearly million-dollar endowment fund — speak to Meyer’s current work as a board member for corporations such as Mutual of Omaha and her past executive positions at Piper Jaffray, Ameriprise Financial and SECURA Insurance.

Executive influence

The success of Friends of Ngong Road is told in Kenya through the obviously improved lives of the 350 smiling, well-nourished, neatly uniformed schoolchildren that the organization serves each year. Here in the United States, the story is about creative middle-aged executives following Meyer’s lead, putting their resources to greater use and transforming their own lives through social service.

Paula MeyerMeyer jokes that, at 60, she is past middle age. In fact, her decision to uproot her life — to leave a high-paying career at age 52 and donate her skills not toward charity but sustainable change — puts her squarely amid the trend to re-examine priorities at midlife, and, ultimately, to give back.

  • Management consultant and former professor William Bridges describes it in his popular business book Transitions as “the shift from the question of how to the question of why.” A careerist naturally moves from wanting to “demonstrate competence” in her or his field to “being motivated to find personal meaning in the work and its results.”
  • The “working retirement revolution” examined in March 2014 by Merrill Lynch and Age Wave notes a pattern of “re-engagement” among young retirees like Meyer. Among the four types of working retirees — many “motivated by important non-financial reasons” — are “caring contributors,” people with financial means who “seek to give back to their community or worthwhile causes.” They make up the largest percentage of working retirees, the study found.

The Friends of Ngong Road board is made up of current and retired senior executives, men and women like former Piper Jaffray executive Karen Bohn, 61, who organizes up to 20 home-based fundraising events a year.

“A lot of people in this 50- to 70-year-old cohort are no longer working full time for pay,” says Meyer. “They have a lot of experience, and they want to use their gifts to make the world a better place. This is not licking envelopes; it’s meaningful work. Our board does the scut work, but we also shape strategy.”

Board member Keith Kale, a former marketing executive at Pillsbury, oversees the newsletter and informative website. Tom Gleason, a retired IBM executive and former Boy Scouts leader, organizes Friends of Ngong Road’s weeklong summer camps in Nairobi.

Meyer and Bohn are the chief development officers, using Gleason’s online relationship-management tool to track some 500 individual contributors and sponsors. They identify top prospects and divvy up calls among the board, which meets semi-monthly.

Crafting solutionsKaren Bohn

Bohn’s proudest achievement has been her “craft ladies” initiative, which yields about 5 percent of the organization’s annual revenue.

During a visit to Nairobi in 2009, she noticed two women who’d been waiting hours in line for free medical care. They were clutching ratty plastic bags — “the scourge of Africa,” Bohn says — out of which they pulled beautiful beaded bowls. Spotting opportunity, she and Meyer combined their Kenyan shillings and bought all of the bowls they could get their hands on.

Now, Bohn invests in about $10,000 worth of handcrafts every year and sells the bowls, jewelry and other colorful items for triple markup (“we’re shameless about it”) at the house parties she organizes. “These are our Girl Scouts cookies!” she declares.

The “craft ladies,” in turn, tithe 10 percent of their revenue back to Friends of Ngong Road. “It’s another example of something that I would not have thought of,” Meyer says. “Everyone on the board comes up with ideas. My approach is: ‘Feel free to add value!’”

Succession planning is becoming a priority. Only two of the seven board members are under age 50, and both Bohn and Meyer are realistic about the unpredictability that comes with age. The 18-hour one-way flight to Africa will become less palatable and physically less possible.

Meanwhile, as the board evaluates whether the nonprofit can be replicated in Bangladesh or India — and can become less volunteer-dependent in the United States — Meyer relishes working with creative professionals who have the means and the selflessness to offer children hope.

“It’s fun to create and work with great people,” she says, “but the most fun is going to Kenya and seeing the impact we have on children’s lives.”

Flexibility, Focus Ease Strain of Midlife Career Shifts

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Sarah Berger, 47, insists she wasn’t afraid when she got downsized from her director-level job in early September — even though she is single and solely responsible for her mortgage and other household expenses. Even though it’s her second career transition in four years.

Even though — as is often said of women on the other side of 40 — she isn’t getting any younger.

“It doesn’t pay to panic,” Berger explains. And here’s where age and experience served her: “I was feeling confident about what I’d achieved. I felt I had something to offer.

“As soon as I got laid off, literally driving home, I already was putting together my list of people to call,” she says.

Berger began with the women in her book club. “These are professional, well-connected women who believe in lifting up others. So I knew that if I called on them, they would use their network to help me.”

A fund-raising professional, she landed an even better position in mid-October — six weeks to the day after her layoff.

“The networking for me was key,” says Berger, the new director of resource development and communications at Neighborhood House, a nonprofit with a 117-year tradition of serving immigrants, refugees and low-income populations in the Twin Cities.

LinkedIn cartoon

Purposeful connections

This so-called “hidden job market” — in which a matrix of personal and professional connections opens doors — accounts for up to 80 percent of new hires, according to Forbes magazine.

That’s why Cathy McLane, 52, began rebuilding her network a year ago when she decided to ease herself out of a role as marketing and communications director at a prestigious private school in suburban Minneapolis. McLane had been there 14 years and recognizes now that she “had clearly stayed too long.”

She was out of practice in the discipline of connecting with professional peers — and out of step with the digital ways networking is now conducted. “I didn’t realize how deep I’d gotten in my little rut, my happy rut,” she says.

McLane activated her social media presence, which now includes 379 connections on LinkedIn and 578 followers on Twitter, with a handle — @CathyConnects — that describes where she wants her career to grow.

And, because no Tweet beats a face-to-face meeting, she started calling on people in similar roles at health care organizations and in higher education (including me, during my years at St. Catherine University). “People warned me that the level of job I want will come through knowing someone who knows the hiring manager,” McLane explains.

She was businesslike, professional and prepared in her informational interviews. And, without fail, she observed three practices:

  • Ask your business contact who else you should meet.
  • Write a timely and specific “thank you” note.
  • Purposefully stay in touch. “Part of networking should be giving back,” McLane says. “You want to add value. So if I find a good article or blog or website, I send that out.”

‘The age thing’

Six months after leaving her job, McLane has yet to land an equivalent career position. She’s got a long-term contract doing project management and internal communications for Cargill, which she hopes will become the “seed client” of the business she is launching: Cathy Connects LLC.

The glass ceiling she hit during her job search is less about gender than age. “People don’t always want 20 years of experience,” McLane says, because it calls up all sorts of speculations and suspicions:

  • Will you demand a higher salary?
  • Will you be digitally savvy?
  • Can you keep pace with the speed of change in today’s workforce?
  • Will you stay in a position for which you’re clearly “over-qualified”?

Consultant Sue Plaster, a former communications and HR executive who herself was laid off at age 50, says the economy and “the age thing” hit middle-aged men and women equally hard, though women likely pay a higher price for looking older. “The self-confidence aspects of the job search are really challenging,” she says.

And so, three pieces of advice for people in a midlife career transition — from three women who have been there:

  • Plaster: “Invest in a professional headshot for LinkedIn that portrays you in a favorable way — not a glamour shot but no selfies either.”
  • McLane: “Take space, not time,” she says, quoting Karen Himle, the recently named vice president of corporate communications at Thrivent Financial. Rather than mindlessly filling up your calendar, “slow down and take space to reorient: What’s important? What makes you happy?”
  • Berger: “I did not say no to a coffee date, ever. My goal was to make one contact a day. Those professional networks are really important.”

Lesson learned: “I have yet to meet one person who’s transitioned who hasn’t landed in a good place. It’s how you approach life, your attitude,” concludes Cathy McLane.