Jan 8, 2026 | Uncategorized
What is your story?
As I have come to believe by now, when you truly take a fresh direction that fits you, it vibrates bit by bit into your life. Gives renewed energy in little moments. A sense of challenge. New adventure.
First, it bubbles up gently from an underlying recognition of what matters to you now. Even if you don’t have it wholly formed in words or vision. You sense it. It’s the little nugget you observe and note instead of ignore.
I’m learning*(see notes) to read comic strips through L.E. Mullin who publishes The Flight of the Condor each Sunday on Substack. He recently posted about his process: That’s how some stories begin, not just this one. You come up with a simple idea, and then you start adding elements that feel right for the atmosphere. And before you know it, you have a story.
Maybe in fact, that’s not so different than finding a fresh direction. You have the idea – and you simply go with it a while. See where the story takes you.
Now, I know you may tell me it is not such a logical or rational way to plan your career. I challenge you here, as I have myself: did your path go in a logical way so far? Did it open up exactly as you imagined when you were 20? When the horizon widened, did you always encounter the predicted landscape? Did your career story ever have a turning point?
I wish someone had described professional choices to me as an unfolding story, back when I started. Expect crossroads, forks and turning points as often as smooth sailing. When the best choice is not clear. Make it anyway. Take it as an adventure. Pay attention to the little moments telling you who you are.
With this in mind, I have also asked myself how many fresh directions a person can really handle?
Well. Lifetimes are getting longer and so I guess we will take more fresh directions than previously. We already see that in Baby Boomers as they retire: they feel well and are active – and often getting bored. Or they’re worried about financing their lives for a longer time than predicted. And so, they are still out exploring.
The rewards of new stories
What I wish for us all professionally is that at every age and life stage, you have the great pleasure of doing work that feels fulfilling. That it vibrates with the rest of your life as it evolves.
That someone around you recognizes the way you are doing it, what it contributes and how it shows your personality, your strengths. Including your eccentricity and occasional mistakes.
That your fresh directions honor your persistence and value you exactly for being who you are over a whole lifetime.
And that starts, in no small measure, with noticing an idea and having the curiosity – not to mention the courage – to follow it. Let’s see how this unfolds!
Notes
* Two languages I never thought I would learn: German and comic strip. 🙂 Thank you to L.E. Mullin. Deeply felt illustrations explained with a wry smile and more than a few surprises. I start to understand. (You can find my growing collection of visual storytellers on the Modern Careers Substack page titled Stuff on the side. )
Dec 17, 2025 | Uncategorized
Figuring out where to begin!
Here, for those of you who prefer reading to podcasts or video: a short article about ways to look at career renewal and change.
Andrew Kris of Borderless Executive Search wrote it for their newsletter based on the podcast interview we posted last week.
I found it quite on track and quick to read. Thank you, Andrew!
Dec 11, 2025 | Uncategorized
CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO
What to consider especially from mid- to late-career
by Jill Allemang and Andrew Kris, December 2025
I appreciate that a previous colleague and long-respected connection – Andrew Kris of Borderless Executive Search – invited me to join him in a podcast.
It gave me the chance to describe to you how I look at three career change phases. What we do in each phase. And points to consider depending on how you see your own goals, desires and options.
Our goal is that you get an idea out of listening that you can use right away. For example, are you considering all three phases separately instead of jumping over one or two?
If you have questions or inputs, please let us know!
Thank you for listening!
Dec 4, 2025 | Uncategorized
by Jill Allemang, December 2025
Thank you for visiting!
I assume you are either generally curious or have reason to consider your own career change.
This page gathers themes and ideas that I want to toss out there for you to consider.
How many of us truly knew when we started our professions where we would end up?
So far.
We likely could not imagine ahead the options that would present themselves. The choices we would face. The uncertainty and challenges. How our external environment, our lives, the economy and culture, would change.
Now we find SO MANY options – yet very few of them laid out in obvious roadmaps. Some that bring (at least perceived) risk. A few that simply surprise us.
It is up to us to find solutions.
That is why I am here. The timing for things to change is ripe. I like it when we can drive new ways of thinking!
Perhaps good to keep in mind: I share from the view of a leader who enjoys developing new business and people together. Who has a certain ability to see patterns in the external environment. With a lot of practice in facilitating to bring out ideas, actions and talents.
I am not a career, life or other coach, although have a couple of times worked with one.
My deep belief is that as experienced adults, the trick is to stay open, seek support when we need to get unstuck, yet keep making choices ourselves!
Oct 3, 2025 | Uncategorized
Five choices that can shape a transition
I write here about five choices that have shaped my own mid-career reinvention(s). Not the only choices one may face. Yet consistent enough for me that I now use this list as a reminder when facing a new transition.
Maybe some of them can be helpful for you, as well.
1. Motivated by bold courage and big dreams? Not always at the start. Courage sometimes follows reaching the bottom of something and realizing it is a choice of change or to give-up on yourself.
- Choice #1 Actually, my first pivotal choice was often to clearly decide to stop doing the things that were not working for me. Stop, full stop at what seemed like all costs at the time. And find a different way forward, no matter what.
- Perhaps here’s where the courage comes in. Or maybe it’s blind faith in yourself and life. Or it was more simple: I was too darned tired to know exactly how to change or what I wanted to change. In fact, I’d been too busy – even overwhelmed – in my old world to have looked openly for a new one. So. Call it a sabbatical, a break, a burn-out, quitting my job, being forced to an ending, as you will. It was time to simply stop.
2. Small steps, collected. The thing about making a big change is, ironically, that sometimes the best you can do is find the very small steps first.
- I knew I needed a plan, but didn’t yet have enough insight or clarity about my new direction. So I started saying every day, “Just do the next thing you see in front of you.” Sometimes that was a phone call or reading an article or brainstorming ideas in my journal. What might I want a sabbatical to look like? What did I know now, if anything, about my next career step? (I knew more than I originally thought – a lot was about better using my strengths and operating in a way that fit my values.)
- Choice #2. Many little steps proved cumulative in a big positive way. I learned to trust them.
3. Disappointment = when your best idea turns on you. Even when following an idea with high hopes an optimism, sometimes we are left with an option “ruled out,” but nothing yet “ruled in.” Are you lost in no-where-land forever?
- Choice #3. Adopted a “toughen-up kid” attitude when dealing with disappointment: accepted the frustration of still not knowing what to do when a good idea proved not so perfect. “Next!” I decided this process was necessary and productive in the long run, even though I didn’t always enjoy it. “Remember, take the next step in front of you!” No wallowing.
4. Floating to build stamina. I didn’t realize how long I would need to simply physically recover from the stress of decisions and life’s unexpected twists and turns
- Choice #4. Letting yourself float has its value. The best option often eventually evolved towards the end of a longer exploration, rarely at the beginning and surely not exactly what I ever predicted. Note: Even now, I often underestimate the time I need to “clear my head” when I’m tired. I should always take my own impatient estimate of time and multiply it by two! Until I physically rest, I cannot as effectively explore my options.
- Change experts also say that staying “in transition” has the benefit of keeping you open to creative options you will not consider once you have chosen a direction and path.
5. Allowing goals to follow understanding my emotional “non-negotiables” and positive wishes
- Choice #5. I accepted my emotions as a barometer of my professional dreams, not only of my personal life. Trusted them to recharge my creativity and inspiration for the long-term.
- Before my own mid-life career change, I tended to write goals the way we are taught in business. Simple, measurable like “Exercise three times a week.” “Read one book a month.” “Finally plant my garden with perennials.” With career change, I began writing more principle-based, qualitative goals that included emotion about what I would be willing to compromise and what not.
- I ended up with a list of what a My Great Career would look like to me. (I later turned this into one of the most popular exercises in Modern Careers, btw.)
At the bottom line of my professional changes, I have gained a great deal of confidence and faith in taking little steps. And thereby in my ability to sort out messes I felt I had made of my career and life (or that life had made of me).
The way to go forward is to choose. And choose again.
