The COVID legacy: How some broke free from a career path they may have resented

Events change things. They change our minds. Events that take us away from our normal patterns of living can have a profound effect on our thinking about our career.

In February 2020, we are commuting to work, bantering with our colleagues at work, perhaps dreaming of a corner office. We might be whizzing off to the local airport, with a rural, interstate or international business flight in the offing.

They know the routine, try not to get behind the Perrottet-sized family when going through airport security. At the other end, if in a hotel, we are 90 per cent certain it will be bathroom to right or left, wardrobe opposite. A bed and a long desk with drawers under, and a TV on the wall.

And then it all stops in March, and we cannot leave our homes for fear of catching an infectious disease that kills, and then out of fear of the fines or being dobbed in. Things change. We bunker down, with varying degrees of success. Some thrive, some hate it.

Then after a few false starts, we are once more free. Those with the means to do so, head overseas to reunite with families to attend delayed weddings, or simply to enjoy travel once more.

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But more has changed. We are not quite the same person. We have had time to think, to work in different ways, to be apart from the daily grind. The COVID pandemic may have reminded some, perhaps tragically, of the fragility of life. We may feel we lost three years. We are not the same as we once were, and we look at work and career differently.

While some simply picked up where they left off, and carried on regardless, content they were on the right path, others found themselves disconnected and less sure about the old path and sought to make changes. Others saw it as an opportunity to break free from a path they had long resented.

If ever there was a good excuse to make a big change in career it was the pandemic. Sure enough people are relocating, moving interstate, into the regions. They are moving industries, or setting up small businesses.