From the course: Marci Alboher on Pursuing an Encore Career Instead of Retirement

Marci’s story

From the course: Marci Alboher on Pursuing an Encore Career Instead of Retirement

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Marci’s story

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- So early in my career, I was a lawyer. That was a really bad fit. I lasted about 10 years and not only did I think I wasn't doing work that helped the world, I thought I might have been doing work that harmed the world. So I had an early crisis of conscience and I went within and I tried to learn new things and I took adult education classes and I found mentors and I eventually found my way to something that had always interested me, which was writing and journalism and storytelling. And no surprise. I started writing about work and career changes because I had just went through it and I realized just how prevalent it was and how hard it was. So after years as a journalist, I wrote an early book on slash careers on people who have many identities, often at the same time, and eventually, I landed the gig of a lifetime. I wrote a blog and column for the New York Times called Shifting Careers. I was really proud. I'd really felt that I'd arrived. And I was, I thought, at the cutting edge. I was tweeting. I was early. All of those kinds of technologies. Yeah, and then, I got laid off. And here I was, a career expert, and I lost my biggest gig. So I went back and read all the job advice I'd given to other people who were getting laid off and I decided to follow it, which was to go out and ask for help. So what I did is I wrote about it for the New York Times. The Times allowed me to do this. And I wrote this post called Laid Off from my non-job. That post led me to my next job, which is working at Encore, which is all about thinking about how we, as a society, can help to create new options for this new lifestage of people who are aging with so much to give and offer. So that's how I got here today. It's really hard to know you're going to be okay until you've landed. But in high in sight, we can always trace the path and figure out why things happen. So I look at my job at Encore today where I help to run a small non-profit. I'm using all the skills from way back in my legal career. And I feel like, I want you to think about as well, what have you collected all the years? How are you going to be able to tie it all together? And how are you going to braid it into something that's really meaningful to you and to the world?

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