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Illustration by Alex Deadman-Wylie
There’s a folder on my desktop called “Career (FinalFINAL2copy)” with 16 different resumes – each tailored to a completely different industry.
On Monday, I applied for a job at a non-profit. On Tuesday, I had a call with a-friend-of-a-friend at Netflix to learn about entertainment publicity.
By Wednesday, I was researching continuing education. Thursday, I was planning my third solo trip of the year. And Friday, I cried because someone on LinkedIn said they’d found their “dream job.” I’ve had eight different dreams this year.
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This is what your 20s are supposed to be, right? Trying things. Failing. Reinventing yourself. But no one talks about what it feels like to be so lost you start Googling “jobs that pay well but don’t require passion.”
In the last few years I’ve been a social media manager, a PR girl and a production assistant. I’ve worked in the fashion industry, the beauty industry, the non-profit sector and the film industry. I’ve considered a career in writing, film directing, teaching and psychology. I’ve looked into a pilot’s licence and a realtor’s licence. I’ve tried my hand at being an influencer, a blogger, a digital nomad, an entrepreneur, a freelance web designer… the list goes on.
Every step felt like a reaction – to boredom, to burnout, to the constant fear that I was spending too much time in the “wrong” lane.
In hindsight, I suppose it looked like throwing darts in the dark - hoping one of them would magically hit the bull’s eye labelled “purpose.” I said yes to everything. Social media manager for a medical aesthetics company? Sure. A gig in fashion PR? Why not. Starting a dropshipping business that I learned about on TikTok at 2 a.m.? Obviously.
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I never felt aimless. I was experimenting – I was genuinely passionate about everything that came my way. But the thing is, when you experiment this much, people start to think you’re flaky. Sometimes you start to think you’re flaky. In my journal, there are five separate pros and cons lists measuring different careers against one another. Each list was written after a breakdown, when my mind begged me to make a choice while not trusting any of the options – or rather, not trusting my abilities in any of these options. The phrase “jack of all trades, master of none” haunts me.
The options are endless, which is something that should have felt liberating but mostly, it felt like spinning in circles. Social media didn’t help. Actually, social media never helps. Everyone seems to have found their thing – while I sit here toggling between LinkedIn tabs, hoping I can belong somewhere long enough to build something real.
I remember telling my therapist that I was running out of answers to the “So, what are you doing now?” question. She told me “But you’re not doing nothing, you’re growing!” I looked her in the eye and said “That’s the most Gen Z response to unemployment that I’ve ever heard.”
While I can’t exactly put “growing as a human" on my resume, it took me a while to understand what she meant; trying everything wasn’t a failure of commitment – it was a process of elimination. Every pro and con list and every 2 a.m. existential spiral taught me something: about the environments I want to work in, the kind of people I admire and the work-life balance I was aiming for. Even if I didn’t stay, every career opportunity shaped me and showed me what I want and don’t want in a workplace.
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The real change began to happen when I started to question what I enjoy versus what I’m good at. The reality is, not every hobby or interest needs to be monetized. Social media makes it easy to convince ourselves that we need to capitalize on all of our passions but choosing one thing doesn’t mean abandoning the rest. It means turning all those other interests into hobbies and living a well-rounded life. If you want to change your mind? Change it.
Moving in life is a gift. Every single step will open new doors and eventually, you will look back and see that it all made sense.
So what am I doing now? Well, that folder on my desktop is still there and my resume is still tweaked and tailored for every different job I apply for. But for now, I have a little more clarity on what I want, and if I change my mind, at least I won’t beat myself up over it. Who knows, maybe I’ll stick to this writing thing.
Khadijah Ghaffar lives in Paris, Ont.