The Case for Next-Door Career Paths
It's safe to say that this is a very weird time for work. I will spare you my overall and ongoing rants about capitalism and the sociology of work, and instead focus on now and how much it… sucks. There are different flavors of work throughout history, but this current American version is very hard to wrangle and very hard to feel (or actually be) secure in. Just a few examples of the current confusion:
Until very recently, government and higher education jobs were considered secure and low-risk.
Regardless of your personal feelings or excitement about AI, it is rocking the norms of many industries and causing a lot of uncertainty and shifts in approaches and expectations of expertise for particular roles.
Tariffs and other economic uncertainties are causing even the larger "stable" businesses to hold off on projects and spending, and that is causing stress and layoffs in the smaller businesses that provide services and support to those companies.
All of this is causing many people I speak to to wonder if their chosen career is even going to continue to exist in any fashion. They are exploring other career paths, not because they are eager to get away from theirs, but because they feel the path is crumbling below their feet and is unsustainable. When that happens, the immediate and understandable reaction is to consider wildly different paths—industries and jobs that you are barely qualified for or that require a completely new education.
I am here to encourage a different mindset, if I may: the paths really close to yours.
A good friend of mine has been a graphic designer for 20 years and has worked her way up the rungs from intern to Creative Director to VP throughout it all. She has worked in stationery, luxury aviation, and lifestyle clothing. As she looks around herself, she sees very little opportunity, and the ones that are available value things she doesn't (metrics, influencer culture, etc.) and still don't pay as well as she was expecting, and needs, at this stage of life. As we sat on a couch while our kids played together (with limited tears—win!), she shared that she's considering going back to school to become a nurse or even an HVAC technician. The logic: these are things that feel recession-proof! She doesn't really have an interest in either of these directions or in going back to school; she loves her career and just also wants security.
Rather than making that huge leap, here are some parallel paths she could consider, ones that share skillsets or value the qualities of a creative director: Real estate staging or interior styling; Litigation graphics specialist (creating visuals for courtroom presentations, which is surprisingly well-paid); Or shifting back towards luxury brands and working in high-net-worth client services.
An example of a successful next-door path: someone I know has worked across writing, content, marketing, and business development for 30 years. For the last decade, she couldn't find anything that felt both fulfilling and stable, and she was exhausted and defeated by the search. She was considering a full jump to interior design, which would have required classes to build her confidence and credentials. Instead, someone who knew the owner of an interior design company suggested her for a role as a Design Studio Manager. It turned out to be a perfect fit: her diverse background is genuinely valued, she gets to be surrounded by the creative work she loves, and she's back in an office with great colleagues. She didn't have to start over. She just had to look next door.
My graphic designer friend hasn't made any decisions yet. She's still sitting with the weight of it all — the fear, the frustration, the grief of watching something she built her identity around become less viable. But I'm hoping she'll look sideways before she looks all the way across. The skills she's spent 20 years honing don't disappear just because the industry that valued them is contracting. They just need a new home.
If you're in a similar place—staring down a career that feels unstable and wondering if the only answer is to start completely over—I'd encourage you to pause before you enroll in that certification program or apply to that totally unrelated field. Look at what's right next to you. What industries value the thing you're already good at? What roles need your exact skillset but call it something different?
The next-door path isn't settling. It's strategic. And it might get you where you want to go a lot faster than starting from scratch.
So: what's a field adjacent to yours that you've never seriously considered?
