Could you thrive on less?
Part-time work as a gateway to career change
Ambition, success, more money, a bigger house, a flashier car or a luxury holiday are desires unwittingly embedded in many of us and yet when we pause to question them, some clarity can arrive. There’s a societal expectation that if you are of employable age and fit and healthy, then you should be working full-time. But what if there’s a different way?
During the past year, so much positive change has happened for me because I’ve allowed myself time to build a rhythm and a way of being that allows me to be me.
A good portion of that I owe to a part-time job.
I’ve come to understand that it has been my gateway to exploring other work, whilst allowing me to earn a partial regular income each month. It has enabled me to launch an interior design business, host a podcast series, write regularly and be open and available to fulfilling and interesting creative opportunities that come my way.
For those of you contemplating or, frankly, needing a career change, part-time work might be an option for you too. Today’s piece delves a little deeper into the benefits, the challenges and the stigmas associated with working part time. I’m grateful to
, , and who all kindly agreed to chat to me about their experiences of working part-time, so that I could write this piece from a broader perspective than just my own.Returning to where it started
In many respects, I have come full circle. When I qualified as a teacher back in 2007, my first teaching job was part-time. This was because I was simultaneously studying for a part-time master’s degree. I couldn’t afford to do the postgraduate study full-time so this seemed like a good balance. I taught for 2.5 days per week for 3 years whilst completing an MMus in Composition. It was tough doing both at the same time, but it taught me many valuable skills without having to choose whether I wanted to be a composer or a teacher.
After the degree I continued to work part-time as a teacher though increased my hours to 4 days per week whilst I attempted to be a composer for a fifth of the week. In my mid-twenties, the freelance composer life didn’t work for me. I have many thoughts on why this was and it is perhaps a subject for another post on another day, but suffice to say that the allure of a full-time salary eventually got me. After a few years I was teaching full-time and taking on extra responsibilities left, right and centre. By the time I left my second teaching job, I had acquired several spurious job titles as well as teacher of music.
Aged 28 or 29, I had the ambition bug and had (sadly) left behind some of the creative sparks I once had for composing. Instead, I wanted to be head of department so I applied for jobs and after a while got one of them. That’s where I ended up for 9 years, gradually being worn down by the weight of the responsibility, the workplace politics, the management of people.
That was until early 2023 when enough was enough and I handed in my notice. I’ve written about this journey previously, available here if you’d like to read more:
I knew I wanted to set up an interior design business. It had been in my mind for a good while and steadily I had been forming a plan as to how I could made it happen. They key to that turned out to be getting a part-time teaching job.