I didn't use to believe that those who go through multiple careers gave up their dream lives for another.
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I couldn't help but smile as I watched him talk about his brief experiences working at the teaching hospital,
“They used to call me doctor, and even till now, if I go to Makurdi I will be addressed as Doctor Stanley”.
I met Dr Stanley at Abuja some 5 years ago when my mom was first diagnosed with ulcer. She went to the healthcare center for check up and medication and he was the first doctor we met. I had never met any doctor so talkative. Several hours after the consultation, he asked for my contact and said he would call from time to time to check up on my mother, and that he did.
When we moved away from Abuja, I totally forgot about him until a couple of weeks ago when he called to tell me he was in Akwaibom state for a program.
“Isn't that the state you moved to? Let me see how big you've grown now!” He said when I tried to protest. Three days later, I was at Ibom Tropicana to meet with him.
It was there I met him gisting excitedly with some foreigners, telling them how he switched from being a doctor to being a marketer for a wellness company.
“If you look at it, it's almost the same thing. Just that this time around, I'm selling drugs to people, not just prescribing them”.
Doctor Stanley was one man I admired, his fervency could be perceived even from someone who was just meeting with him for the first time.
When he was finally done with speaking to them and convincing one of them to buy a multivitamin, he walked up to me. I could see his face radiating, as if he had finally found the job of his dreams.
When I asked why he quit working as a doctor, he said he felt caged on the job and wanted a career that would make him go out and meet with people more.
I learnt from the experience that no man was bound to a career. From the time a person is born, he or she would have one career path or the other that he would love to pursue and as time goes on, such desire may become overwhelmed by a completely different one.
I am a preacher of focus and diligence, but I am also a preacher of excellence. If a career path doesn't go well with someone or they are not doing very well at it, he or she is at liberty to switch at any time to another career path of his preference.
Now what I do not encourage is running two parallel career paths side by side. For instance, someone is managing a filling station and working as a fashion designer at the same time. I don't know if it is possible for such a person to give adequately the attention both businesses require but I strongly doubt it.
If being a businessman isn't working well for someone, I believe he or she should quit doing that and go ahead to do something else that his passion can drive him to be excellent at, or better still, he concentrates to put in the work and effort that would make his business grow the way he wants it to.
Again, there are various career paths that have branches or similar fields of interest. For instance, one can be a Web3 writer and eventually go into fiction writing. It's the same career, just that those paths are two different branches.
I personally prefer that people stick to one career path and even if they want to deviate, it should be within a similar field, not running two completely different jobs from two completely different fields at the same time.
If life happens and a person has to leave or forfeit the initial career path he was taking, then another career path can definitely be chased, but I don't encourage chasing both side by side because one of them will suffer.
Growing within a career is one of the things I encourage which is why I think people should choose career paths carefully and not jump into a particular area because people are rushing into it or because of pressure.
I have met a lot of people who regret the career paths they have chosen because it has either turned out to entail what they didn't plan for, become tiresome, or it has become boring.
For some other people, staying in just one career path would become less exciting for them so they deliberately choose to switch career paths after some time, for some others, they are curious for knowledge so they go ahead to study multiple courses.
I encourage everyone to go for what they want and what works for them but for me, I would rather stay in one career path, maybe branch a little within that same career but not switching career paths because I love to be single eyed.