Nel Mezzo Del Cammin di Nostra Vita/ Midway Along the Journey of Life’

A Character Who Makes a Dramatic Life Change to Pursue a Goal They’ve Secretly Always Wanted

Nel Mezzo Del Cammin di Nostra Vita/ Midway Along the Journey of Life’

Sarah was a middle aged woman and she was in a rut. She had attended a meditation retreat and she had been struck by the quotation from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy which was about waking up ‘midway along the journey of life’ and finding yourself in a dark wood, because the speaker had ‘wandered from the straight path’. As she was driving home to her apartment in Belfast, she thought about how much she dreaded going to work the next day. She worked in a local Health Trust and she was basically a clerical officer, doing routine clerical work. She had made a few queries about furthering her career but was told that she would need to study for an accountancy qualification.

So the years rolled by, punctuated by the usual office rituals of Secret Santa at Christmas, apple tarts at Halloween, ‘leaving-dos’ and so forth. There was even an office Lotto club. Sometimes there would be a staff dinner or a meal to celebrate an upcoming wedding. And of course everyone grumbled about the annual pay offer and threatened to go on strike. And of course everyone in the lower grades complained about the management. They accused them of lacking in communication skills and overall mismanagement. Everyone dreamed of getting a promotion or being seconded to a more challenging post. And more years would have rolled by had it not been for the advice a senior colleague gave Sarah one day. She was not renowned for her people skills and the advice was delivered in a forthright manner:

‘Sarah’ she said, ‘You have been asking me about the possibility of promotion in finance and I am going to be straight with you. There are no top jobs unless you have a degree or a qualification in accountancy. I know in your heart of hearts you want a career but this will always be a job. If you want a career, you will have to go back to university and resume your academic studies.’

Sarah realised this was the advice she need and she was ready to act upon it. She had a degree in English and History and basically she always harboured a dream of going back to university and do a Master’s in English Literature and then maybe she would be able to do a teaching qualification.

She knew the office routines were sapping her creativity. She had read a short story at university called, ‘Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street’, written by Herman Melville and it occurred to her that she was becoming like the protagonist Bartleby, a new employee in a law firm who refuses to do any more work. When asked to carry out a straightforward proofreading task, he replies, ‘I would prefer not to’.  Sarah did not want to become a Bartley figure, preferring not to do her work but she was heading in that direction.

She scanned the jobs section in The Belfast Telegraph and she saw a job in the voluntary sector which caught her attention. It involved setting up an advocacy service in a mental health charity. It was not a full-time job and there was only two years funding for the post.

She knew she was throwing caution to the wind because her post in the Trust was permanent and had a good pension scheme.

She applied for the post and she was delighted to find out that she had been shortlisted. After her interview she stepped out on to the pavement in Belfast City Centre and looked up at the sky. Other people were also looking up at the sky as well, for although it was a summer’s day, the sky was beginning to grow dark. It was the solar eclipse which was due to take place on 11^th August, 1999 between 8.30am and 10.30 am. Sarah checked her watch and saw that is was just coming up to 10.30am. She thought it was a sign from the universe that she would get the job. She thought about the Druids performing rituals in Stonehenge, celebrating the eclipse, and birds heading back to their nests, and horses in Serbia becoming agitated and hippopotamuses growing confused and cows thinking it was milking time. Everything was topsy-turvy. If the sun could be eclipsed by the moon, then surely she could manage to change careers. She felt the alignment was right and the odds would be in her favour. The heavens had sent a sign and she was prepared to jump ship. That’s what it felt like.

Getting the job was in a sense the easy part. Resigning from her post in the Trust, proved to be more challenging. Some of her colleagues advised her not to cash in the pension she had accumulated over the years and her father was heard to say, ‘she’s leaving a job with a pension’. One of her colleagues said ‘you’ll be back’.

After working a month’s notice, Sarah, who had taken part in dozens of leaving-dos, was suddenly taking part in her own ‘leaving-do’ and to be honest it was a bit surreal. She remembered walking outside her office in College Street and she noticed a few posters in the window which said ‘Good Luck, Sarah’. She saw this as another sign. One of her colleague’s husband worked in a local newspaper and he had drawn up the posters.

She had crossed the Rubicon and there would be no turning back. She knew there would be challenges ahead and that she was taking a gamble and that she would miss her colleagues and her routines and rituals. In fact, she had no idea what her new job would be like and she did not even know exactly what it entailed and if she would be successful in establishing this new service. She had been so fired up with the prospect of escaping from a boring job that she had not really figured out how she would set up a new service and she did not know if she would be successful. Her excitement in getting the post was replaced with a fear of the unknown and she knew it would take all her power and resources to reinvent herself.