Sometimes you can pivot into a type of work that does not suit your nature.
As the "properties of materials" guy in my first "real" job, I was pretty comfortable but spent more time on the programming aspects of the company's measuring and real-time monitoring equipment. When the oil-and-gas industry went bust in about 1982 in New Orleans, my mother was already in a nursing home (Alzheimer's, at the time transitioning from phase 1 to phase 2). In 1984, my employer got bought out (typical corporate takeover) and I had no job. I couldn't leave Mom unattended so pivoted into the oil-and-gas surveying industry, which is where I learned entirely too much solid geometry for navigation purposes. Did a lot of work for one of those companies that support the seismic exploration industry in the Gulf of Mexico. That stayed in New Orleans even if the oil companies moved out. I didn't care for that - but I managed to learn what I needed. Then in 1987, Mom passed and I was free to do anything I wanted. I answered a blind ad and pivoted one more time - into the Navy contracting job that lasted 28 1/2 years. No chemistry at all, but plenty of computer work. All three of my jobs were based on being an analyst and problem solver, of being able to look at the big picture AND the small picture interchangeably. That part suited my nature quite well. But... there is always "the one that got away. "
When Mom was in the home and had progressed to stage 3 of Alzheimer's, I got a head-hunter call that damned near made me cry. They were looking for an analytical chemist (my PhD subject) comfortable with instrumental analysis by computer (my dissertation subject) and who understood a particular model of computer and operating system (the main system at my first real job). I was about a 95% fit - but the job was in St. Louis and I could not leave Mom alone. Too many horror stories about old people left to die in nursing homes, abandoned and forgotten, I guess, but I could not let that happen. Turning down the job was quick and easy. Living with the "what if" ruminations that followed? Not so easy.
In my case, the thing that DIDN'T suit my nature was abandoning my mother to live the nightmare of Alzheimer's alone and forgotten. It didn't matter that she had forgotten me. I stayed with that duty to family until it was done. OK, maybe I'm a bit masochistic in that aspect. But family was central to my life and I oversaw her care. No, wasn't pretty. But necessary.
