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I was recently laid off from my job as an analyst for a major steel company in the Philadelphia area. While I was given a generous severance package and told that an opportunity would exist for me once the recession abated, I tried to find the silver lining and decided that this ‘misfortune’ in actuality provided me with the opportunity to reevaluate my career goals, to do something that I could really enjoy on my schedule. Massage school offered the perfect opportunity to transition into a new career helping people de-stress and recover from accidents – real tangible output, far more gratifying than the weekly reports I published that may or may not have been read by the managers that assigned me to write them.

Beyond being more personally gratifying than my previous work, my new career in massage therapy offers a great deal more flexibility than my traditional 9 to 5. For one thing, I can now more or less set my own schedule as an independent massage therapist (after putting in some time at a local day spa). Beyond that, the demand for massage therapists by stressed individuals and the hospitality and medical industries globally makes it so that my skills are easily transferable to opportunities wherever they might arise, so it is possible for me to earn a living nearly anywhere. And as far as compensation is concerned, my new career as a massage therapist offers me higher hourly pay, north of $75/hour, without all the stress of my old job.

Massage school made it possible for me to make sweet lemonade from this recession’s lemons. I highly recommend that anyone looking for a career change investigate a career in massage if a change of pace, a pay raise,  greater flexibility, and the gratification of really helping people directly sounds appealing.