How Do You Leave The Job That Built Your Identity?

Ask a man who he is, and he'll tell you what he does.

He can't help it. "I'm in sales." "I'm a teacher." "I run the site." For the best part of twenty years, I said "I'm an actor", usually someone squinting at me and asking, “where do I recognise you from?”

It's the quickest, simplest way to be known. It tells everyone where you stand, your place in the world, and it's proof you're a fully functioning member of society.

Which is lovely, right up until the day you decide it's a poor fit.

Is this it?

For three years I drove home the same way. Same road. Radio off. Frustrating silence. Same questions going round. Is this it? And if this IS it, what's next?

The money mattered. As did the security. Failing in public mattered a great deal, given how public my job was. Those were the reasons I'd give friends when they questioned why I was still in a job I was clearly undervalued in.

The real one was more personal. If I wasn't the actor, who was I?

On a long-running show, someone else decides what you say, what happens to you, and whether you're still in it next year. You hand over your lines first. Then your story. Then, slowly, your value. Give that away for long enough and you forget it was ever yours

Two ways to lose yourself

Researchers asked over two hundred retired professional ice hockey players about life after the game. Among the ones who'd ended up depressed, two stories kept coming up.

Some never really left, and years later they still saw themselves as the player. Same stories, same measuring stick, same dressing room, except the dressing room had long gone. The researchers called it identity gripping.

Others went the opposite way. They kept their distance from who they'd been and threw themselves at becoming someone new. Identity flight.

Opposite reactions. Same place.

A related study found that men who struggle to put feelings into words tie themselves more tightly to the role. Of course they do. If nobody ever taught you to say how you feel, the job does the talking for you. "How are you?" "Busy, mate."

What the job was really holding up

Here's what I think both groups had in common.

A job gives you far more than a title. It tells you when to get up. Where to be. Who you'll see. What to do next. And ultimately what counts as a good day. It's scaffolding, and most of us have leaned on it for so long we've forgotten it's there.

So when the job goes, the scaffolding comes down overnight. Mornings have no shape. The week has no edges. A man in that position will tell you he's lost his identity. Look a bit closer and the first thing to go was his structure.

Picture a man who's spent twenty-five years in an industry he drifted into. The early starts, the gym before work, the long days; the job built all of it. Then the job goes, however it goes, and all of it goes with it. So the phone screen fills the gap. Twenty minutes a day becomes four hours, and he starts wondering what’s wrong with him. Nothing is wrong with him. His days have just lost their entire shape.

Gripping is clinging to the old scaffolding. Flight is jumping without scaffolding or a parachute. Either way, nothing's holding you up.

Which makes the answer to the title simpler than it sounds. Build your own structure before you leave, so the job's can come down without taking you with it, leaving you to float down comfortably.

Before I left

I'd love to tell you I had a grand plan, but I didn't. I had a morning and an evening.

Mornings; silence, journaling, breathwork, fresh air, water, stretching. No phone for the first hour. That hour gave me the clarity to face days that were about to be full of new things, that I had no idea I could accomplish.

Evenings; I protected them like my life depended on them, because in a way, it did. No alcohol. No food for two hours before bed. Reading, herbal tea, no caffeine, no screens, a cool room, an eye mask. All of it for one thing; a proper night's sleep.

I know how that list sounds. Cliche. Overused. Basic. Like every self help guru on the internet telling you to jump into an ice bath (fuck. that). Ignore the details. Your version might be a walk and a sensible bedtime. The point is who owns it. The job had no say in it, so leaving the job couldn't take it away.

And I started the next thing early. Herminia Ibarra at London Business School has spent years studying people who change careers mid-life, and she puts it plainly: "doing comes first, knowing second." You don't work out who you are and then act. You act, and find out.

I'd launched Protocol and started writing long before I left Hollyoaks. You don't wake up a writer. You write until you are one.

When I left

Once I'd gone, I broke my days down to the finest detail. What I'd be working on, and when. Every. Single. Day. hour by hour. Minute by minute.

“Would you like to come for a pint tonight, James?”

“Nope. I’ve got reading to do until seven, and a seminar on outreach at seven thirty.”

I took motivation out of the equation completely. Motivation is a mood, and I wasn't going to build a new life on a mood, so instead I kept embarrassingly small promises, every day, until I had a library of evidence that said I am someone I can trust.

So when I finally left, I just went. I wasn't lost. I wasn't worried. I didn't once think about going back, and I've barely given it a second thought since. The clarity meant I could turn straight towards the next thing and get on with it.

The sociologist Helen Ebaugh interviewed 185 people who'd left roles that defined them. Ex-police, ex-doctors, retirees. She was one herself, having left life as a Catholic nun. What she found is that you never completely stop being the old thing. You become an ex of it, and the ex carries something forward.

I'm an ex-actor. I always will be. I kept the work ethic and the nerve it takes to stand in front of a room and speak. I left behind the part that let someone else decide what I was worth.

Protocol

• Build one piece of structure the job doesn't own. A morning hour, a bedtime, a daily walk. Small enough to keep on your worst day.
• Start the next version before you need it. One evening a week. One conversation with someone already doing the thing you're curious about. One small experiment. Every one is evidence.
• Plan your first week out before you leave. Down to the hour. A week with no edges is where men go missing.
• Find a room where nobody knows your job title. Research on retired athletes keeps finding that men who belong to more than one group cope far better when a career ends. For a lot of us, work is the social life. Sort that while you're still employed.

But if you feel unfulfilled, trapped, bored out of your mind, and you’re counting down to the weekend before Monday’s even started, take that shit seriously. It’s data. Use it.

Build your own scaffolding first. Then you can let the old one come down.

Take care

-James x