{"id":2177938,"date":"2026-10-03T18:49:50","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T15:49:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2177938"},"modified":"2026-10-03T18:49:50","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T15:49:50","slug":"breaking-up-with-the-dream-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2177938","title":{"rendered":"Breaking Up With The Dream Job"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(The Art Of The Pivot)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Breaking Up With The Dream Job<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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The hard road to \u201csuccess\u201d sometimes means a reframe. Here\u2019s how some of today\u2019s most go-getting women conquered a career pivot, and ended up on top of a whole new game. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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by Faran Krentcil<\/a><\/address>\n
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\"Rethinking<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Like buying a tiny Khaite clutch and ghosting a finance bro, crying on the street is a rite of passage for every ambitious city girl.<\/p>\n

So when Jazzi McGilbert found herself choking on her tears just outside the Miu Miu boutique in SoHo, she wasn\u2019t too worried \u2014 at least at first.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the beauty of New York,\u201d says McGilbert, then a fashion editor and stylist. \u201cNo one really acknowledges you crying on the street. Chances are, they have also cried, especially if they work in fashion or media. Really, any of the \u2018dream jobs\u2019 from movies that eventually turn into something much more complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGilbert represents one of the 35% of women in their 30s who have reckoned with their \u201cdream jobs\u201d and realized they wanted to wake up. (That number comes from a McKinsey study<\/a> \u2014 but group chats and vent sessions at wine bars worldwide suggest the number is way higher.) How are these women making life work without working in the jobs they always wanted? And can you ever really give up the girl you wanted to be?<\/p>\n

Social media is jammed with women trying to figure out these answers in real time.<\/p>\n

Look at the designer Batsheva Hay, who worked for a decade as a high-powered corporate lawyer before finally realizing her dress designs were worth creating. Today, she counts Christina Ricci, Celine Dion, and Sarah Jessica Parker as clients. Then there\u2019s Jenny Jackson, whose years as a book agent made her reckon with the fact that she\u2019d always truly <\/em>wanted to be an author. Using the knowledge she\u2019d learned coaching first-time authors, she created her debut book, The House on Pineapple Street, <\/em>in 2024; it <\/em>became a steady best-seller. Ava DuVernay famously taught herself how to direct in her 30s while doing PR for the Spy Kids <\/em>franchise.<\/p>\n

As for McGilbert, she answered that question in her own way \u2014 but it took a minute for her reframe to come into focus with the same sharp beauty as the girls in her fashion shoots.<\/p>\n

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A talented image-maker with an endearing smile and a knack for making everyone feel welcome on-set, McGilbert steadily climbed the media ranks from eager intern to capable assistant, in-the-know stylist, and finally, to editor at a few of her dream publications. She sat front row at shows next to idols whose pictures hung on her teenage bedroom walls, picked out denim for pop stars, and glided through the iron gates of celebrity clubhouses like The Box and Boom Boom Room because she was dating the DJ.<\/p>\n

But access to this \u201cdream life\u201d wasn\u2019t free \u2014 even if the endless PR freebies spilling out of her gifted Marc Jacobs bag were. She left her long-term boyfriend and a tight-knit crew of best friends back in LA, quietly dealt with a medical scare on nights and weekends, and eventually felt like despite her many wins, there was an unspoken misalignment in her current life and her destiny.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fashion industry wasn\u2019t ever going to love me back, for a variety of reasons,\u201d says McGilbert. \u201cSo I got to the point where I could keep forcing my way in and feeling out of place, or I could go back home and be with friends and family who loved me\u2026not some version of success sold to me\u2026 I really felt that cost adding up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then McGilbert\u2019s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She packed up the Chlo\u00e9 boots and Marni dresses in her Brooklyn apartment, flew home, and slept on her mom\u2019s couch. \u201cIt\u2019s insane feeling like a success and failure at the same time,\u201d she sighs. \u201cFor a little while, I did not know who I was outside of fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Reckoning<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Jazzi\u2019s experience was singular. But it was also an example of \u201cbroken ladder syndrome,\u201d a phenomenon coined by Harvard Business School<\/a> researchers that highlights the extraordinary number of women in their 30s and 40s who devote decades to reaching the top of their industry \u2014 then begin to worry their \u201csuccess\u201d is leading to a shaky, scary future instead of a great new height.<\/p>\n

Sarah Lewitinn remembers a similar reckoning, but hers happened at the historic Wiltern theater in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was seeing a band I really loved,\u201d says the former rock journalist turned record label executive, who was given her own imprint by Universal Music at just 25 years old. \u201cAnd I looked up at them and realized, I couldn\u2019t even hear the music. I was so checked out.\u201d The next day, Lewitinn stopped accepting the free backstage passes and VIP wristbands that arrived on her desk with the speed and frequency of a daily lunch order at Sweetgreen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually heard myself saying, \u2018I hate going to live music,\u2019\u201d says Lewitinn, who was once so devoted to hyping new bands that she turned her small apartment into a secret concert venue that was shut down by neighborhood police. \u201cThat\u2019s when I realized something was very wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the first time in her life, Lewitinn preferred driving in silence down the Los Angeles freeway instead of cranking music from her thousands of Spotify playlists. She began to think of discovering new bands as \u201cexhausting and boring\u201d even though it had once electrified her soul with the force of a Hendrix riff. \u201cI thought, \u2018Is this depression?\u2019\u201d Lewitinn says. \u201cI mean, I was just so bummed out. It was like a part of my being<\/em> [was] turned off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like McGilbert, Lewitinn was reckoning with the death of a parent \u2014 in this case, her father Marc, an Egyptian immigrant who settled in New Jersey before succumbing to COVID in 2022. But she also cites the changing nature of the music business itself as part of her malaise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is that everything is so corporate now, and authentic discovery is harder. Community is harder. And I\u2019d worked so hard, poured everything into this, and then, you know, robots are deciding what people should listen to.\u201d Lewitinn also cites the rising difficulty artists face in getting paid, even when their song clips rack up zillions of TikTok plays. \u201cIt\u2019s disheartening,\u201d Lewitinn says, \u201cwhen you believe in people as artists, and they can\u2019t get basic support to make their work, even though everyone wants their work.\u201d<\/p>\n

The loss of faith in the industry that had essentially raised her was a giant psychic blow to Lewitinn, who felt \u201cso, so tired\u201d that she found herself hiding out at home instead of rocking up to dance floors and secret shows. \u201cI could not have run fast enough from my former industry,\u201d she said. \u201cBut then it\u2019s like, \u2018what now?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pivot<\/strong><\/h2>\n

What now <\/em>is a question that slams against all ambitious women, whether we\u2019re facing burnout in a once-cool career, navigating a layoff in the middle of today\u2019s economic chaos, or frantically trying to upskill during tech panic.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the answer is as simple as finding a better job in the same field. When my friend Melissa (her middle name) left her post at the top of a major lifestyle brand, she did so in part because her boss was actually kind of a monster who enjoyed, among other things, locking her senior staff in their office\u2019s stairwell, then asking why they weren\u2019t \u201cfit\u201d enough to climb the 10 stories up to the building\u2019s next open entrance.<\/p>\n

Melissa did the usual stuff \u2014 network tapping, job board perusing, jumping on an email chain when someone announced their departure \u2014 and landed a new gig at a beauty brand within six months of her last emergency exit exile. \u201cI feel like I got very lucky,\u201d she told me about her swift-ish landing. \u201cBut I also took a small salary hit. Although I\u2019m saving a lot of money because I don\u2019t need therapy every five seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Sarah Lewitinn, she realized that her grand plan echoed what the author Jenny Blake said in her 2016 book, Pivot: <\/em>\u201cWhat you can plan is too small for you to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, Lewitinn turned down a pair of tickets to a Hollywood Bowl concert and ended up on her couch in West Hollywood. She didn\u2019t know that her husband, the chef Daniel Patterson, had invited friends over to plot a new restaurant concept \u2014 one that Lewitinn herself would end up helping to pioneer.<\/p>\n

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