It seems like everyone I know is in the middle of a career transition. Or they’re contemplating one, or they’ve completed one. I don’t know if this is my age group (I turned thirty this year), or the time of year, or trying to be creative in the middle of a recession, but it’s a reality that can’t be ignored.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be taking a look at a handful of queer friends and acquaintances and exploring how they landed in their careers. A gay firefighter, a lesbian CEO of a startup, a gay interior designer, a transgendered community activist, a lesbian newspaper editor, and a closeted gay Navajo artist: what do they all have in common? How did their choices bring them to where they are today?

Risky Business in a Slow Economy: The Interior Designer

The small house next door has been on the market for a long time, at least since last summer. A few weeks ago the For Sale sign came down, and landscaping and patio construction began.

I finally met the new neighbors today, on my way to the laundromat. They’re a couple in their late thirties or early forties, with a little Shih Tzu dog. John pinged my gaydar immediately. (I probably pinged his too, especially since I’d just returned from the hairdresser with a new super-short haircut.) John told me he’d worked at a local retailer for over twenty years as a facilities manager, and last summer he was told his position was being eliminated. John’s partner Terry had a similar story. He worked at a large, prominent bank for eight years, and was also laid off suddenly, with no warning. The two of them are moving into the little house next door because they wanted to downsize.

Terry decided to take advantage of the forced change. He’s switched careers to become a real estate agent, and is now slowly building a clientele. John has started a side business dressing homes, preparing them for sale. It’s a little stereotypical — who hasn’t heard of the gay interior decorator? — but It seems like their two careers work well together. They’re taking risks by running their own businesses in a sluggish economy, but the truth is that their new, risky businesses are probably equally as stable as their old jobs.

I’m hearing this story over and over. Our friends are forced from their comfortable, safe corporate jobs out into the great unknown. And instead of trying to find a new job in a similar career with a similar company, risking the same layoffs and unpleasant surprises, they are forging new paths for themselves and starting their own small businesses.

In a struggling economy, it makes sense that many of us are feeling disaffected with corporate life. People of my generation have been trying to emulate our baby boomer parents by settling comfortably into a single career and working our way up the corporate ladder, but it’s just not working. It’s taking a lot longer than we’d hoped, and those cushy cubicle jobs simply don’t provide the security or upward mobility we thought they did. Besides, all of the baby boomers have seniority, and aren’t leaving anytime soon.

It seems risky to begin new enterprises when the future is so uncertain, but this is actually the perfect time. Large corporations aren’t hiring. We all need to make money, so a network of business-to-business services are springing up. We’re all networking with each other, running our own businesses, paving our own ways. We’re selling houses to each other and offering our computer skills to each other. We’re bartering for massage and graphic design. We’re doing each other’s laundry, and tending each other’s gardens.

Many of us are like John and Terry. After being kicked out of the nest, we have to make different choices about our homes, our careers, and our priorities. And we’re finding that the faux security of 9-to-5dom isn’t what we were led to believe. I know this is certainly true for me.

How about you? Is your job secure? Have you found ways to create stability when no one knows who will be laid off next week?

Jan Hanseth juggles her multiple careers (freelance web developer, dancer, and massage therapy student) in Portland, Maine. She writes occasionally about living and eating in Maine’s largest city at Blueberries and Lobster.