The Pandemic Wrecked Millions of Careers. These 6 People Built New Ones.

Jane Watiri Taylor was working as a nurse on the Travis County Jail in Austin, Texas, when the pandemic hit. She referred to as it probably the most scary time she may bear in mind in 10 years of nursing. Not solely was she fearful about catching the virus throughout her shifts, however some inmates took out their anger and frustration on her.

“One time this individual actually tried to spit on me,” she remembered. “They mentioned, ‘I’ve Covid, and I’m going to offer it to you.’ They spit on my scrubs; fortunately it by no means bought on my face.”

For Ms. Watiri Taylor, 54, like so many different well being care employees, “the burnout was actual.”

“I like taking good care of individuals. However at that time, I used to be like, ‘I believe I’m going to alter jobs and begin taking good care of crops,’” she mentioned. “You recognize, crops are by no means going to name me names, or insult or abuse me. I actually wanted to get out of that job.”

In July 2021, she left to pursue a dream she’d had since her childhood in Kenya: to turn into a farmer.

She had been rising vegetables and fruit in her yard since 2015. To learn to run her personal farming enterprise, she signed up for a category by Farmshare Austin, a nonprofit. She subleased a small piece of land in Lexington, Texas, to develop vegetables and fruit on a bigger scale. She now sells her produce at native farmers’ markets.

“I wish to nurture individuals; that’s why I bought into nursing,” she mentioned. “With farming, you might be nonetheless nurturing individuals, however otherwise. It’s actually satisfying whenever you develop stuff and are in a position to know that finally it will assist make certain somebody has bought meals on the desk and it will nourish their our bodies. And to me, that’s sufficient.”

Farming is way much less predictable than nursing, and the monetary instability worries her. Nonetheless, she says she is way happier than when she was working as a nurse.

“Cash is necessary,” she mentioned. “However I need to have the ability to get up each morning enthusiastic about what I’m doing. And that’s how I really feel about farming.”

“It was time for me to take a step again.”

Adam Simon