I have written and deleted this post several times, trying not to ramble and give to much or too little info.

I hate my job (massage), not to mention I won't be able to do it forever as it is tough on the joints. I want to retrain and do something else, but I have absolutely no idea what. I am restricted in most jobs by my location and language inabilities.

Ideally I want to be able to work from home, or anywhere in the world so I can travel more. In a sector that has high demand, so I'm not constantly hunting for work.

I have no special skills particularly (but I'm not stupid, I have a 1st BSc) , languages are not great so I want to work in English. And I'm not an arty creative type. I need to start from scratch, but I'm just totally lost.

If I wasn't restricted by language and location and love to work with animals in some form, but it's not really a practical option.

I'm driving myself around the bend trying to come up with something and getting nowhere. Has anybody got any ideas?? Something I can train in from scratch but that won't take decades and will actually provide an income. Help!!

(or am I a lost cause??)

what would you say your secret skills are? What do you enjoy doing?

Secret skills?? I’m good at time management, organisation, planning ahead, seeing problems before they happen etc. I used to work in aviation and I loved it (apart from the crap hours) but I live no where near an airport and it’s not the industry to be in right now either.

What are the reasons your current career no longer suits? It will help to see what else is there... Aside of massage being extremely physically fatiguing.

Perhaps the ideal 'new' job now would be something that does not even exist yet or a replacement for something that collapsed during the pandemic.

The sort of questions you need to ask are:

What are people doing now that they didn't do pre-covid? (and that they are likely to continue doing?)

What will people want to do, and continue doing, once COVID is over?

I don't have the answers.

You could also substitute the word COVID for Brexit and there may be some new opportunities there. I know Switzerland is neither the U.K. or the EU but there may be some 'work from home' opportunity.

"Are you quarantined and need your dog walked?" would be something that people would appreciate these days, I think. You don't need no good grammar for that and can build up a base of clients relatively fast. So, one could look for some kind of dog psychology/pet care course?

A few reasons. It’s slowly ruining my hands and if someone is demanding more pressure it’s very difficult to say “sorry I just can’t”. To be honest it’s also pretty boring. It’s also very unpredictable, you never know how much work you will have, bookings can come in very last minute which makes it very hard to have any kind of life outside work.

Is it just me, or do other people look at job listings online and not have a clue what they even are lists of jobs and I couldn’t tell you what the hell they might entail.

I was kind of wondering about trying for something specific, like website building just for example, rather than setting up as a dog walker. I want something that will bring regular work for ok money.

If you want to know what jobs are, you could have a browse through the site https://www.berufsberatung.ch

I know it because child #1 is currently looking for an apprenticeship, but it covers a range of stuff and has quite good descriptions of careers etc.

Maybe something will give you inspiration.

Could you retrain as an alternative therapist - something like acupuncture or counsellor.
As you have a degree you might be able to do a lot of the training online for counselling - and for practical one to one sessions to obtain the qualifications you might be able to travel to a large town to help English speakers.

Could you train to do massage on animals? That way you could use your knowledge of massage whilst also working with animals, I shouldn’t think the skills needed would be that different, and you wouldn’t have to use as much pressure on say a dog.

I've looked into animal massage and animal physio before. 2 things that stopped me going further with it. 1. I can't imagine there is that much demand for it (unless you are loaded you are not going to pay for dog massages - I believe there is quite a demand for racehorses). 2. There is still a bit of a need to be very good in the local language to interact with your clients owners and vet.

Without knowing real basics like your age, actual language level and what specific education you have with the BSC it's hard for people to give good or meaningful advice about alternative careers.

There is indeed a lot of demand - but often wiithin the context of a veterinary practice. Animal theraputic massage is part of physical therapy... and as you can imagine, there is an education path.

Our veterinary physical therapist seems to be fully booked well in advance, I assume he does rather well. In Switzerland pet owners, from what I have seen at three clinics in my area, seem to view veterinary physical therapy favorably, and seem to be quite willing to pay for it.

Our veterinary physical therapist is also - or perhaps I should say was first - a human physical therapist. His hobby was his dogs - he is well known in the dog sports world, competed at the elite level. His interest in animal physical therapy grew out of a natural conjunction of his hobby and his profession.

Could you see a similar symbiosis between your professional education and hobby interests?

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Beyond animal physical therapy, which I would guess is more regulated, there are also 'alternative' massage therapies such as TTouch and Bowen.

TTouch training n Switzerland, just one example:
https://tellington-ttouch.ch/index.p...und-ausbildung

You could train in TTouch in English. There are many courses in the UK, although I don't know if remote learning is possible.
For instance:
https://www.ttouchtraining.co.uk
https://www.ttouchtraining.co.uk/tra...a-practitioner

The question remains, though - could you make a living from non-veterinary care context massage?

I honestly don't know. I use TTouch massage techniques frequently (despite not subscribing to the esoteric concept behind it) but after few sessions with a practitioner I learned the touches myself, and do TTouch massage with my mutts, which I might guess many dog owners do.

Which is not to say you can't make a living, as there seem to be a good number of practitioners here. For instance, I could see a TTouch practitioner joining forces with a dog trainer or behaviorist. But you'd need to research potential before shelling out on a course.

I don't know much about Bowen therapy or other alternative animal massage techniques, other than that they exist, and there are practitioners here. Again, something to research.


Just a few thoughts...

Ever thought about horses? There are a few horse farms around and I see ads of all kinds in the local paper and coop Message board. From "let's share a horse", to "looking for someone to walk my horse on Fridays". Horses are high maintenance, so quite probably the customers are above average income. Better than dogs from the perspective of an steady income. But....I'm almost sure some kind of formation and certification is needed to work with horses in CH. Anyone knows?

As second thought, you live in Valais. The tourist sector is bit dead for now, but it will recover sooner than later. If you manage the basics of local language (French or Deutsch, which part of VS?), you can be the face of any business to tourists.

I'd really love to vastly improve my German and French to give myself more options, but I go round in circles with that too.

1. I have social anxiety, which makes foreign languages a nightmare to start with.
2. I'd love to do a really intensive course, but I can't afford to give up work or the course fees for long intensive courses.
3. I try to learn on my own, get frustrated at lack of progress and give up.

I'd say I'm prob roughly B1 German and A1/2 French (Spoken/Reading).

Having a "I'm a loser" kinda of day

Maybe something like logistics. Big hubs like Geneva or Zurich. Surely english would be the dominant language too.

If you have good organizational skills, have you considered becoming a virtual assistant? With corporate offices being phased out for home offices, it could be a good time to get into it.

The problem could be paying Swiss rates for a virtual service.

A friend of mine used to be a physiotherapist, but had to stop because she developed a condition in her tendons and the doctor said massaging was too strenuous and she needed to stop.

Fortunately she was able to claim IV any they retrained her as a nutritional advisor / therapist. She said she hated the concept of having to go back to school and sit through courses and take tests. But once she was done with it, she was actually happy about the change.