I'm 32 years old and I don't know what I want to do when I grow up, Part 5

This one's about pipe dreams.

Things I (and sometimes Andrew) wish we could do if we had the time or money.

First, there's the pretty obvious: I want to be a writer. Okay, I guess in practice I AM a writer. I write almost everyday, but I want to be a writer in credentials (does that make sense?) too. I would like to see books I've written available in print or e-book. I would like to earn enough income from them that I don't have to work full-time (that might be a tall order as advances and royalties aren't large). It might be nice to receive the occasional piece of fan mail.

Then there's the baking-related pipe dreams.

Opening my own bakery. In some ways, baking for a living is extremely appealing. I'm a morning person anyway, and I'd have a reason to make all those deserts I see in my (now defunct) Google Reader subscriptions. As I said last week, I'm particularly proud of my breads.

A variant on the bakery I've been musing about recently is the Pain a la Panier idea I threw out several weeks ago. Instead of actually having a shop I could sell my product in a street vendor set up--out of the paniers of my bicycle. Of course, in Edmonton I'd have a somewhat limited selling season, and Andrew doesn't think I could carry enough on my bike to make any money.

Whether I could make any money from a bakery business at all is questionable. I don't have much in the way of business sense; I don't have any notion as to how much I could sell my stuff for; and everyone thinks they're a baker these days. Really, have you been to a local farmer's market recently? How many stalls of baked goods are there? Lots? Yeah. How many of them do I think produce goods better than my own? None.

Finally, there's the B&B pipe dream.

This is where Andrew comes in. This is more of a retirement idea, one that is only half-joke when we talk about it. We'd love to find a for-sale B&B in the Niagara-on-the-Lake region and take it over. As a retirement gig, we'd only run it from March to October, then travel for the winter. Again, I could bake to my heart's content for the second part of the 'B' and we've even toyed with the idea that we could offer a dinner option on certain nights of the week. There's something very appealing about this, especially if we could take over an already existing B&B. We'll see, maybe one day.

"For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."
~Steve Jobs

Ciao

I'm 32 years old and I don't know what I want to do when I grow up, Part 4

The next logical step in my discussion of jobs might be to take a look at what I like to do/what I'm good at. Although to be honest, I don't know how this will transpire into ideas of what I want to do when I grow up. At any rate, here it goes. Maybe something will come to me as I type...

Kitchen related activities: cooking and baking pretty much any thing. I love putting together complicated meals, trying new cooking techniques, new ethnic styles of cuisine, everything. I also love to bake bread, cakes, muffins, squares, whatever. I'm particularly proud of my breads. I've been doing sourdough for several years and have got my method down pat. I tried a new rye bread this past weekend--divine!

Writing, of course. I'm mostly a long story writer, although I've done a few short stories in the past. Obviously I blog and tweet, although I haven't figured out a good niche to focus on. My biggest downfall is that my command of grammar can be questionable, and my editor-eyes are only half-powered when I'm looking over my own work.

Knitting and the occasional craft project. Most of my non-writing creative energy gets focused into knitting, although I've never felt compelled to create my own patterns. I'm pretty good with complex patterns for sweaters, scarves, mitts, whatever, although I'm pretty new with colour patterns. I don't really sew anymore, although if I had the time and patience it might be nice to get back into.

Aerial skills. So I'm never going to be in Cirque du Soleil (not sure I'd really want to anyway), but I love learning, practicing, and performing on the silks and rope. It's something about the combination of strength, dexterity and grace required that appeals to me; that and I love being twenty feet up in the air and going for a huge slack drop.

Okay, so those are some things I like to do, but what about more bankable skills, things that will help me land a job?

Well...I am the office cake lady. If someone's leaving/there's a special event, I'm often called on to bring something in. Writing and good communication skills are also pretty important for most jobs, but what else?

I know my way around most biomedical databases (Medline, Embase, CENTRAL, CINAHL, etc.), which means if you need literature on a medical topic, I can probably help you out. In more every day terms, I also have pretty good Google-fu. However, don't confuse the term 'Librarian' with 'Search Engine'. My dominant Darcy-Pants gene will probably rear it's head and I will glare at anyone who asks me something for which the most basic Internet search will return appropriate answers.

I'm pretty good with most of the standard citation management software such as Reference Manager, EndNote and RefWorks. I know how to use the various grouping/folder features, make output style filters, and integrate them with Word. However, if there's an actual problem with the software, I can't help you. Also, don't confuse 'Librarian' (at least this one) with 'Tech Support.'

What else? I mean, is this my resume or something? Sure, I can spout off a series of standardize remarks about my critical thinking and analytic skills, ability to work with minimal supervision, my project management skills, etc., but that isn't really the point, is it?

I'm supposed to be reflecting on what I'm good at and what I like to do in order to help me make some job-based decisions, and all I can say thus far is what I like to do (and what I'm reasonably good at) are my hobbies.

So what's the point? What have I learned (Charlie Brown)?

That I, like so many others, would rather live the high-life, have fun, and not work at all.

I do, however, live on planet earth, and am well aware that I can't just have fun all the time without an income to help support Andrew and me.

I think I'm back at square one.

At the end of the semester I had 27 study partners, 8 Mead journals filled with recipes and a D average—so I dropped out. I just figured if I was going to make the world a better place I’d do it with cookies." ~Ana Pascal, Stranger Than Fiction

Ciao

I'm 32 years old and I don't know what I want to do when I grow up, Part 3

Let me be clear, I don't hate my job.

In fact, I have a pretty decent job, and having had some fairly awful ones, I think I have the authority to know that some of the alternatives are like.

I'm paid well, I have friendly co-workers, no one's trying to stab me in the back, and working at the University has several perks (like a gym, pool, public transit covered between main stops, plus other financial benefits).

So what's the problem?

Well, it's repetitive, cycles through highs and lows (in terms of amount of work to do), and doesn't have a lot of outlets for creativity.

Some of you might still be thinking, so what's the problem?

I find the repetition, the cycles, the lack of creativity stressful and demeaning on my psyche. It makes me tired even when I haven't had a particularly busy day, and zaps my motivation for writing once I get home. I can usually force myself to write, but often not until after I've wasted a chunk of time working myself up to the task. Then I stop earlier than I might like because I just can't press on until bed time.

This wasn't always an issue. Several years ago, when I'd just started my job and I was only an RA, I could get in a full three hours of writing most nights. Now I'm taking nights off every few days it seems and it's not as if I come back feeling more rested.

I totter back and forth on whether or not I need a new job. As I said, it's really not so bad, but it's not really a great fit for me either.

Also, I don't know what would suit me better. A 'real' librarian job, one where I actually work in a library and talked to people? Except having to talk and deal with people all day would probably be just as tiring. I like the idea of doing something in the social media/transmedia arena, except I have no idea how to get into it, especially in Edmonton. Plus I don't have any educational/work background in social media except I'm enthusiastic. And writing isn't a career path one can easily live upon--especially when one's spouse is still a grad student.

Where does this all leave me? No where closer to where I want to be, just as confused and uncertain as a kid graduating high school and heading to university or collage. Maybe that's how everyone feels. Maybe most people pick their job based on what's available, convenient, easy, or not as bad as the alternative, but considering how much time we spend at our jobs, shouldn't we expect more?

“Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.”
~Drew Carey

Ciao

I'm 32 years old and I don't know what I want to do when I grow up, Part 2

I was going to continue on my 'work' series of posts with an explanation of what I do now, then I thought I might want to describe what I've done in the past to put some perspective on things. I've had a number of different jobs and surprisingly I remember most of them; therefore, before I move forward, I'm going to go back.

1) I sorted the mail at the Embro post office every day after school. This job may not have been legit, but it's too late for that. I started sometime late in Grade 8, and kept it up for two years.

2) I was a gas station attendant at one of the full-serve Essos in Woodstock. The shifts were primarily on weekends and it helped pay for my first year in University, but that's about all I can say for it. I didn't really get along with many of the people I worked with, it sucked in the winter (cold and slushy), and it was hot the summer.

3) The summer after high school was my first stint as a factory worker. My dad got me a job in the factory of the company he worked for. It was hot and loud and boring, but it paid and it meant I didn't have to sink into debt in my first year away from home.

4) After my failed year of biology at the University of Waterloo I had an empty bank account, and returned to the company my dad worked for but, instead of the factory I went into the office. I answered phones and did some other secretarial sort of things, but that ended half way through the summer as I was only filling in for someone on medical leave. Then I went to work in the office of a trucking company in Woodstock, which was even less exciting then the first half of my summer. The only bonus there was that I could sometimes take my lunch down at the Woodstock cow where one of my friends worked.

5) I spent two summers in a foundry that made brake routers. That job really sucked (even hotter and louder than the first factory), but it paid shockingly well for what I did--often standing and watching routers pass by on a conveyor belt. I also got my most interesting scar from this job (in a place I can't show anyone) from a stray fleck of molten iron.

6) The last summer before I graduated with my mostly useless nursing degree I worked as a personal support worker in a nursing home. I've often commented that due to this job, I'll have to change the diapers of more than one child to overbalance the ratio of adult to infant diapers I've changed in my life. 'Nuff said.

7) After graduating from nursing I took on a variety of small jobs such as officer worker (back in my dad's office), retail employee, waitress, and theatre usher. None of these were particularly meaningful, although I suppose none of them were terrible either.

8) Finally, I came to work at my current place of employ, first as research assistant and now as a librarian, but I'll get to that.

That's it. Those are the jobs I've had in my life. I tend to stay in one place for a while, a combination of laziness and loyalty, I suppose.

"You'll be old and you never lived, and you kind of feel silly to lie down and die and to never have lived, to have been a job chaser and never have lived."
~Gertrude Stein

Ciao

I'm 32 years old and I don't know what I want to do when I grow up, Part 1

Okay. I won't actually be 32 until April.

And I guess I know what I want to do when I grow up, what I don't know is what I want to do to in order to pay the bills as I continue to age.

What I want to do is write (If this comes as a shock, you've probably never read my blog before, and you probably don't know me at all, in which case...please, read my blog. If you're an agent or editor, and aren't a figment of my imagination, please contact me, I have manuscripts to sell). The problem with writing of course, is that unless your JK Rowling, or Neil Gaiman, or Margaret Atwood, or some other notable figure, you probably can't make a living off your work.

The other problem is, I like having clean, safe housing, a healthy bank account, RRSPs, health benefits, insurance, etc.

If I could do without the latter I might be able to indulge/humor myself by working some quirky part time job that pays little, but give me lots of time to write. But I can't. My father was an accountant. Apparently my parents paid off their first house in 4 years, the second (much larger) in 12 years, and they haven't even begun to dip into my Dad's RRSP, even though he retired...3, 4 years ago? Therefore, I have a few grains of financial responsibility deeply seeded inside me, and my desire for financial stability supersedes the desire to have unlimited writing time.

As of late, with Andrew nearing the completion of his PhD, I've been thinking more about what I actually want to do for work. I've yet to come up with a clear answer. So, interspersed with my posts on discussing my character flaws, I will also investigate work. What I want to do, what I could do, and maybe what I will do.

In the meantime I will float something (without further explanation): Pain a la Panier.

“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
~Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Ciao,