I may have posted one of these months ago but I want to take another stab at it. Maybe it'll help or be therapeutic
Long story short... I am now without a job and I'm hunting for a new career that I will hopefully like. My old job was not too bad until new management came in and made things a living hell. The biggest problem aside from the worst kind of management was very average pay.
Right now I'm doing a bunch of different things to get me on the right track. I'm seeing a career counselor, I'm taking personality tests where I can find them, I'm reading career websites like wetfeet.com, and I'm trying to stay positive.
But right now... I'm feeling not too interested in anything really. I may have to get over some of my hang ups such as hating to get up early in the morning to sit in traffic for an hour to travel a distance that should take 15 minutes.
Anyone else in that situation or trying to think through about another job? I'm trying to find that niche where I'm happy and I just don't know where it is. If you're not in this situation... what do you do to make a living and do you like it or not?
Let me pose this to you...
Every job is infinitely interesting, rewarding mentally, and satisfying IF...IF you approach it as though a game you wish to win and be the absolute best at there is....Doesn't matter if digging ditches, flipping burgers, cleaning toilets, running a mill, or the CFO of a fortune 100.......Any bit of work can be very rewarding....Where we all get hung up is in serving another/others, and money.
That said.....NEVER make your hobby your livelyhood or that which you love will become a chore. Instead determine what you seem to naturally be good at...Like a gift, you just seem to know, it's always obvious to you. That will be a profession you'll be happy with.
Lastly, do not discount the ability to transfer any skill from one job to the next no matter how different. In the end what you know one place as in the lessons learned can be applied elsewhere to extreme degrees.
Best of luck!
K2
I love my job - I get to do cool things with people I like.
I'm an exhibit designer at a museum so that means I will be installing a new multimedia interactive one day, then the next working with graphic artists and scientists to tell interesting stories, then video editing, web page making, picture hanging, model building....
Flexible hours. Work at home is an option sometimes. Lots of vacation since I've built up a lot of years of service.
But. the. pay. sucks. REALLY F#&!$G SUX.
I want my kids to be able to go to college and for me to one day be able to retire, but at this rate, forget it.
I'm actually coming to hate the job I love.
I can understand how you feel, left school at 17 with two GCE O' levels to my name and went straight into work at a screen printing firm. I left 13 years later after finally working my way up the payscale from £45 per week (before tax by the way) to £230. S*** job, s*** pay, complete wingnut of a boss and his brother, to leave for a job in a CD manufacturing company here in Belfast "Norn Iron" as we pronounce it in Norhtern Ireland. Stayed ther for three years as I worked my way to become "Training Teamleader" and shop steward for the Union. Threw may head up left and re-trained as a P.C. and Network repair and support technician. Couldn't find a job for love nor money in the sector that I re-trained for as employers only look at experience rather than IF YOU can actaully do the job. I took a job back in the printing sector to cover my back in the meantime until I found a post somewhere doing what I like and enjoy. No joy so far, left that place, went to a new firm as a print fininshing technician and three and half years ago after losing my father to cancer I developed Myalgic Encphyalitis and have been un-employed since. Have worked my balls off since I left school and even re-sat GCSE's and A-levels at night class through the years, and now can't get help from the Government to help me through this bad patch!!! And yet the work shy slackers that have NEVER worked an honest day in their life get all the help they can scam of the state because they can lie and cheat without any remorse!!! Am I bitter, no-way as I know there'll be a flipside along the line sometime!!!
Sorry to hear some of these tough stories happening to guys I am sure I'd have great time having a beer with.
I'm relatively speaking very lucky, and I am genuinely thankful for it, but still, I'd like to be doing something else. My case in no way compares to the stories you guys have shared, so I know this will sound spoiled. but hey, this is a thread for talking about what we want, so what the heck.
I teach English to engineers in a big Japanese steel company. I have a job that pays kind of okay but gives me a fair amount of time and holidays and is pretty helpful for someone with young kids.
It's sometimes interesting and enjoyable as I work with people and sometimes they give you really funny responses or tell you something you'd never heard before.
The problem is it's very, very repetitive,a lot of the students are extremely apathetic, and I've been doing it for 12 years now and looks like I'll be in this field for a long while yet, as I'll stay in Japan and there's not lots of companies outside teaching that are looking for a foreigner with my experience or skills.
Plus, you often get the feeling of being looked down upon by people in other jobs. I suppose that happens in many jobs though.
If I move back to NZ, the problem is similar due to the size and nature of the economy. If I stayed in teaching there, I'd be on less money and have much less job-security.
I'm currently doing an MA slowly via distance-learning with an eye to getting into a university in a teaching role - no way I could go a lecturer's post. Even then, the pay is only a little better than what I get now. I think it's enough but from time to time I get heat from my wife to earn more. She works too, but is in a corporate job where salaries actually go up significantly.
I just want a change, and to do something that produces results. There's a sort of endlessness to teaching a language as most people drop out after a year or two, so I'm always teaching the same kind of stuff to the same kind of people, and it's not really a job where there's anywhere to go.
So for all my whining I really do appreciate all that I have - sometimes I look around the place I live and just think "How lucky am I to be able to live here?". My complaint about my career is more a desire to make a bit more money and to do something challenging and, I don't know, meaningful or vigorous, vital.
I'm 23. I work in retail, a CD/DVD shop to be specific. I feel like i'm happy somedays, and others i'm not. It depends largely on the sort of customers I meet and the mood of my managers. My happiness in the job has diminished gradually, as i've been there for 3 years.
I'm about to start a degree, to diversify and to improve future prospects.
The problem is, when I look at new jobs to apply for, they all seem less attractice, in more ways than one, compared to me current job - pay, flexibility, location, hours. All hard to match.
Why can't I just get paid to write?
Okay, this a small part of a post I made elsewhere regarding work....However, this is part of what I do now to make money (basically retired at 30).
......However, the last 14 years I have also lived by a strict set of rules I developed that keeps me balanced in a rather harsh way.........I spend none of the cash I brought with me when I met my husband (in fact all of it still in a couple paper bags on my closet floor and modestly is quite a significant amount). In kind any of the monies/finances/investments pushed on me by my husband stay out of my contact by my choice and are handled elsewhere as I refuse to access them.
What this means then is, for me to even "buy myself" anything, heck even a candy bar if I wanted one, entails me having to work for it....YET....to firm limitations.
1. I cannot ask for work in general (reason for that is too many people give me work that is not needed to be done simply to give me money). It must be work/job/task that must/needs to be done and there is no one else readily available to do it.......That leads to a LOT of usually low end work......
*A good example being Kathy complained that the women's bathroom was filthy in a bar we went into when out on a ride. The bar owner stated if she thought that one was bad we should see the men's, and that the guy that usually cleaned them was off that week (yeah, place was a dive). So without looking, said I would do it......He offered $50.00+drinks and expected a half-assed job I'm sure. So I said $10.00 and no drinks and worked 4+ hours cleaning both making them sparkling (his statement being they had never in his 15 years there been that clean) as Kathy my companion enjoyed being a customer of the bar.
2. I cannot take work away from others. IOW, because I will only work for a very low rate it would undercut others, so there must be no one available or willing to do it.
*Above an example, others being similar bathroom cleanings, an old woman wanted a 4' high and est. 50' long rock retaining wall built yet only had $5, serving drinks at a packed bar where none of the waitresses showed and took just 1/4 of the tips (though was tempted to be the bouncer from all the *** grabbing), cleaned out a vacant inner city lot of all trash, high plant growth, etc. for a combined $17...(must of been 1,000(ex) used condoms), as all the neighbors were very old and complained how the crack dealers and prostitutes had taken it over....(boy were they mad, glad my guys watched over me while I did it), picked more crops, hayed more fields, cleaned more stalls, dug more ditches, etc. then I could count......................Best place to find such work is ask at any local church dealing with the very poor and elderly who can't pay.
3. I cannot make it a career.......Many jobs are needed to be done regularly, my rules insist I only do it the one time.
*Ex. I've fed, bathed and cleaned house for a few shut-ins I didn't know who frankly I have no idea how they are able to live....IOW, could barely eat unassisted, can not bathe (for one man had been over a year), and naturally their homes go to hell it like a sewer....Could spend the rest of your life on one of these folks....Point in me doing those was in that I had to be escorted (as an unknown person) was to inspire others to do so after.....Most I ever made from one of those was a little over $11 in returnable bottles.
4. I must do the work for under $99 AND must accept no more then half of what was offered less better NO MATTER THE JOB. Most under $20.
NONE of the above were done as/for chairity......
All of the above odd jobs done for "me" to make me money.
So why all the above that has little to do with the thread?
Particularly frustrated one day having just hand dug out an old farmers cow manure pit into his spreadder it a hot humid day after a rain so a messy job and all for $3.....My husband chuckling at my self imposed distress as I showered off (and covered in cow dung from head to toe in 90F heat not fun) asked me if being a stable hand was what I did best? Naturally I stated no angrilly, the best thing I did was......
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So what's the point?....I work for the pleasure of accomplishing something. No matter how bad it may be I do it the best it can be done. Money no longer part of the equation nor worried about status, it makes any job easy and enjoyable (though sometimes when just looking back on it).....and everything I have bought for myself be it my drinks, PC, hunting/fishing gear...whatever all paid for by the above sort of stuff.
Granted, I'm not trying to make a living, supporting a family and paying bills with it....Yet the point to prove any job can be rewarding....So the trick is to make your current job such, or find/make a new one that will be even better yet in the end simply enjoy whatever it is.
K2
Meh - too many people look to work for things that should come from friends, family, etc. A job is just a means to the items you need and want - it should never be a defining aspect of your life. My job pays ok, is relatively stable (so far), and has enough flexibility that I can have time to do what I want to do (like come in the office early and leave early to go fly on nice afternoons).
How wrong you are....If you sleep 8 hours a night, and if you work 8 hours a day, then 1/3rd of your life is spent is gone sleeping, 1/3rd spent with family and friends....and roughly 1/3rd working.Originally posted by p-11.cAce:
Meh - too many people look to work for things that should come from friends, family, etc.
It always amazed me the "I keep work and free time separate, work is work"....It's a third of your life. In fact, you very likely spend more time interacting with fellow employees then you do any of your friends or family....To that end, you better make use of that time in enjoying your life or 1/3rd of it is lost. Getting along with those you work with and making friends.
.....and if you think you'll make up for that lost life on the third with friends and family you're sorely mistaken as they have their other bits of life to live too.
So better enjoy it all the best you can unless a thrid of your life wasted doesn't mean squat.
K2