As a fairly recent member of the unemployed I’m coming up against questions that surely plague many who have been out there for a while. I am fortunate – my chosen careen path of web design very easily translates into the freelance lifestyle so while I am unemployed – meaning no full time job – I am working.
I was having a particularly off or down day. I found jobs to apply for but I’ll be damned if there was a cover letter to be found in my brain. I decided to go to the library (YES, the library. The internet was just bringin’ me down) to get out of the house and see if I couldn’t jog some give-me-the-job juices from somewhere. While leafing through various books on cover letters (once again, the Dummies series came through! I really should return that…) I bumped into “What Color is Your Parachute?” It’s been around for a while and, apparently, it’s updated every year. Not very far in, a question is posed: “Is this a good time to try to figure out your purpose in life, your calling, your vocation, your passion, your “dream job”? Indeed, I have thought about this. I probably shouldn’t be too picky, right? I mean, I’m not that picky by any stretch. I don’t have to work for the #1 ad agency in the world (some would ask well, why not?) but I have read some job descriptions that, while I could do it, it didn’t inspire me. That or the company left something to be desired. Did I apply? Yes, to a couple of them but since there are only so many jobs available on any given day and after I have taken care of any freelance work, there is inevitably down time. So, as my grandfather used to say, might as well do something even if it’s wrong. Meaning, doing something is better than nothing because it gets the ball rolling.
I have finished reading the book so now I think I’m going to go back and do the exercises to see if I can’t unearth “my passion”. These exercises are recommended whether you are changing careers or just trying to find the right place to do what you love. I’ve never really gotten into exercises like the ones in the book – I’m an eye-roller, a nay-sayer, a wow-this-is-lame, PUH-leeze kind of gal sometimes. Maybe I’m older, maybe I care more, who knows. Maybe after these exercises, I will have to work for the #1 ad agency in the world!
The other thing I’ve been doing in my spare time (note: this is a fallacy in my life. I’m not working full time but I have less time than I did before) anyway – I am learning Javascript. I’ve been meaning to buckle down and learn it for quite a while but now, in my job search, I notice it’s expected in the ‘toolbox’ of a front-end developer/designer, which would be me. I can work with pre-written code – make edits and tweak settings – but not my own stuff and now it’s holding me back.
So, you’ve got your variables and your functions. Functions are really fancy ways of telling a variable what to do. I’m thinking I should write a function for my job search, like var parachute & var jobs. IF jobs < 0, THEN parachute should be huge, ELSE, IF jobs > 0, THEN parachute should still be big. Just in case. I may not mind doing something wrong to get the ball rolling but I still like an escape route.
