Get to the point quickly and clearly. No problem. If you’ve dipped into my blog you’ll also notice I have an appreciation for humor once in a while, too. In fact, and maybe there is no secret about this, I would love to cultivate the use of humor more widely. However, you have to pick your medium carefully and do it just so. That is the part I’m working on. Once you’ve exposed yourself online so-to-speak, you really have to decide – OK, now what do I do with this? Last summer this began as a way to get myself adept with WordPress and take it from there. Now I’m feeling the tug to do greater and bigger things with it. No doubt 2010 will be when that happens. The process of refinement begins in ernest when you can answer the question: What does that say about me? and: Do I like what it says?
My criteria is: Does it put a smile on my lips after I’m done absorbing it? If the answer is yes, then I know I’m on the right track.
Some people have ALL the fun and the rest of us just embed their code. Oh, well.
There is a famous quote out there that makes the rounds in cyberspace. I think it is attributed to Kahlil Gibran, it says: Work is love made visible.
That being the case, it is pretty easy to see where the love is this year. In fact, issues surrounding work are increasingly a central focus of my life, as I’ve joined the jobfully team, a start-up in Redmond. I’m very excited for the prospects of this endeavor, not only because it gives me the opportunity to use my native strengths in writing, but just as importantly it gives me plenty of good reasons to increase my networking.
While I will continue to use this space for a greater variety of discussion topics, I will be focusing a lot of attention on the employment counseling field via jobfully.
So please join us through all the usual social channels, be part of the discussion, and share the love.
Yesterday I spent the afternoon with a friend reviewing our resumes and bemoaning the state of working for a living in a world gone mad. We compiled all our collective wisdom, and painful experiences, and advice we’ve gathered from others, and still could not make sense of it. I concluded that the only comfort one can derive from this situation is in communing with others for whom the experience is the same. When you can bear witness to other brave souls finding a way to live without losing their humor or desire to be who they really are, then there is hope. There are millions of us. Yes, it is unfathomable.
That leads me to yet another realization. The business of giving aid to job seekers is a mushrooming industry! No surprise there. In fact, I find myself part of it as well, and I have to admit it intrigues me.
After reviewing my resume Chris told me: “You’ve reinvented yourself.” I quickly added: “Yes, but I’m still in the process, and I’m still not ‘there’ yet.” And here is where the real object lesson comes into play.
Are we now, as many people have already concluded, living in a world where long-term employment of say, three years or more, is a thing of the past from here on out? If that is true, are we ready to live in a world of constant work search? If that is also true, then war, health care, the elderly and the recurringly unemployed could easily suck the economy dry in our life times. If we could delete just one of those, say, war, we could fund the nation’s well-being so much better. But I digress…
I love being part of this industry. My reinvention has been transformative in ways I can hardly comprehend. Five years into it and I can finally say it has been for the better, but I’m still in uncharted territory, and I’ve got lots of company.
The other night I was at a networking event and more than one person I was talking with was wondering: How can this economy settle into anything reasonably sustainable when you have literally millions of adults constantly going in and out of cycles of work and non-work?
This much is certain: No one knows.
Posted in Methods or Madness | Comments (0)