Easier Said Than Done
Upon reflection, I found my last post glib and platitudinous, and I apologize for that. Having experienced unemployment and under-employment, I know that it doesn't have to be a worst-case scenario for it to be pretty lame. Looking for a job because you really need a job can be stressful, frustrating, and even humiliating. Funnily enough, when I was in those situations, I generally found work through temp agencies. Although they didn't often find me work from one day to the next, they usually did have me working within a week or two. And that was a good thing.
Of course, a source of semi-regular income does not a career path make, nor is it the high road to personal fulfillment. To paraphrase Citizen Kane, "It's not hard to make money, if all you want to do is make money." The questions that I glossed over - "What do I want to do?", "Where do I want to work?", etc. - are really the hard questions. Finding any job at all is infinitely easier than finding the job you want. In fact, finding any job at all can often be easier than figuring out what you want to do in the first place.
Which is why my last post annoyed me. Everyone knows that planning for the future will give you more control over your life, that networking is the best way to get a job (better than responding to an on-line job ad, for example), and so on, but that's not the point. Along those lines, it's easy to say, "Think of 5 people you could call on to help you find a job." It's not even that hard to actually do. In fact, it's probably just as easy to think up 5 people who could lend you money in the short term to help you make rent. Coming up with 5 people who can help you get exactly what you want, given you know what that is, then actually calling them, actually asking for help, actually getting them to help you, and all that, is, well, easier said than done.
At this juncture, I could say, "Which is where Aquent comes in. If you're pursuing a career in marketing or design, we ARE the people who can help you get what you want." But I'm not going to, because that would be cheap and marketing-y. Instead, I wanted to take a second and advocate "the easy way."
Don't get me wrong. I'm not telling you to forsake your dreams or settle for less (though you might want to consider those options). I am asking you, however, to be skeptical about your wants. As Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche suggested in his Myth of Freedom, the true ideal of freedom is not "getting what you want," but getting beyond "wanting" altogether. As I understand it, it's not a question of resigning yourself to "not getting what you want" so much as keeping yourself open to the possibilities that fall outside the narrow scope of your desire.
This is what I'm talking about. I wanted to be a professor, but my pursuit of that goal was frustrated, in part because I didn't want to do some of the things you need to do to become a professor, and in part because I didn't want to do something of things you need to do as a professor. As a cure for unemployment, I had temped for Aquent, then worked in Aquent's Boston office, and then, two years later, while off professing, I was offered a job in their headquarters office running their internal training department (which didn't really exist at the time). I took it.
Since that time eleven years ago, I've changed roles several times and have certainly had my ups and downs but the bottom line is this: When I was in graduate school, and even after, I didn't know that someone could have a job like the one I have had thus far at Aquent. I didn't even really know that you could work at a company where the people were smart and nice, sometimes even funny, and the opportunities were, if not quite endless, at least not quickly exhausted. In other words, I didn't start out thinking, "I want to have a career in the staffing industry," or even, "I want to have a career in training/HR/marcom." And yet, here I am, not necessarily doing the things "I want to do," but, oddly enough, doing things I like to do.
It's easy to dispense career advice, especially of the generic variety, but pursuing a specific career can be rather difficult. In most cases, you need more than an aptitude for the work; you need luck. There is another way, however, and I'm living proof of it. Forget about the specific career and follow your "luck" (by "luck," I mean, "fortune," "coincidence," "happenstance," etc.). You might not get what you want, but you might be surprised to find that you want what you get.
I've got to warn you though. It's easier said than done.
Image Courtesy of SuperFantastic.
