Thoughts about jobs

[avevale_intelligencer]

It becomes more and more imperative every day that I (a) get myself healthy enough to (b) find work. The bugger with CFS is that it always feels as though if I could make just a little more effort, try just a little harder, I could do things. Which in turn becomes another stick to beat myself with, because gods know I need more of those.

stevieannie says that one should find what one is good at and what one enjoys and try to make the two interact, and she and micktim are doing just that, and mostly managing very nicely, and more power to them. There are things I am good at, and things I enjoy. Unfortunately, they don't translate into the sort of jobs that are (a) generally available, (b) regularly--let alone well--paid, and/or (c) accessible to someone who isn't already doing them. And that's before we get to the problem that at the moment I'm not even doing that much of the things I enjoy. My music keyboard is a spare shelf and cat seat at the moment, and the writing projects are all pretty much stalled.

I can write. Reading back over my last few posts suggests a possible career as a political columnist, assuming there were a piblication willing to allow me house room, which is unlikely since the purpose of a paid political columnist as far as I can see is to articulate the views of the proprietor, not his own. Besides, I'd probably go insane inside a week.

What I want is a job as a Fanthorpe.
That's a game that I think I could win.
Where the faster I type as I churn out the tripe
The faster the money rolls in.
I could earn a good wage being paid by the page
And producing a novel each week...

...well, maybe, though thinking about it I have my doubts. I fail at NaNoWriMo every time, for one thing, and if I can't do a novel in a month when I want to, how likely is it I can do one a week when I have to? That's the other thing about this kind of job, making your survival dependent on something you only know as a pleasurable diversion. Suppose I dry up? Loud cheers from the populace, obviously, but what would we live on?

Likewise, busking. People do do it with electronic instruments (though I've not yet seen anyone with a laptop, a keyboard and a bunch of VSTs doing karaoke to a MIDI sequence) but I'm not so wealthy that I can afford to lug my kit into Bath and stand it out in the weather while I croak along to it. And my voice is not good, at the best of times. (Waits for argument--not a sausage, and quite right too.) I can do background music--I could see myself tweedling about on a piano while well-dressed people sit around guzzling cream teas and ignoring me completely, but that kind of opportunity, if it arises at all, does so well outside my social orbit. And I suspect I would find out very quickly, as would my employers, just how limited my musical range actually is.

In the end, one applies for the jobs that are available, one takes the job that it turns out one can get, and one puts up with it for as long as possible. What one is good at, what one enjoys, are seldom relevant. When one is me, anyway.

I just need to try a little harder.

Comments

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

just need to try a little harder.

Possibly, though when one seemingly hasn't the energy/inclination for the things one loves doing, having energy for an actual job is a bit of a challenge..

[aunty_marion]

Oh dear, yes. Me too. Am There, Doing That. So to speak.It's horribly Catch-22, isn't it? The jobs I'm (technically) qualified for are the ones I hate doing, and the jobs I'd quite like to do demand qualifications that I don't have and haven't a ice-cube's chance in hell of getting. Or else they want experience which you can't get without getting a job first...

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Same here. Several jobs around involving MS Visual Whatever *spit* and MFC *spit* and Windows GUI programming *spit* (not that I actually have experience in those either) but the ones I'd like to do require experience I don't have. The "make money doing something you enjoy" idea sounds very good, but for most of us there just aren't the paying jobs which involve sleeping and reading SF and playing and singing less than well. If micktim and stevieannie can't make a full-time job out of music then there's no hope for me, they are way out of my league.

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

It's not that easy. Our lifestyle needs a LOT of supporting at the moment (two kids, three mortgages and more businesses than I care to count right now). If Tim were single and living in a flat with no dependents, he could make an extremely *good* living from music at the moment.

The trick is tailoring the lifestyle and the earning capability together.

We haven't managed it yet. We may not do it until the kids leave home. But in the wise words of "The Full Monty":

"It feels better being an unemployed saxophonist than an unemployed pipe fitter..."

[catalana.livejournal.com]

Huh, I thought that was from the Committments. I love both of those movies. *grin*

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

Je suis une banana. Of course you're right - it's the Committments - not many pipe fitters in Full Monty as they are all steelworkers!

Full marks to Catalana!

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

Well, the bit of the comment that I didn't make is the fact that whilst Tim moved to Lincolnshire and now builds walls for a living, he also spent 5 years serving an apprenticeship on utterly poo pay to be able to do so.

Maybe there's nothing fitting in the "what do you love" sector that can earn you money right now, but a more pertinent question might be "how can I train myself or develop an audience for the job that I really want?"

Yes, it's easy for me to say, and it isn't easy to do. It wasn't easy for us either - a career and life change that I glibly throw away in a single sentence brought Tim to the edge of a nervous breakdown and both of us to within a whisker of divorce and bankruptcy. Look at pictures of Tim before 2001 and after - his beard went grey within 6 terrible, terrible months. It wasn't the easy option, but I just couldn't face living the rest of my life in the grey hinterlands of despair.

If you want to do music professionally, and feel that your musical knowledge is limited - expand it! Download some new music. Attend an open mic. Set aside time for practice and do it.

You are remarkable. Don't settle for despair.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"You are remarkable. Don't settle for despair."

I'll second that! =:o}

Although lurking at the back of my mind is the fear that you (Zan) may be afflicted with the same freezing anxiety that such exortations have always raised in me, ever since the days when my Dad's regular chant of "get yourself organised, boy!" used to leave me paralysed, trying to figure out (a) "What does that even mean?" and (b) "*HOW*"? )

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Kind of, yes. My Dad used to ask me if I was "in good order," which had a similar effect--what kind of order is good order? Is there such a thing as bad order, and how would I know? if there is, would it be okay if I turned out to be in good chaos?

I think possibly the key question is going to become "what kind of job could the last twenty years of dead-end jobs on poo pay possibly pe--I mean, be an adequate apprenticeship for?" And the answer, sadly, seems to be "more of the same." I'm not sure I have time for any more apprenticeship.

But it's something to consider.

[danceswithlife]

Finding work you love is really, really hard.
Finding work you can tolerate is merely hard.
Creating work in our upcoming economy is going to be difficult as well, but I'm going to give it a shot (while trying to find a day job, too--I'm getting laid off in January).

But doing any of the above with a debilitating, unpredictable disease (that many people STILL doubt is real), is hardest of all.

My prayers for you and the Countess.