Tell me about yourself.

[resonant]

I'm suddenly struck with the desire to know how other people do the things that matter most to them, how they find and follow their passions.

How do you decide where your heart is? How do you carve out time and energy to pursue it?

Are you on a new road or one you've been following for a long time? What have you learned that could help others? What false starts have you made, what poor judgments? What have you compromised, and what do those compromises look like to you now?

Comments

[jenna-thorn.livejournal.com]

Add another voice to the chorus. I'm pushing forty and have been university instructor, part time librarian, inventory specialist, front line at a mortgage company, accounting clerk (eek), Sales analyst (twice!), Executive assistant (more fun than you would think) and am now unquantifiable. 8-) Okay, I specialize in the regulations governing munitions shipment worldwide. No, seriously.

No one graduates from high school and says, "I want to change the world. I'm going to spend my days with the US government's regulations concerning acquistion, the GAO online version of 22CFR Parts 120-130, and a listing of hazardous chemicals all open in windows at the same time." And livejournal open in another window.

And yet, here I am. I'm touching (in a very small way, with one millionth of a fingerprint, but still...) the Hubble, the ISS, I'm part of the building of a protective net for places like London's metro, I'm supplying firefighters with cameras that see through smoke, to keep them alive, to let them save others. Lookee here, I'm making the world a better place. Which was always my plan. I just didn't know that this would be how.

I fell into this job. I was working as an admin in sales to get away from being the receptionist, and I saw a need. Filling that need helped my boss, so he was willing to let me do it and that gave me the flexibility to leave sales when he did and move departments while still doing the same job that needed to be done. Four years later, I've got pieces of paper with shiny seals, I've mastered the Washington DC metro system, I've led meetings in the Department of Commerce for Dept of State representatives, the local FBI field office has my business card and thinks I'm cheerful and helpful and friendly and knows me by name and face.

And if you'd told me all that when I was twenty and teaching ENG 201 to bored freshmen at 8 am on MWF, I'd have laughed at you and said something cutting. If you'd told me that I would have a kid and a mortgage in the suburbs, I'd have sneered. *shrug* And yet, here I am. Hindsight's a heck of a lot clearer than foresight.

But I can tell you this: I won't retire from this company. And as much as I like my job (okay, it can be tedious, but it can also be fun in odd ways), I might not be doing this in five years, let alone twenty. After all, five years ago, I'd been laid off and was sitting at home, playing with color flashcards with my then-two year old, and interviewing with anyone who'd give me the time of day, for any job, at any pay.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I saw a need.

This is so much the key! It's something to be said for temp-service work, actually, and for taking unlikely jobs: if you don't know what to do, you can at least go and be someplace where you'll meet people, learn something, and possibly be lucky enough to see a need.

[jenna-thorn.livejournal.com]

And also build a personal foundation of experience. The standing joke is "Everything I needed to know about dealing with Salesmen, I learned teaching kindergarten kids."

The two years I spent working inventory gave me the chance to teach myself tenkey by touch, something I've used on a regular basis, but also a feel for courier truck driver schedules and an affection for forklifts and the smell of plywood pallets and cardboard. I've since startled warehouse guys with my facility with packing tape and made friends by volunteering to file packslips.

In the last two weeks, I've given thanks that I took Physics 201 when it wasn't a required course, discussed the Scorpio Simpsons episode and the Ferengi Laws of Acquisition and the Turing machine.

What single corse of instruction, what degree plan can build that? Nope, but twenty years of bopping from video production to diaper manufacturing to high tech components taught me about manufacturing lines and JiT management and well...stuff I'd never have learned had I gone straight from school to a single company, or even a single field, and stayed there.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I've since startled warehouse guys with my facility with packing tape and made friends by volunteering to file packslips.

This made me think of my brief tenure in the mailroom, which is the reason why to this day I never get my scotch tape tangled up.

(Also, the one skill from journalism school that impresses people the most? is that I can write without looking at the paper. Not prettily, mind you, but I can write.)