Monday 19 March 2001

Growing up is hard to do (Part I)

Ugh, Monday. What is it with Mondays? Is it that all weekend you are your own person, with your own thoughts and humour and needs and urges, and then suddenly, when the alarm clock goes off in your ear, you become a mere drone, a cloned worker bee moving to a dictated theme?  Whatever. Ugh. And feh. 

I really resent my current job. I resent the time and energy it takes up, when I could be doing good things. Not just fun stuff like shopping and fooling around and reading and playing with the dog, but stuff like community service, looking after my local and global environment, doing stuff that matters. Not to mention maybe doing a job that suited me, that challenged me, with fun interesting normal people. Instead of being stuck in a sick surreal office situation with crap management doing an uninspiring job that no one cares about. I resent the stress and angst and what I put my poor old body through, doing tasks that won’t matter in two years, two months even.

I’ve been having a career crisis you see. To be honest, I’ve had a permanent career crisis, since someone first asked me the question "so what do you want to be when you grow up, little girl?". Even as a child, I really had no idea, perhaps vague dreams of being a Hollywood actress, a champion equestrian, a vet perhaps. These dreams just never solidified into an actual need to be that thing.

I did a degree, and by god I finished that degree, even though I loathed and despised and resented every moment. Don’t ask me why I didn’t just quit and head overseas to find myself. I was just too small and scared, too ill, and somehow too horrified at the prospect of not finishing something. Combine a Protestant work ethic with the kind of guilt only a totally lapsed Catholic can feel and you get trouble.

By the time I graduated I was even more confused about what I wanted to do. I STILL didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, so hence, in a fundamental way, I had yet to really grow up. So I drifted from job to job, some incredibly rewarding and challenging, some not. Until I found myself at 30 (oh ok, 31), still needing to 'find myself'.

Anyways I’ve been reading all these fabulous online journallers; I’ve been fooling around a little around with web design, just for fun like, and talking to lots of friends involved in web stuff and IT and multimedia, so information was being processed in ye olde brainbox. And finally it hit me, in a St Paul on the road to Damascus kinda way ... THAT’S what I want to do. I want to be involved in web design and multimedia, as both a designer and writer of material, and coordinator and team leader of projects. Because even at my most self-deprecating, I know I am good at those things. But how to go about it? What do I need to know? How do I market myself? Does such a job exist and what's it called? And where the sweet hell do I begin? So yes I’ll be looking in the employment section of the paper today, and trolling around employment agencies next week. This has gone far enough, my dears.

Stay tuned ... and if you have any advice or find a book called 'Career Changes for Complete Eejits', please let me know.

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