I’m a few weeks into the job-hunting process and I still haven’t found a way to tame my restlessness. So far I’ve wrestled with the idea of being a writer, an editor, a page designer and maybe even a bartender. I began one week redesigning my resume to send to small-town publications around the southeast, and ended the same week seriously considering the Coast Guard. There’s nothing wrong with these professions, other than how different they are from one another. It’s a great mental and emotional workout to seriously contemplate these worlds-apart careers within the same seven days.
I don’t want to say that I’m keeping an open mind. Something about that sounds too airy and flighty. I will say that I’m interested in several opportunities out there, those I’ve least expected and those least suspected of me. At first I thought more options would muddle the process to the point where I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. Yep, I’ve been there, but it’s also a good starting point.
For a while I’ve limited my abilities to a pool of choice careers, thinking there was only one out there for me. Often people have the same tendency in finding romance– the idea that destiny has reserved two perfect people to complete each other like puzzle pieces, an overall destructive mindset that leaves people consulting the cosmos over common sense. There’s nothing wrong with having dreams or being romantic– otherwise I’d be in trouble, too– but it might be healthier to debunk the one-person theory (along with the perfect person theory) and understand that there might be several people you could be with for the rest of your life. However, there’s only one you’d give all of yourself to. That choice seems more romantic anyway.
Such is the hunt I’m in now. This outlook applied to job searching takes the pressure off myself from finding the unattainable, absolute perfect career (like testing roller coasters and tasting ice cream), and lets me focus on the ways I could be making a living so that I eventually can choose what is best for me.
