Location-independent vs. Stability

Lately I’ve noticed a lot of buzz (on many of the post-grad, figuring out your career blogs I read) about location-independent jobs. I have mixed feelings about this.

At first glance, it sounds like a great idea: set my own hours, autonomy, opportunity to do something I truly enjoy.

But I also have to consider: Setting my own hours would mean I wouldn’t be able to “leave for the day,” and I probably wouldn’t get paid while on vacation (though, theoretically, I could do some work then); Work wouldn’t necessarily always be available, and sometimes there might even be too much to process; I like not having to worry about having health/dental/eye insurance.

It’s a tough call, but something I might be interested in trying at some point. I would absolutely love the flexibility of the scheduling though. Something I really miss the the ability to be out and about during the day.

Since lately I’ve been thinking so much about my career, I made a list of paths I may be interested in pursuing:

• Graphic design (advertising/marketing): This would give me more of a change for the location-indie lifestyle. But it also could mean for a company in a regular hour position.
• News/magazine design: Not newspapers, though, for obvious reasons (unless it was strictly graphic design and I didn’t have to work evenings/weekends).
• Social media: This also has many possibilities. I prefer either a nonprofit or a good company I believe in.
• Somehow working with environmentalism: This is an issue I have a strong interest in and could include social media, graphic design, or something else.
• Teaching: This is still a possibility, but probably not until later down the road. I’m mostly interested in it for the “giving back” aspect, school holidays, I do usually like being around kids, and it would be stable.

In the meantime, I’m just trying to be happy and continue working on side projects that hopefully will begin to lead me in the right direction.

Blast from the past

It’s funny how sometimes, even though you haven’t seen an old friend in years, you can get together and everything just falls back into place.

Last night I met up with two friends from high school for dinner and drinks. We reminisced on old times and caught up on what everyone’s been doing over the last few years. One friend, we’ll call him J, I’ve seen at least a couple times over the years. But the other, S, I hadn’t seen in three years. It’s interesting how easily conversation flowed after not seeing each other for so long. (Of course, we already had a vague idea of what the others had been up to thanks to Stalkerbook.)

J is working to finish up his bachelor’s degree while living with his parents. He basically has a well-paying job lined up when he graduates if he wants it. S is out of school, about to move in with her boyfriend, and works several days per week with a middle school girls’ choir, which she says she absolutely loves. She also plays piano for several school groups and has been working at Belk (though she recently quit).

At one point S asked if I’d experienced any depression after finishing college. Um, YES! Granted, I’m doing better now than I was, and I imagine it has to get better. She said she had a rough time dealing with the change too, so that makes me not feel so crazy.

At one point we talked about knowing what you want to do, and S said she doesn’t think anyone ever knows what they want to do. And especially being in our early 20s, we really aren’t supposed to have it figured out. Good points.

All in all it was great to get together with some old friends and hear about their lives now. I’ve lost touch with many of my high school friends (other than the aforementioned Stalkerbook), so it’s nice to get together with some that I’m actually interested in keeping in touch with.

Slave to the clock

Yesterday I completed maybe two hour’s worth of actual work. It’s not because I was being lazy – there simply was nothing to do. I  read all sorts of blogs, edited and posted my previous entry, read online newspapers and gchatted with a friend. Sure it’s great that I was getting paid to do all this stuff, but I really wish my hours were more flexible.

My work hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. No exceptions, unless you want to take PTO. There’s no cutting out early on Fridays or the day before a holiday. I understand the reasoning behind it: If a client calls, you don’t want no one to be here. That being said, I am not the person any client would need to talk to anyway. If I’ve gotten to a point (say at about 5 p.m.) where I can tell there is nothing else to be done for the rest of the day, why can’t I leave? We’re all mature adults, and I wouldn’t abuse the privilege.

This is a kind of flexibility I need in a job.

Last Friday I had the opportunity to visit the printer where we do most of our business (I work for a direct mail company), and I really enjoyed being out (i.e. not in an office) during the day. Sure, PTO days will help some. Still, I keep reminding myself that teaching would afford me this luxury for a solid amount of the year. Ideally, I think I would like to work as a graphic designer – in an office half the week and from home the other half. Who has a job for me?

Girl, you need to find yourself a dream

It was about two years ago that I was sitting around with some friends in the office of the college newspaper, and I don’t remember why, but everyone was discussing their career aspirations. When it became apparent I didn’t have a “dream job,” one of my now-good friends told me, “Girl, you need to find yourself a dream!”

Sure, I’ve had things I’ve wanted to accomplish over the years, but I’ve never had a vision of a dream job. How this never happened, I’m not quite sure — I have to-do lists for nearly everything. But I never really sat down and set those long-term, “what do I want to accomplish in life” goals. I guess it is good to have at least a vague idea, but when you put something, such as a “dream job,” on a pedestal, won’t you be crushed if you actually achieve it and it’s not as great as you imagined?

Back during the “dream job” discussion, my plan consisted of pursuing a job in newspaper page design, and then figure things out from there. Well, that all changed during my summer 2008 internship as a newspaper designer/copy editor. Turns out I was already bored by the end of the summer. I found designing on such a rigid grid to be bland, and I absolutely hated the hours. Working late evenings was fine for a college life while working with many of my best friends. But I decided once I was done with school, I’d rather be able to go to happy hours, meet people for dinner, and actually be able to hang out in the evenings. It was mostly a lifestyle decision.

So during my senior year in college, I continued working at the paper, but I expanded my design portfolio to include spreads and much more illustration-type work. My new plan was to find a job as an in-house graphic designer for some company. But by the time graduation rolled around, I still hadn’t found a job and was looking for anything to give me more design experience — even unpaid work. I spent the next three months working for a small marketing and PR company that really only consisted of two people. Her business model included hiring unpaid interns for work. It was a great way to get some hands-on experience, but I quickly saw it was not going to turn into a full-time-with-benefits job.

I moved back home around the time this internship ended and quickly became desperate to find a job so I could move back out and be an independent adult. Looking back, I sometimes wish I’d taken more time. Time to enjoy sleeping in and hanging around with nothing to do. Time to try and find a job that actually involved graphic design. Time to figure things out. But I also remember how fuzzy my brain was at the time. I had a sense of hopelessness and a “what is wrong with me that I can’t find a job with a college degree” feeling. Thanks, recession.

What it comes down to, is I took the first job I was actually offered, and now I’m back trying to figure out “my dream.” Could be worse.

I have picked up some freelance graphic design work, so that’s a start toward trying to eventually find a real job in design.

Here are possible paths I’ve been mulling over for the past couple months:

• Find a graphic design job. I’m not sure if I want to work for a design/advertising company or if I’d rather be an in-house designer (where I’m not held accountable to so many picky clients). I also really like the idea of working for myself, though not necessarily having a steady income terrifies me.
• Design (and maybe copy editing) for a publication. I would probably enjoy doing graphics for a newspaper if I could work normal hours and have weekends off. I’d also really like to do magazine design.
• Go to design school. I know I need more skills eventually. I need more solid training and need to learn Web design if I’m going to really go into design as a profession.
• Go back to school to become a teacher. I’m not gonna lie, one of the biggest appeals for me is having summer, spring break and winter vacations. I also would probably actually enjoy it, but it’d have to be English/newspaper/yearbook-based. (No teaching math or science for me.) However, kids can be really annoying and I’d undoubtedly have to deal with discipline issues, which is completely lame.
• Find a job with a nonprofit (preferably designing), so I can contribute something positive to the world.

Right now, I think I’m leaning toward sticking with design either with some sort of publication or a nonprofit. I think as long as I’m not designing, I will always envy those who do. As far as teaching, I know I could always pursue this path later on if that’s something I am still interested in. I signed up to take the GRE in December, which I think is a positive step since scores are good for five years.  Hopefully in that amount of time I’ll have some idea of what I’d like to accomplish in life. It’s still a little frightening (but also a little exciting) that, at 22, I still don’t know exactly what I want to be when I grow up. But I constantly have to keep reminding myself that there’s nothing wrong with changing my mind (other than it being exhausting), and I just need to decide what I want to do over the next few years. I’ll figure out what I want to be doing when I’m 40 by the time I get there.