Once again, I've neglected my writing blog for more than a month. I've been working on finding a job, and I've recently enlisted the help of a career coach. I'm slowly implementing her suggestions and some of my own. I decided to try and find as many of my professional samples that are lingering out there in cyberspace. With them found, I wanted an online portfolio. So, with the assistance of WordPress, I've launched www.angelackerman.com. Day by day it will connect my various interests, all my blogs, all my talents and even my fiction and the occasional piece of poetry.
I hope you'll visit.
Showing posts with label career. Show all posts
Showing posts with label career. Show all posts
Monday, July 15, 2013
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Those little wow moments
I think I had a revelation this morning.
The last few months, heck maybe even the last year, have been full of excitement and challenges. These events leave me minimal time for anything. I've forgotten my hobbies. I have no idea how to do anything fun. I also have lost the art of deeper introspection.
Now that I have graduated, I still have excitement and changes, but my daughter is home from school for summer vacation so this forces me to slow down and do the housework I've neglected for eons. This also gives me time to think.
Today's nugget:
My husband and I have discussed for about 9 months now the possibility of me returning to full-time professional work. The ends haven't met in a long time, and the finances have reached the point now where the car payment comes out of the grocery budget every month. Or, shall I say, the car payment consumes the whole grocery budget. Earning this new degree was to facilitate potential career change and give me a chance to recover from life as it used to be.
That's simply put.
My daughter is older now. She was four when I returned to school. I needed a flexible work schedule when she was home, in half-day kindergarten and in the early days of her academic career.
I spent four years as a college student, while serving on boards and working part-time. I thought, when my daughter was young, that I would use that time to promote my writing to publishers, editors and agents. But I didn't. I did earn a bachelor's degree. Why did I spend so much time on a bachelor's degree? If I spent the same amount of effort on promoting myself, I probably would have built some sort of fledgling career by now.
Do I not want it? And the answer is...
I don't know. My behavior suggests that I have no interest in a career as a creative writer. I think that's because I don't like the uncertainty. I have spent too much time being poor. I don't like the life of a freelancer, especially tracking everything for my taxes. I don't like not knowing how much money will come in or when it will arrive.
Writing has always given me solace and comfort. Maybe by trying to sell it, I'm sacrificing the element of my writing that provided me with escape and comfort and replacing it with the stress of using something I love with so very much of my soul as the means of my survival. That's ALWAYS why I resist the life of being a writer first.
Part of me also needs to be more than a writer. What makes writing so fun and interesting to me is that I can use what I learn and share it with other people. I can learn about haute couture or dance moves or even political circumstances and pull other people into that universe.
I want a master's degree some day and I know I could get into several MFA programs without an issue, but I resist. Instead I dream of a master's in international journalism, or international development, or foreign service... But then when I contemplate my Ph.D. I dream of history and Johns Hopkins because of my interest in post colonial Algeria-France relations.
And the MFA is on the list. It's just not the top of the list. Weird for a writer, isn't it?
Right now, I want to feed the family. I want to grow as a person. I want to do good. I want to help make a better world.
Fiction will remain my stress relief.
I need to see what I can do in this world, before I can help my fictional people make their mark.
The last few months, heck maybe even the last year, have been full of excitement and challenges. These events leave me minimal time for anything. I've forgotten my hobbies. I have no idea how to do anything fun. I also have lost the art of deeper introspection.
Now that I have graduated, I still have excitement and changes, but my daughter is home from school for summer vacation so this forces me to slow down and do the housework I've neglected for eons. This also gives me time to think.
Today's nugget:
My husband and I have discussed for about 9 months now the possibility of me returning to full-time professional work. The ends haven't met in a long time, and the finances have reached the point now where the car payment comes out of the grocery budget every month. Or, shall I say, the car payment consumes the whole grocery budget. Earning this new degree was to facilitate potential career change and give me a chance to recover from life as it used to be.
That's simply put.
My daughter is older now. She was four when I returned to school. I needed a flexible work schedule when she was home, in half-day kindergarten and in the early days of her academic career.
I spent four years as a college student, while serving on boards and working part-time. I thought, when my daughter was young, that I would use that time to promote my writing to publishers, editors and agents. But I didn't. I did earn a bachelor's degree. Why did I spend so much time on a bachelor's degree? If I spent the same amount of effort on promoting myself, I probably would have built some sort of fledgling career by now.
Do I not want it? And the answer is...
I don't know. My behavior suggests that I have no interest in a career as a creative writer. I think that's because I don't like the uncertainty. I have spent too much time being poor. I don't like the life of a freelancer, especially tracking everything for my taxes. I don't like not knowing how much money will come in or when it will arrive.
Writing has always given me solace and comfort. Maybe by trying to sell it, I'm sacrificing the element of my writing that provided me with escape and comfort and replacing it with the stress of using something I love with so very much of my soul as the means of my survival. That's ALWAYS why I resist the life of being a writer first.
Part of me also needs to be more than a writer. What makes writing so fun and interesting to me is that I can use what I learn and share it with other people. I can learn about haute couture or dance moves or even political circumstances and pull other people into that universe.
I want a master's degree some day and I know I could get into several MFA programs without an issue, but I resist. Instead I dream of a master's in international journalism, or international development, or foreign service... But then when I contemplate my Ph.D. I dream of history and Johns Hopkins because of my interest in post colonial Algeria-France relations.
And the MFA is on the list. It's just not the top of the list. Weird for a writer, isn't it?
Right now, I want to feed the family. I want to grow as a person. I want to do good. I want to help make a better world.
Fiction will remain my stress relief.
I need to see what I can do in this world, before I can help my fictional people make their mark.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
The Job Doing What You Love
When I was in college, someone (I don't even remember who) asked me why I didn't pursue a journalism major. I had two reasons:
1. I don't believe in a journalism major. Journalists must have broad education or at least an intelligence that allows them to question and receive information. The craft of writing is part talent, part experience and part having the right mentors. I don't think journalism professors are the best mentors. The fast-paced universe and the breadth of topics that appear in a journalist's world are constantly in flux and an academic at a university has lost touch with this and cannot train a journalist for this.
2. I love to write. I didn't want to ruin that by writing all day long.
I was right. I spent four years in public relations and publications. Then, I moved to my journalism career. I wrote an average of ten stories per week for years on end. Sometimes I did as many as twelve or fourteen.
By the time I got home at night, I had no words left for me. I have given them all "to the people." I didn't want to read words. I didn't want to write words.
The pleasure had gone from them.
I remembered this recently when a friend of mine recently finished her honors project for her bachelors degree. She lamented to me that her brain had been in "research mode" so long that she looked forward to returning to her creativity.
And I understood.
Many of us who write creatively also use our skills professionally. This can hinder productivity. It is important to do something you love as a career. It is important to have skill in what you do. But any career that involves creativity in its day-to-day life will drain you.
So you must be careful.
If I ever get the chance to write my novels and stories as a career, that means I will no longer have that as a hobby (and perhaps could return to having hobbies that involve putting my photos in albums, gardening or oil panting). But if I use those skills in my next career: for press releases, articles, whatever... I have to weigh if those things add to or detract from what I want to do with my words.
If the New Yorker calls and wants me to go be Adam Gopnik in Paris, I am there. If the AFP (French Press Agency) calls and wants me on staff, I'm there.
Other opportunities? Depends how badly I need the money. Depends how much of my soul they demand.
In America, we don't sell our souls to the devil, because corporations so gladly take them off our hands.
1. I don't believe in a journalism major. Journalists must have broad education or at least an intelligence that allows them to question and receive information. The craft of writing is part talent, part experience and part having the right mentors. I don't think journalism professors are the best mentors. The fast-paced universe and the breadth of topics that appear in a journalist's world are constantly in flux and an academic at a university has lost touch with this and cannot train a journalist for this.
2. I love to write. I didn't want to ruin that by writing all day long.
I was right. I spent four years in public relations and publications. Then, I moved to my journalism career. I wrote an average of ten stories per week for years on end. Sometimes I did as many as twelve or fourteen.
By the time I got home at night, I had no words left for me. I have given them all "to the people." I didn't want to read words. I didn't want to write words.
The pleasure had gone from them.
I remembered this recently when a friend of mine recently finished her honors project for her bachelors degree. She lamented to me that her brain had been in "research mode" so long that she looked forward to returning to her creativity.
And I understood.
Many of us who write creatively also use our skills professionally. This can hinder productivity. It is important to do something you love as a career. It is important to have skill in what you do. But any career that involves creativity in its day-to-day life will drain you.
So you must be careful.
If I ever get the chance to write my novels and stories as a career, that means I will no longer have that as a hobby (and perhaps could return to having hobbies that involve putting my photos in albums, gardening or oil panting). But if I use those skills in my next career: for press releases, articles, whatever... I have to weigh if those things add to or detract from what I want to do with my words.
If the New Yorker calls and wants me to go be Adam Gopnik in Paris, I am there. If the AFP (French Press Agency) calls and wants me on staff, I'm there.
Other opportunities? Depends how badly I need the money. Depends how much of my soul they demand.
In America, we don't sell our souls to the devil, because corporations so gladly take them off our hands.
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