The (Mis?)Adventures of a Perpetual Job-Hunter/Job-Hater

I think “like” may have been too strong of a word to use in my post yesterday.

Thank you, Weekend.

It’s a sentiment that feels so strange for me to express. True, this feeling may wane fairly soon, but it’s still pretty remarkable considering the fact that I’ve never truly liked any of the jobs I’ve had in the past at any point during my tenure in the positions. So it’s an incredibly foreign and refreshing thing to me, this job-liking.

It’s about time, though… especially after the hell I endured in my last job. The job-liking stratum of the working world is definitely a nice place to be! But I must admit that I don’t love my job… or even like it a lot. Nor do I feel like I’m maximizing my potential. So while I’ve finally found a job that doesn’t compel me to fantasize about leaving the office for lunch break and never returning, it’s not the elusive self-fulfilling career that I set out to find at the beginning of this blogging adventure. Let’s hope the internship gets me closer to finding it. I’m really excited to start. And I’m also relieved that I’ll get to do it without being completely destitute: my proposed Monday to Wendesday schedule at my job was approved, and I get to retain full-time hours until the end of the year. I’ll have to move to “freelancer” status in the new year, though, since they’ll have to hire someone else to fill the typical contract position (i.e., with the conventional Monday to Friday schedule). But that’s cool. I always wanted to work as a freelancer because of the freedom it entails. The amount of work assigned to me won’t be guaranteed, which would obviously impact my pay… but I’d get to choose my hours, decide when to go in to the office, and complete certain tasks at home. It’ll be good.

Who knew I’d actually like a job for once? It’s shocking!

I was plagued by the most disgusting dizziness today. It started at about 9:30 am and lasted the entire work day. I think a lot of people who have desk jobs suffer from this ailment now and then, but I’m convinced that working in legal publishing increases the frequency of my dizziness episodes. Marking up and being hunched over hundreds of pages for hours on end, all the while trying to decipher legalese that employs a bunch of misplaced and, in my opinion, unnecessary commas that impede comprehension (I’m definitely a fan of the comma, as you all can tell by now, but even I’ll admit that my curvy little friend can make too many appearances) really does aggravate my desk-job-rooted proneness to dizziness. Ugh. Such. A. Bad. Day.

Anyway, another dizzying situation is the scheduling issue I’ve been having with regard to the internship. The editor at the magazine emailed me on Monday to let me know that after more thought, she realized that she could not accommodate my new job schedule. But she’d be more than happy to take me on as an intern as soon as my availability opens up. So, because I decided that I can’t let this opportunity slip away, I approached my supervisor and asked her if I could still stay on with the company and work Monday to Wednesday (so that I can dedicate all of Thursday and Friday to the internship). She was happy to work with this proposed schedule, but unfortunately I’m still waiting for official approval from the Big Kahuna. So, I’ll have to wait and see what happens… but I’ve made a choice – I’m going to do this internship even if my work schedule doesn’t get approved. If I don’t, then what was the Big Stand that I took when I quit my previous job for???

I’ve realized that sometimes all it really boils down to is a choice. Sometimes it’s not about dizzying yourself by keeping your options open, trying to juggle a couple of opportunities and then waiting to see which one ends up working out. Sometimes it’s about streamlining… eliminating the non-essentials… choosing to do what you truly want to do, thereby creating a simple trajectory to follow, even if the risks of that simple path are obviously high (therefore rendering that simple path not so simple after all!) and you’re not sure where you’ll end up at the end of it all. Those  types of choices are particularly difficult to make… a choice is a full-fledged commitment, and it’s absolutely terrifying to commit to something that’s so uncertain. But making these choices is contingent on a leap of faith that’s the starting point for the fruition of truly remarkable things.

…

I’ll work my way up to “remarkable”. Right now, I’ll settle for trying to ”do something that I actually want to do”. But then again, some might even call that remarkable, no?

The editor at the magazine had no qualms about working around my work schedule! I’m incredibly excited!!!! I’m so elated that I don’t have to give up this experience.

Man, I hope this leads to good things. I really, really hope that in a year I can say that I actually work – for wages – at a magazine. Maybe in 2.5 years I’ll somehow get an Assistant Editor gig… and I’d be happy to remain in that position until the 5-year mark - hopefully at that point I’ll be a full-fledged Editor.

I think I should take some magazine publishing courses… I really wish I hadn’t switched my Journalism major to English in the second year of my undergraduate career. I mean, I don’t regret the route I ended up taking. I wholeheartedly loved my undergrad courses in English and didn’t know for certain that I no longer wanted to pursue my PhD until after I finished my MA and was just a couple months away from beginning the PhD, so I had no clue it would all end up this way and that I’d eventually want to pursue a journalistic rather than academic career… but it’s not too late, right?

It’s never too late!

Can’t it all just work out for me for once? So the new job is fine, but it lost quite a bit of its lustre this afternoon when my supervisor told me that I can’t work early hours until my “newness” has diminished. She wants me to get more traning under my belt before I begin working without a supervisor in the office (the earliest a supervisor arrives in the morning is 7). The problem – IT’S A BIG PROBLEM – is that I’m supposed to intern from 2-5. I was supposed to work from 5-1, which would’ve worked perfectly with my internship hours, but now my plan that was neatly tied up with a pretty little bow has gone completely to hell.

I want to be a part of this magazine – seriously, I NEED this experience. Since Friday is a short work day at the company I work for, I can intern from 12:15 to 5, but the internship requires a two-day commitment. I’ve already emailed the editor of the magazine with all of the details re: the schedule debacle and told her I can come in for an hour Monday to Thursday (to discuss new developments and assignments that I can take home) AND dedicate all my spare time to completing tasks on my own time (I completed some fact-checking on my own this past week and it went really well!)… I just hope we can work something out.

What am I supposed to do, though? While I need to intern for the magazine to help me get on the career path that I want to be on, since I haven’t won the lottery yet, I also need this job. And for the first time in a very long time, I can say that my job is decent… and the company is more than decent. It’s a truly solid company, actually. Probably the best I’ve worked for in terms of taking care of employees. I’m on contract, but the chances of getting hired permanently are quite high… and once that happens, I could work the hours I want, receive awesome benefits (maternity leave top-up!), and eventually work from home FOREVER if I choose to do so.

At the end of the day, though, I don’t think it would be enough. Yes, I do think I would be able to learn to accept having a “meh” job at a good company. But it still wouldn’t be enough… I could never permanently quiet the nagging voice inside my head, which would constantly remind me that I’d be happier doing something else.

I just hope that nagging voice never leaves me – because so long as I’m armed with it, there will always be potential for my continued evolution. I don’t ever want to lose the ability to want better for myself when I know I can amount to so much more.