The second hardest thing is getting everything organized, the notes made during workshops and group meetings and one-on-ones. The hardest thing is getting all the items done that the organization process reveals need doing, the follow-up website visits and calendar revisions and email inquiries and so on, ad finitum and etc. While this is just as true when you’re working as merely job-seeking (and trying to keep your personal life/business under control at the same time), somehow it seems easier then – maybe because when you’re working at least some of your priorities and deadlines are determined by other people and circumstances rather than your own ragged half-distracted ass.
This time the getting-organized component wasn’t that hard, even if it did take the better part of the other afternoon. That was the goal for the week I set on Monday in the weekly job-seekers group I’ve been going to: synthesizing all the input I’ve had in the month-plus of my first thrashing attempts at building a coherent network while generally trying to go about the job search in a new, more productive fashion. Now I can drop it from my to-dos: I am well-organized for the moment and you’d better believe it. Evernote has come to my rescue once again, acting as a handy repository for lists galore . Now comes the hard part of actually crossing off items on those lists.
Yesterday was my formal intake appointment at the vocational service. It kind of served to put a cap on the latest phase of shuffling around and exploring that began with all those “let’s network” emails I sent out in late September; now I actually have a counselor, and even if I don’t do any more than send email every few weeks updating her on my progress, that still acts as a dividing line between before and after. That and the fact that yesterday I received my quarterly disbursement and, skimpy though it was, added to the retirement fund money last week it gives me just about enough to get through the next three tightened-belt months without further aid (barring of course any unexpected catastrophic expenses). So: one phase ends, another begins. Yay today.
During these next three months I’ll be doing more than just looking for work. I will be performing the all-important task (according to various literature I’ve been reading) of building myself as a brand: a marketable, sound-bite-able, sharply-defined professional identity. I’ll be not just Drupal-ing, getting a site of my own that I want to show people in order, but Twitter-ing and LinkedIn-ing and Meetup-ing and, of course, face-to-face networking. All of which means, of course, that week by week I’m only going to end up with more stuff that I need to organize and then take action on. Busy busy.
This whole idea of building myself as a brand is kind of funny to me because for the first 40 years of my life I had no clue who I wanted to be and consequently what I wanted to do, which as you can imagine makes representing yourself a tricky thing. I’m still getting used to knowing myself as someone who knows what he wants, what he’s doing and where (after a fashion) he’s going; it’s a me I frequently don’t recognize. I suppose I could get to like him well enough eventually, though.
Something I’m going to need to find out is what this me has to say to the public, via the professional blog I want to set up on the commercial side of my new site and my professional Twitter account. (I just got on Twitter two days ago and immediately set up two accounts: one for the sort of stuff I like to put out on Facebook for my friends, which considering my political leanings could be, uh, a little controversial, and another for my business contacts. As always, compartmentalization is the name of the game in my little world.) It’s relatively easy to churn out entries in this blog you're reading; I’m writing about something of immediate interest to me – my life – and next month I’ll have been doing it for 12 years, plus because I’m writing primarily for myself it doesn’t matter much if I have a significant readership. A business blog/tweet is a whole other thing,: not only will I have to find/generate content I hope others (and lots of them) will appreciate, but I’ll have to articulate why I think that content is relevant enough to present.
I suspect learning to articulate thus will further serve to make me into someone I have trouble instantly recognizing. I also suspect that that, in the end, is what growing into yourself is about. And if I’m having trouble recognizing myself, at least part of it is because the current me is a more powerful, self-assertive person who’s got a better idea of who he is and what he wants than he ever before was or had. So in that case: bring it on. I’ll learn to adapt. This is why I cleaned up over ten years ago.
And I figure with so many people online now there are bound to be at least a few hundred interested in the same spread of things I am: OS X tricks and hacks, innovative design principles and theories, the intersection of technology and psychology, the pace and limits of progress, resource conservation. Perhaps even the redistribution of wealth, in the form of knowledge. Or maybe that’s all a bit too wide a net and I’ll have to focus more tightly as I go along. Either way, it’s a new start for me and a part of me is chomping at the bit to get to it.
Meanwhile another part is whispering in my ear: Caution. Get organized first and know what you’re doing before you start doing it. Not sure if that’s the traditional me, the habitually procrastinatory one, or the newer me keeping in mind how much trouble I’ve made for myself in the past by leaping in unprepared. I may never be sure; caution’s a useful practice except when it isn’t, and I suspect I’m by nature the sort of person who has trouble telling the difference. But I am sure that I’ve got three months starting today to learn a lot more about it than I know now.
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