Job Seeker?

It’s January and it’s cold outside. Happy New Year everyone! I have so many plans and ideas, but the temperature is so frigid, that I can’t even think straight to put anything into motion. This is supposed to be the year, in which I let go and do things my way, because life is just too short not to. This is the year, in which I take my career to a whole nother level, and find a way to make a difference in the lives of those around me. This could be the year, in which I say good bye to the security of a nine to five desk job, of nine years, and follow through on a more rewarding experience.

It’s scary to say these thoughts out loud or let alone type them on a computer screen. It’s a frightening time for change and the current job market is nothing but volatile. The current unemployment rate now stands at ten percent and the headlines at Huffingtonpost.com read “Zero Net Job Creation Over Last Ten Years”. Meaning, if I’m looking to jump careers in search of new employment opportunities, the chances of me finding one now stands at slim to none.

But I remember when I didn’t think twice about going out and getting a new job. At fourteen, I served free lunch for Lexington’s Micro City Government, but felt too much drama unfolding under Director Ronald Berry and decided that one summer was enough for me. By fifteen, I found my high school niche serving fast food at the McDonald's on New Circle and Russell Cave Road, but that joint even got on my nerves for while and I ditched that for a few months, to try my hand at TCBY Yogurt. McDonald's paid more and was loads more fun, so I went back, and made my way through high school serving burgers and shakes. Picture below, is me on the left, without a uniform, hanging out with fellow McDonald's co-workers...



In college, I found a way to focus on the community through the YMCA, as an after school counselor, and then a summer camp counselor, and later a life guard, and a courtesy counter rep, and a Teen Leader director, and finally an Assistant Camp Director for the YMCA Urban Services department. Leaving the Y was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. The money wasn’t great, but the rewards were plenty.

When I graduated from college nearly thirteen years ago, emotionally I was on the run. I was willing to work anywhere and everywhere, just as long as it wasn’t in Kentucky. I spent the summer after my graduation with my paternal grandmother in Dayton, Ohio. During that summer, I worked at McDonald's, Toys “R” Us and for a Toyota Car dealership selling cars, although I know next to nothing about automobiles.

By that fall, I was in South Bend, Indiana, staying with my father, and I briefly worked at a McDonald's there. I also got into sales for Xerox copy machines and I was a substitute teacher for the South Bend School system. That job I loved. The kids were bad, but they were funny, and they used to leave all kinds of crazy notes and love letters on my desk.

I was in South Bend when I discovered an appreciation for the news. I took a position in the production department at WSJV, Fox 28, creating graphics and running studio camera, and I fell in love with broadcast journalism. I struck up a conversation with one of the senior reporters/ producers, who became my angel and agreed to let me shadow him. He taught me how to write for the newscast and sent me out on stories with a photographer to interview people and gather breaking news.

Eventually I made my way back to Lexington, and acquired a position in the production department for WKYT, channel 27. But my heart was in the newsroom, I wanted to be a news producer.

I did make it to the newsroom, and it was only a year and a half after I had graduated from college. Delivering information to the community that could make a difference in their daily life, felt very good to me. But the culture and environment and talent in the newsroom was at that time, draining. And I walked away from it, into a less stressful, less demanding, less rewarding, stable environment. And now nine years later, here I am. I’ve moved up and within the company I work for, and have relocated with them from Indianapolis to South Florida to Hilton Head, and still I am not satisfied.

I don’t know what this New Year is going to bring for me. The last time I was out in the job market, searching to do what I really wanted to do, I had sent out hundreds of hundreds of resumes before the senior news producer at WDEF in Chattanooga called me for an interview. I know I am not ready today to jump back in, to look for a new career. I don’t even know what I want to do next, but I may know tomorrow. I plan to take a few training courses or classes, to update my skill sets, and I plan to practice what I love to do, and eventually I will find my way into a better and more productive me, and into a more satisfying and rewarding life experience.