Conference quark::mennotes-v1

    I fear I may be telling you something you already know, but perhaps
    not, given that you've (apparently) done exactly one job search during
    the last 15 years!
    
    There are several books by Richard Bolles (or similar) which help you
    work through this topic. The best known is "What Color is My Parachute"
    -- this is perenially on the best-seller lists in D.C. where there are
    many mobile professional types. "Parachute" exercises will let you
    think about the intersection of what you like, what you're good at, and
    what's out there. It pushes creating your own job, e.g. pursuade a
    prospective employer to make a job to your specifications (and give YOU
    the job!). Another Bolles book is "The Three Boxes of Life" which is
    more about mid-career changes and getting out of traps of
    circumstances.
    
    My personal experience is that job search is one of the best ways to
    explore this stuff. Practically anyone is willing to spare you half an
    hour to talk about what they do for a living, even if there are no
    immediate hiring needs. Call them "informational interviews." Network:
    get one contact to identify two or three more, then call the referrals
    with "X suggested I speak with your about opportunities doing Y." There
    are thousands and thousands of ways to spend your working day which
    you've never heard of and/or cannot imagine. Cast a very broad net. Ask
    general questions like "What do you like about your job." Answer THEIR
    questions about "Where do you see yourself five years from now."
    Getting all this new data, asking and answering questions, will expose
    you to an amazing range of possibilities, and you'll develop a much
    richer theory about what "growing up" means to you.
    
    Also, meager out your 50+ weeks' salary so if you DO select a new job
    three or six months from now, you retain the option of saying "Oops,
    this is not the right place for me" -- quit and search again!
    
    - Hoyt

    There is another book, called "Wishcraft".  I don't remember
    the author's name.   Lots of exercises for looking at yourself.
    Sounds like the book that Hoyt mentioned, which I haven't seen.
    
    Maybe it is time to take a sabbatical, though.
    
    If you leave with the idea that you "have to" find
    what you want to do, and then you "have to" find a job 
    doing that, then you may wake up every morning with 
    the nagging feeling that you haven't decided yet and/or 
    you haven't found the job yet.  The pressure of time
    will get to you.
    
    If instead, you think, "I am going to take the next year
    'off,' and I am not going to make any 'decisions' about
    my next job during that year," then you may find a whole 
    new you as the year goes by.  If only you and the dog
    are dependent on your income, then you have the freedom
    to take a lot of time off.
    
    It will be hard as hell to do, however, because all you
    know how to do right now is work at a regular job. If
    you continue to live where you now live, you will wake
    up each day with all the old patterns.  All your reflexes are
    built around going to work by some route, coming home, 
    feeding/walking the dog, etc.  So you may have to do
    something pretty drastic, like, get a small camper and
    decide to spend the year on the road, touring the US
    campgrounds, or move to a small apartment on the other
    side of the country, or, join the Peace Corps, etc.
    (Peace Corps takes time to get into and you are in
    for at least 2.5 years -- so that is not the same as
    a "year off".)
    
    I plan to leave Digital as soon as my condo is sold.
    I'm going to move to an apartment 500 miles away from
    here (to northern Virginia), and spend a year doing
    volunteer work, getting lots of exercise, eating well,
    doing some reading and writing.   And talking to 
    everyone who is interested in talking.
    
    I wish I could get the "package", but it doesn't look
    like it will happen...
    
    Wil

It sounds as if you have already done this, but I'll say it anyway.  I 
try to tell the writers in my group to pay attention to the tasks that 
cause them to get excited during the course of a work day.  Those 
moments that make your heart leap a little bit are the indicators that 
you are doing something that comes naturally and that you enjoy.  (For 
instance, my loving to write documentation plans and hating to 
actually write the documentation was an indication that the time was 
right for me to move out of writing and into management.)

Something else that is apparent to me is that, the older we get, the 
less it makes sense to abandon a career path completely (unless you 
are willing to take a huge pay decrease or be supported while you get 
retrained).  What I advocate is blending your experience with your 
more natural interests.  For example, I have friends who gave up on 
their true love (art or writing) and became programmers.  For the life 
of me, I don't understand why they don't move their programming 
careers into graphics or other fields that can keep them connected to 
what they really love.

I guess what I am saying is, figure out what makes your heart sing, 
then blend it with your computer experience, and then look for 
opportunities to make some money on it.

(Easier said than done, I know.)


							--Gerry

    Here's another vote for "What Color is My Parachute" .. an outstanding
    book.

    When my wife and I divorced she had to return to the work force ... a
    little scary, understandably, but, she had nothing but the highest of
    praise for WCIMP.

    Jerry

    I just reread .0 again.
    
    The title is:      "what do I want to BE when I grow up?".
                                          --
    
    The title is not: "what I want to DO in my next job?"
                                      --
    
    The "change" that is coming up for you is in the DOing area,
    but the question that you are asking is broader than that.
    It is easy to define who we are by what we do, but it can
    be a trap.  Are you a 38-year old man with a dog, or are
    you a materials planner on the shop floor?
    
    If you like to work with your hands, outside, tinker, etc,
    what is wrong with the Peace Corps?  (You'd have to leave 
    the dog behind.)  But you'd have three years to do something
    totally different from what you have been doing and to try
    out a whole new you, in a new environment, with new people,
    etc.  I had a programmer friend who went into the Peace Corps
    twenty years ago -- his 13 year old son asked him at the time,
    "what are you going to be when you grow up, dad?"  He is now
    in the diplomatic corps in Washington.  
    
    When I got divorced, my 54-year old ex-wife went into the Peace
    Corps.  She just re-upped for another hitch.  She loves it.
    
    There are lots of volunteer jobs in national parks, forests,
    seashores, etc.   (Last weekend a friend and I went for a walk
    on a beach that runs into a national wildlife refuge.  It was
    late afternoon, and we had the beach to ourselves.  As we
    approached the edge of the wildlife refuge I saw a person
    standing there looking out at the Atlantic.  When we came up
    to her, she told us that the refuge area was closed for the
    season, in order to protect the nesting sites of the terns
    and plovers.  We had a nice talk, she told us how the nesting
    was going, gave us a brochure on it, and we turned back.
    As we walked away I turned to look at her, and there she was
    under her broad-brimmed hat, walkie-talkie on her belt, watching
    that ocean again.  She told us she was a volunteer.
    
    You can do a lot of thinking about who you are when all you
    have to do is stand and watch the ocean.)
    
    Wil

    re: .5

    Yes, the Peace Corps sounds like a great idea.   But how hard is
    it, really?   Could one stand and look at the ocean, so to speak?
    Or, would there be "politics" there, just as in Digital?  Be great
    to find a place where a person could just *be*.   Are there such 
    places?  If there are, probably they are only temporary?  

    Mardy

    Damn...  I HATE when you lose a note mid-stream...
    
    Anyway, I replied that I had done a great deal of thinking about my
    life in the last few months, after having my long-term plans changed
    (via divorce, not loss of job), and I just have two things to say:
    
    - Live life for today
    - Do what makes YOU happy...
    
    You ask 'what to do when I grow up', where I would start with the
    question: "DO I want to grow up?" :-)...    And 'growing up' shouldn't
    be a goal, IMO...   Who cares?  I'd much rather happy than 'successful'
    (using the 'standard' definitions - IMO, I'm not successful UNLESS
    I'm happy...)
    
    You already seem to know WHAT you WANT to do...   You just want to know
    how to get PAID for it :-)   Less materialistically, you want to know
    how you can SURVIVE while doing what you WANT to do...   Your
    definition of SURVIVAL will dictate how far you have to stray from
    doing what you WANT to do...   (hey, that's pretty good :-) :-)
    
    For example, if you "can't survive" without weekly trips into the city
    for fine dining and entertainment, then you probably can't "survive" by
    being a sheepherder in Montana...
    
    I have a very low "survival" need...  In fact, if I get the package
    tomorrow, I will - in all seriousness - sell everything I own, go to
    bartender's school, and bum around the beaches of the Caribbean until I
    want to re-enter the rat race (which could be never).  This is my
    "worst case" scenario (damn good for a worst case, IMO :-)...
    
    But, as I hope and expect NOT to get the package, I'm working over 60
    hours a week in addition to the 'DEC 40' trying to keep my fledgling,
    two-year old, company on the side with own partner, afloat...  I'm
    killing myself short-term in hopes that I can achieve my (grown-up,
    long-term) dream of owning my own company.
    
    In my case, the freedom of 'being the boss', working directly to
    satisfy customers, free of restrictions, controls, politics, and
    bureaucracy is worth the lack of sleep (and pay), and balances very
    nicely with my DEC job, which pays me, but requires working in a large
    company...   The bad things about my own company make me recognize the
    good things about DEC, and vice-versa - and I have the best of both
    worlds. 
    
    You have the same challenge, but without the safety net of guaranteed
    income...  Again, your definition of 'survival' will dicate your
    choices: Peace Corps at one end of the spectrum, through struggling
    with a small "hands on" company, to becoming another working stiff at
    the other end...
    
    IMO, happiness with your work is crucial; you can survive a lot of
    other crap if you have that...  so take the time to find out what
    constitutes your definition of survival, and what you like to do, 
    and start planning how to how to link the two up as best as possible.
    
    JMHO+$.02,
    
    Dave
    

    William Bridges has written a book that I have found 
    very useful, called  "Transitions".
    
    He describes the process of change, and the importance
    of recognizing that there are endings, middle-grounds and
    beginnings to contend with.   He says we are easily lead
    into thinking that the "change" can be quick -- like
    crossing a street.  You decide that you don't want to
    walk on the shady side of the street, you want to
    walk on the sunny side, so you cross the street, and
    continue your walk in the sun.  We bring this
    simple model of "change" to the bigger changes in our
    lives and it doesn't work quite so smoothly.
    
    First, a big change takes longer.  Then, it involves sometimes painful
    endings with the shady side.  Then, it may involve a long
    period of transition, as if you had to sit in the middle of
    the street for awhile, or wander back and forth in periods
    of confusion and indecision.  Then, it involves a lot of
    beginnings which can be hard.  
    
    And these don't even all happen in sequence.  Sometimes you 
    are thrown into the beginning before you have had a chance 
    to even consider the endings.  Sometimes you think you can
    skip the endings because the beginnings look so enticing --
    all you have to do is run over there.  Sometimes you do the
    endings and start the beginnings and then a few weeks later,
    you are filled with confusion, and you think you've made a
    mistake.  Sometimes people jump to the new thing (the beginning)
    get heavily invested in it,  then have a terrible time of 
    confusion, loss of control, etc, and maybe a year later get
    to doing the ending work that they needed to do.  So endings, 
    middles and beginnings may not happen in that order.
    
    The book has lots of examples, anecdotes, etc that illustrate
    his points.  I've found it very useful to read during pretty
    turbulent periods of change in my life.
    
    The other thing that I have come to realize is that when
    I am in a period of change, that I don't have to consider 
    that a "new way" is "forever."  Example:  If I am crossing
    the street, getting to an island in the middle is not the
    same as getting to the other side, even though the island
    may feel safe, and is nice and sunny. The island is "transitional."  
    I can rest there for a while, before I step back onto the 
    roadway and make my way to the other side.
    
    So, to bring this into reality: I may end a job, a relationship,
    my membership in an organization, community, etc, and I need to
    recognize that there is ending work to be done, that it is hard
    to do, but doing it frees me to move on.  Then there is a time
    of confusion, when I may be searching, getting turned down,
    making false starts, during which I can easily get into self-
    destructive behavior.  Then there is the beginning, which at
    first is filled with optimism and high energy, after which may
    come the realization that it is not so perfect and will involve
    a lot of hard work before it will be satisfying.  
    
    Wil

    In my end is my beginning.

    And yet another quote forom one more member of the peanut gallery:
    
    "I'd rather be a failure at something I enjoy than be a success at
    something I hate"
    
    				- George Burns
    
    Couldn't have put it any better myself!  Whatever you decide, have fun
    doing it....and don't do anything that you have to leave the dog
    behind...  :-)
    
    Jill
    

  RE: .8

  That sounds like a good book, Wil.   And your description is pretty
  accurate as I see it.   The miracle is that sometimes we do change
  in spite of ourselves, and reach the other side of the street.  Of
  course, then we may still not "be there", yet we may console ourselves
  in having made a transition of sorts, if not exactly what we thought
  we had in mind.   Then comes the further challenge.

  Another possibility is that we just become numb.  In fact, part of our 
  problem is that numbness is always hovering about.  We have to fight it 
  off, fight off the insensitivity, the "blahness" that can so easily 
  overtake us.  Perhaps a thought that our time is indeed limited, can
  jar us back on course?   

  Mardy

    Weel, gee whiz.  When I saw that title I though, hey, this is gonna be
    fun.  People are gonna engage in flights of fancy, talk about thier
    dreams and desires, have fun.  
    
    When I grow up, I wanna be a caretaker/host in a wilderness lodge. 
    Kinda like the AMC hut caretakers.  Live someplace really primitive,
    meet people from all over, tune in a little closer to nature, never see
    a TV or newspaper.  Yeah, that's what I wanna do.
    
    jimc
    

    i came up on this late, but i saw it the same as (-.1).  Working in
    Field Circus, there is little chance that i'll ever get the
    "opportunity" to transition (with a package); moreover, i still have
    more than just the dog that are dependent upon my income.  Still, if 
    circumstances allowed, i'd become an independent "bush pilot", working
    when i felt like it (not very often i don't feel like flying.)  
    
    Unfortunately, that's likely as not to leave me starving between jobs
    {sigh}.
           	[dale]
    

 I want to be a charter boat captain, spending my time chasing marlin and tuna
about the great blue sea.