I worry that what has happened to me will eventually happen to everybody else. I worry that everyone is going to get COVID-19, and that a significant chunk those of us who didn’t die will just feel cruddy forever.
At least it feels that way. I first got sick four months ago, and as I write this I’m still sitting listlessly bundled up in blankets. Woke up twice from chills last night. Still on an inhaler, still planning my days around the latest alarm to take my pills. What if this is all there is? There’s this saying: ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ I used to puzzle over it when I was a kid and try to figure out what it meant. Basically it means, enough stuff happens every day to worry about. No reason to worry about the past or the future. The problems of today will always be enough to keep us busy. There’s a balancing effect there, sort of like dollar-cost averaging. On the days when things are truly terrible, we can make a memory that will help to remind us why we can appreciate the easier days a little more. Taking a decent day for granted is a sad mistake. In one sense, I can remind myself how fortunate I am in almost every respect. At least it’s something to do to occupy my time... I lived, I can call my family, I have health insurance, my doctor is responsive, there is currently a little robot mopping my floor. All pretty great stuff. I have to keep going through these exercises because the rest of me is getting pretty fed up. What did I even do to bring this on myself. I don’t mean getting COVID, because to be fair I was duly warned. I actively debated whether I should go out that day with both my husband and QT. I took an informed risk that blew up my entire life, but it wasn’t like I had no idea it could happen. What I want to know is where the bacterial pneumonia came from. The antibiotics seem to have done a reasonable job on it. Now I just feel like I have a bad cold, which is a huge improvement over feeling like someone kicked me in the chest several times with a steel-toed boot. But still. I’ve spent eight weeks so far this year being ill. Now it feels like my rational course of action is to just plan for this to be my default mode. Get up. Hit inhaler. Get dressed, eat breakfast, take pills. Start work. Clock out and lie down on couch. Drink NyQuil and go to bed. Repeat. * This is the location of the pivot * See, I know I can go on like this if I have to. If I don’t get better but if I also don’t get very much worse. I wouldn’t be able to do it if we had to go in to the facility. I don’t know if I’m contagious. I also think it would be too much for me to get up an hour earlier every day and get myself across town. But for now, it’s possible. The alternative? The alternative would be to lie around feeling cruddy every day and watching my husband work. Whenever I think about that, which is daily, I think of how boring and depressing it would be to feel this way and also to have nothing to do. Then I think of all the famous historical figures I can remember who fought chronic illnesses. It turns out there are a LOT. Carson McCullers had lupus and died at age 50. (I have a friend who has lupus who has outlived this sad milestone). Proust, he... what the actual heck was wrong with him?... he was considered to be a hypochondriac but it turns out he actually had a rare genetic disorder and died aged 51. Frida Kahlo was in a horrible bus accident as a teenager, suffered chronic pain the rest of her life, and died at 47. Emily Bronte died of tuberculosis aged 30, although she wasn’t sick yet when she wrote Wuthering Heights so that’s sort of a different point... (Which is to make the most of the time we have, because we know not the day nor the hour) Anyway there have been all sorts of artists who made their art in spite of their physical state, level of pain, or mood. Probably about as many as those who had substance abuse challenges. Someone could do a statistical comparison; it might be comforting. Or a PhD topic, or both. This is exactly what is annoying me so much right now. I had this bright idea that I was going to apply for grad school and get a PhD, but now I feel so low that it seems like it would probably be a fantastic waste of money. What can I manage on a daily basis, what can I do simply by putting one foot in front of the other and making it through the hours, one hour by one hour by one hour by one hour? Living, I suppose I hope that thinking about my state of breathlessness and exhaustion helps someone else. I hope it can help uplift someone who at least feels capable of breathing cleanly. Of course I also hope it helps someone to deal with the boredom of self-isolation, knowing you are saving yourself from something yet more boring and depressing, which is to just be ill all the time. But I hope it helps some of you to feel that you can go on, cook a nice dinner or put fresh clean sheets on your bed or something. I’ll learn to pace myself, like we all do. Eventually I’ll figure out how much I can expect of myself. Eventually I may find a way to get up to my old hijinks. For now, it’s worth remembering that there are only five months left of this stupid year. Others have dealt with worse (cite: 536 AD) and made something of it. This is my hope, that I’ll find a way to dab my own drop of paint or scribble my own smear of ink. You as well. Let us all get through this together, breathe our way out of it and try to make it into something worthwhile. Something happened. Something happened at work and I’m not sure what the ramifications will be until next week, maybe later.
It basically went like this. I got a brand-new job, partly based off a project I’d been doing on spec for not quite two years. Right after I started, I reached out to someone who knew about that project to ask for advice on choosing a grad school in her field. She invited me to meet, which I thought was very generous, and it turned out she wanted to talk about my project. Then she asked me to give a presentation, which I did. What I thought I would be doing was giving a brown-bag lunchtime talk to about a dozen people. I’d tell them how I came up with the idea for my project and how I put it together. I’d share the specific work tools I use and maybe teach some of my techniques. Fun, right? Then there were 80 people there, at least one of them a director, and the response wound up being at least 10x bigger than I expected. WELL THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY One of the slides in my presentation came from notes I scribbled on my phone in the middle of the night, when all I wanted to do was sleep. During the Q&A everyone wanted to go back and look at that slide and discuss it some more. Now I’m realizing that my original idea might have legs. I may have accidentally and sleepily created something good enough to be an entire book. This kinda happens to me all the time. The thing about ideation and creativity is that it comes out of a pipe. For some people, that pipe has been shut off for many years, and it will take more than a pipe wrench to get it turned on again, trickling out in brown sputters that nobody wants to drink at first. Then the water starts flowing pure and clean and cold. Then it really starts flowing and spraying all over the place. Then it’s like a fire hydrant blasting every kid in the street and it takes an entire crew to get it back under control. This is my fountain, a high-pressure water main continually pumping by the thousands of gallons, and here I am in rubber boots, trying to collect it all in buckets and cans before it washes away my entire building. BAIL! Part of my remit now is to put together a reading list of books on imagination and creativity. I’ve read dozens of these, and if anyone can do this task, certainly I can. The trouble is keeping it under eight pages... although maybe I don’t need to... Being a natural ideator often feels like trying to keep a beach ball under water in the pool. It keeps finding ways to pop back out and then everyone wants to play with it. The process of pushing that beach ball back underwater is ungainly, and it feels very exposed to do it in a swimsuit. The idea is often ready before we are. I’ve been working on capturing more things at the beginning phase of the process, the early curly part of the ideation arc, so that people can watch something unfold in realtime. Wouldn’t it be interesting if my little grid illustration, born in the dark of night on my pillow, eventually turned into a published book? And we all got to watch it happen together? I know what I am. Over the past several years I have developed myself into a working artist, and I have that confidence in my identity that is necessary to succeed in the creative world. What I don’t necessarily have yet are the world-class ready-for-prime-time skills that develop from practice and experience. I also don’t have the validation or credentials of having millions of fans. (Yet - but it could happen). Possibility thinking includes anything and everything with a non-zero chance. There’s a zero chance that I will personally go to Mars, because I’m scared to get in a rocket and I just don’t want to. But there’s definitely a non-zero chance that people will go to Mars in my lifetime. Mars is a thing, me on Mars is not going to be a thing. In that same light we can say, what else is there a non-zero chance of happening? In the past 25 years there’s been a non-zero chance of me working on a llama ranch, sorting recycling in Antarctica, winning $15,000 on a game show, or teaching MMA classes. This is because I am curious and I give serious consideration to options and opportunities that would not cross someone else’s mind as acceptable outcomes. Is this awesome? Y/N Would this be good for the blog? Y/N Will this cause me to go viral for the right or wrong reasons? Then what happens? Sometimes I don’t believe my own hype. I can document the fact that I came up with the idea to backpack around Iceland for three weeks, and then rooked my husband into it. I can document the fact that I studied knife fighting and situational combatives. I can document the fact that I can solve cryptograms while listening to audio books on triple speed and using chopsticks left-handed. But that all makes me sound like a cartoon character. Inside I still think of myself as the world’s most boring person, because just as much of my time goes toward basic domestic tasks as everyone else. It’s probably inevitable that I’ll wind up publishing a book, and/or giving workshops, and/or putting out a cartoon or an advice column or something. Those are just locations on the other end of the innovation arc that I’m traveling on. I can’t stop running my mouth, in realtime or behind the scenes in my own mind. Myself talks to myself a lot. It will turn into something eventually. What remains to be seen is whether it will take 3-5 years, like I originally estimated, or whether it will happen more quickly because I have already dreamed it into obviousity. Eat Sleep Work Repeat is a pretty solid description of a lot of our workdays, even during stay-at-home orders. The only correction I would make is that I’m probably not alone in often eating while I work. When I quit my day job in 2010, I lost 15 pounds the first year just from not snacking at my desk. Anyway. Bruce Daisley is here to show us all how to replace the negative factors of our work lives with something nice. Yes, all of them!
Personally, I have it made. I can work from home, barefoot, next to an open window. This was literally my dream when I was 24. All the things that used to bother me about work are, at least temporarily, gone: The commute, getting up early to fuss with my hair, the dress code, wearing a badge, the burnt popcorn in the break room, and, worst of all, freezing all day most days. Now I can wrap up in a blanket when I need to and nobody even knows. Isn’t it weird how the things we dislike about “work” usually aren’t related to the work itself? It’s the conditions that get us - that, or the friction of human interactions. This book is arranged in short sections that are focused on specific, easily manageable changes. Some examples would be taking an actual lunch break, or banning phones from meetings. Much of the book deals with ways that colleagues can help each other create a better work environment that is both more efficient and more fun. Eat Sleep Work Repeat is the rare sort of business book that can be shared at work and embraced by anyone who picks it up. Let’s all try to spread the word about some of these cultural changes so they become the norm... whenever we go back to having a norm. Favorite quotes: Is it reasonable to expect to enjoy your job? We’re overwhelmed with demands and expectations placed on us by others, but we have come to accept it all because we assume that’s the way it is and has to be. Quite simply, when we laugh we’re willing to show our truest selves to others and be more open to the quirkiness of others. Leading Without Authority is an automatic classic. This is not a motivational business book in the traditional sense. It’s more of a tell-it-like-it-is guide to why some people are really hard to work with, which can be so refreshing. Read the right way, Keith Ferrazzi’s book can help deal with not just frustrating people at work, but frustrating people at home, too.
What I love about this book is the concept of co-elevation, that improvement is a group project. I can’t become a better person without having a positive effect on others. Helping others, in turn, is a form of self-improvement. Any person at any level has the power to reach out and try to solve problems in the workplace, no matter how pernicious. Try, anyway. Usually it’s the small stuff that rankles on us more. We can sort of learn to accept larger issues - like my first job at a mortgage bank, where I knew they sometimes foreclosed on people - but daily friction with our coworkers can become nearly intolerable. That’s usually why people quit, because there is that one person (or boss) they just can’t stand any more. Part of the reason why is that we feel like we’re expected to pretend these interpersonal issues don’t happen. Meanwhile, the person who is bothering us - and possibly everyone - may have no idea! We only know how other people perceive us if they tell us. Ferrazzi encourages us to approach the people we’ve written off and figure out a way to work with them. Leading Without Authority has a bunch of examples of how much this oogs people out, how they’d basically do anything to avoid this type of conversation, but then how they did it and managed to make a real connection. I have tried this and I have to say, it does usually work. There are people out there who are unapologetic jerks, and it can be funny to have a conversation with them about their methods, because they have no problem admitting their part in things. Other times, the person everyone is whispering about is totally oblivious. One of these successes involved the guy who always came to the potluck but never brought anything. I hate nothing more than when people talk smack about someone behind their back and refuse to confront them directly. I said to him mildly, “Usually when people come to a potluck they bring something, like a bag of chips or some paper plates.” “Oh?” he said. He was from Ukraine and, guess what? This was a completely new custom to him, so how was that his fault? From that point forward, he always made sure to bring a contribution. Start with the assumption that people are nicer than you think they are. Another occasion that went much better than I expected: I worked at a campus with limited parking. There weren’t enough parking permits to go around, and they only lasted a year. The person in charge issued new permits, and suddenly several people found out that their permits had arbitrarily been canceled with no notice. (!) Mass outrage. I suggested that at least a form letter should go out to tell people, if not some other systemic reforms, but nobody wanted to confront this infamous Revoker of Permits. I volunteered as tribute. I emailed her, and she literally invited me to her office for tea and cookies. She had an entire collection of beautiful teapots and an oak dining table she had brought from home, complete with cloth napkins. I made my suggestions, she instantly agreed, and then we just hung out and ate cookies together for a while. Not much of an ogre. If you ever find yourself lying awake at night, going over a bad interaction at work or just dreading going in the next day, you need this book. Maybe everybody does. Leading Without Authority is most excellent, and I can vouch that its premise even works for lowly administrative assistants. I’ve been getting a lot of texts from my landlord lately. We’re on his mind because he’s been doing a gut reno of the unit beneath ours. One of the improvements is something he wants to add to our unit. I reminded him that we are both working at home and that this would be really hard to do with a skill-saw running ten feet away.
It occurred to me only recently that our jobs are an abstraction to our landlord, because he... has never had an ordinary job. This is true of a surprising number of people in our community. Prosperous as they may be, busy and hard-working as they may be, the way that they’ve “made it” in this world is usually in a weird and personal way that would not apply to anyone else. On the one hand, this is exciting, because it speaks to the idea that no matter what you want to do, there probably is a way to succeed at it. On the other hand, it illustrates the fact that not everyone’s advice is generically useful. Most people’s career advice won’t help you, either because they have no experience in your field, because what worked at the time they did it is no longer effective, or because the reason they think they succeeded is not actually the real reason. Keep this in mind if you are currently out of work, because, as you’ve probably already noticed, everyone has a theory and everyone has plenty of time to share it with you. Don’t ask your romantic partner for career advice. This is paramount even if they do, in fact, happen to work in the same field as you. It just gets messy. They have a vested interest in the outcome. They (hopefully) have a strong bias about how great and cute you are. More likely, in spite of all their many adorable traits and touching loyalty, they are lacking in the sort of strategic planning or negotiation skills that you need. Don’t ask your parents for career advice. To them, you will always be three years old. They already had their chance to tell you anything you needed to know while you were their captive audience in a high chair. What worked for them when they were your age is unlikely to be on the cutting edge of your field today. Don’t ask your friends for career advice, unless all your friends are work friends? What brought you together as friends is most likely that you’re all on a similar wavelength, which means they can’t tell you much other than “You got this!” The sole exception to this is if your friends group is ambitious and you’ve all been trending upward together. If you are very lucky, your friends know you and your skills quite well, and they can pinpoint areas where you can improve or show yourself off. If you’re unlucky, these same friends are your most likely competition. I know more than one person who is no longer friends with someone because both parties applied for the same job, and only one of them got it. It’s worse when one friend tells the other about the posting and then loses out. That’s gotta sting. I didn’t tell anyone when I was busy applying for my new job, and I didn’t ask for advice, largely because I was trying not to die at the time. I had barely enough juice in me during those three weeks to hold the phone to my head, much less run a mastermind session. None of it would have come together for me if I hadn’t put in so much effort months earlier. I did ask for career advice, as should anyone who is looking for something more interesting and more remunerative. I went to an actual career coach, someone with decades of experience in HR who teaches workshops on the subject. She also volunteers her services in the community. It’s not uncommon for people of her experience level to spend the majority of their time mentoring others, because there isn’t much left to learn or explore otherwise. Once you reach mastery, every day is pretty similar to every other day. The joy of watching others blossom into a better version of themselves, though, that never gets old. Usually the advice of someone at career mastery is straightforward and simple. That’s because you’re not their first customer. Undoubtedly they’ve helped others in your situation before, and they remember what worked and what didn’t. What a strong mentor is looking for is initiative. If they give you advice and you ignore it, they’re going to back off, because their time is valuable and there’s someone else in line who will pay closer attention. If you’re wise enough to take action and *do* what your mentor suggests, that’s exciting. It shows that you get it and that you’re worth the effort. After you’ve done the first obvious thing, you’re much more likely to get the golden envelope with the next obvious step. Entire careers are built this way. The first piece of advice that I always give to job-seekers is to put up a profile on one of the major job sites - not LinkedIn but Monster or Indeed, one of those. I have yet to encounter someone who has already done this simple, obvious step. The second piece of advice sounds yet more obvious, but it is nevertheless true: treat your job hunt like a job. Clock in and do eight hours a day. What else are you going to do all day, anyway? (Answer: do training modules on some software that you don’t know, or at least learn some advanced features of the stuff you already use). When you’re out of work, it can make you feel vulnerable like nothing else. It’s haunting. Why me, what next, what if this is it, now what am I going to do?? Getting unhelpful advice (or critique) from people who could otherwise be cheerleading and boosting you is just going to make matters worse. Quit giving updates or asking for advice from anyone in your life who does not have tangible success in your specific field. Keep your chin up and keep going! Remember, you don’t need every job, you only need one. You got this! Having just started a new job in a new field, I can verify that the job-hunting approach in #ENTRYLEVELBOSS is accurate. Listen to Alexa Shoen, because she knows how this is done.
For some reason, the old methods persist. Every conversation with someone who has just been laid off is the same. “There are no jobs out there.” That basically ends the conversation. They’ll wind up taking the first opening that they hear about, a random position at a random company, and keep trudging along until the next round of layoffs. I personally just got a job that I applied for while I had COVID-19, and if someone with a lung infection can do well in a panel interview, chances are that anyone can. That is, of course, if they are using an effective approach, and not simply emailing their crusty old resume around every now and then. I asked a friend who is successful in my field if I could see his resume, and used the same format. Then I had him look it over. After that I passed it to a friend who is a manager for another tech company. I also went to a workshop and had a couple of sessions with a career coach, who helped me figure out some highlights to share at interviews. In all three cases, I wound up adding and emphasizing aspects of my resume that I hadn’t realized were important. I applied for three jobs - only three. The first one never replied, the second one sent a quick rejection, and the third one went from application to start date within six weeks. My experience validates Shoen’s emphasis on targeting very specific jobs, rather than sending out the maximum number of applications. This is really important. The job you want, at the company where you want to work, may not be advertising all its openings in places where you would see them. It’s also possible that you can set up a profile and fill out an application at your desired employer before the job you want opens up - that’s what happened to me. I got a job that didn’t even exist when I applied for it. That kind of thing happens all the time. I’ve also seen people close to me have positions created for them because someone wanted to bring them aboard. Employers want motivated people to come to them and say, “I can solve this problem for you.” Whoever you are, you have skills that someone wants. You can fill a role that nobody else can do quite as well as you. Just because you might not be a fit at one place (or several) doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be perfect elsewhere. Don’t give up - read #ENTRYLEVELBOSS and do whatever you need to do to change your approach. Favorite quotes: You will never again find yourself at a dead end, panicking without a plan. It is extremely unlikely that you are the one truly unemployable person on this earth. We’re on a 9/80 schedule and I’m still trying to make sense out of it. When I say ‘we,’ I mean that my husband has been working this way for a few years, while I generally exist in a timeless void. Now I’m back in the Time Dimension and trying to get my bearings.
Basically 9/80 means you work 80 hours in nine days. This has been relatively unclear to me because my husband a) travels a lot and b) works tons of overtime. Trying to discern his underlying schedule is like trying to spot me under the many layers I wear to hockey games. Something’s going on in there, not sure what exactly... So we work nine hours Monday through Thursday. On Friday, we either work eight hours or we get the whole day off. Four hours of overtime each week, tape them together and turn it into alternating three-day weekends! The reason I’m focusing so much on this is that I want to go to grad school (online anyway), and I’m trying to figure out if I can somehow create the time to study and do coursework. Our weeknights are like this: Clock out at 6 pm Cook and eat dinner Work out for an hour, half an hour to shower and get ready for bed ...because all of a sudden it’s almost 9 pm! I’ve been here before. I went back to school during my first marriage, working full-time during my entire freshman year. We would get up at 6 am and carpool downtown. I would take my morning class, then ride my bike to work, put in a full day, ride my bike back to campus for my night class, then ride home and do homework, going to bed at 2 am. Then I started collapsing, had to go through a bunch of medical tests, and basically discovered that even someone in her twenties needs more than four hours of sleep a night. I dropped out partway into my first term of sophomore year, and didn’t pick up the thread again until after my divorce. That’s, ah, the other thing. I want to do this - meet my outrageous academic dream - and skip the parts that didn’t go so well the first time. The health issues, the divorce, then the financial catastrophe. Advanced education, to me, has always seemed like a gauntlet. You go through an intensive experience for a short time, something fraught with brain drain and all-nighters, and you come out the other side into a new world of opportunity and perspective. This has been on my mind lately, because I had one of those articles that encourages you to ask your partner ‘deep thoughts’ questions. I asked him what accomplishment he was most proud of in his life. (I usually know his answers to most of that type of question). He surprised me by replying that it was going to grad school. Wow, really?? It’s making me feel like a kid looking through the window at a candy store. This place, this place where we work... I got to hear an interview candidate give a presentation today that he said nobody else had heard, as he is on his way to defend his dissertation. Waaaah! *I* wanna defend a dissertation! There are a couple of parts to this project, all of which I have to figure out in the brief windows of time that are available, unless I can somehow stave off my curiosity until the weekend. First, figure out whether I can pass the GRE, which is a special standardized test - or whether there is some kind of nifty shortcut that allows me to get into grad school without it. Second, probably do some self-study to make sure I can get a passing score. I haven’t taken a math class since 1993 and I suspect this may be a problem. Third, figure out what other supporting documentation I will need, such as recommendation letters from professors who have not seen me since, at best, 2004 - or, again, whether I can get around this somehow. Fourth, hack a way to get in for free, get someone else to pay for it, or, even better, get paid to attend! Fifth, figure out how to get on the Dean’s List without disrupting my day job. Or, at least, disrupting it in only a positive direction. Which should hopefully be easier considering all those tasty three-day weekends. I knew nothing the first time around. I had no idea, for instance, that there were study guides for the SATs or any of the other standardized tests. If I had known, I probably would have asked for one for my 12th birthday and read it over and over until the cover fell off. Neither did I realize what the three-digit numbers were that followed course titles. That’s how I found myself in a graduate-level course as a freshman. No matter who you are or what you are doing, there is always something so “obvious” that nobody thinks to describe or explain it. I am going to be the person who finds that out. It’s like if ‘obvious’ had a loading dock out back, and I’m always wandering around out there trying to find an unlocked door, when the front has a giant neon sign with an arrow. One ‘obvious’ thing would probably be, don’t try to go to school full-time while working full-time, since you already know that is too hard. Another might be, don’t start planning this type of project when you only got over COVID-19 like six weeks ago. Ah, but it should be obvious by now, I can’t rest without a challenge. Maybe I’ll never do it, but it sure is fun to think about. Besides, if I can’t find the time to do it while we’re under a stay-at-home order and I have no work commute, then when can I? This was the year I was going to turn in my book proposal. I had bites from an agent and an editor. I had a plan. I had an outline. I had pages of notes. I was actively working on it and it seemed like I was on track to finish by my personal deadline of mid-June.
I decided to put all that aside for now and take a day job instead. I haven’t given up on Being a Writer, not yet anyway. What I did was to make a strategic decision based on new inputs. This year hadn’t been going all that well. First Quarter 2020 was a mess. I was still in bandages from my surgery, then my hubby had a severe eye injury, then we both got the flu, then we had to put our dog down, then my hubby’s bike got stolen... Week after week, disruption followed by chaos. Then I began Second Quarter with COVID-19. These things aren’t even problems, not for a writer. In a certain light, they can be regarded as unexpected gifts of interesting material. Something to write about. What happened was that in the weeks that I spent severely ill, feeling that death was near, my perspective shifted. I realized that the world had changed. My plans needed to change, too.
My husband’s employer (and now mine, too) sent everyone to work from home quite early, before any state in the US had a stay-at-home order. Our county had had one death, but the schools, bars, gyms, churches, and everything else were still open. Airports hadn’t even begun screening. Only Disneyland made the decision faster. This is part of why I made the choice to go to work with them. Imagine a workplace culture where employees are literally regarded as irreplaceable assets whose safety must be protected at all costs. Different, right? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Last year, my husband was out on travel over half the time. We barely saw each other. A couple times we had mere hours within a few weeks. This year has started to make up for the time away, considering that he is now in our living room on conference calls up to 10-12 hours a day. Here, in our living room, where I used to work quietly alone. Now our home is a company-sponsored conference room. If I’m going to be here anyway, I may as well put on a headset and join the party. It’s not like I can leave and work at a cafe. Going back to work has been everything I hoped it would be while I was ill. The time passes very quickly. I learn something new every day. I am rapidly catching up with several new titles of enterprise software. I had met a dozen or so of my new colleagues before the shutdown, and it’s fun to be able to talk to them more. There are other reasons why I feel like taking a day job was a good idea, as opposed to poking away at my now-obsolete book proposal. This is the first place I have ever worked where anyone takes my degree seriously. I feel accepted as an academic peer. I’ve already been invited to a few separate ideation meetings, where I was able to contribute as an active participant rather than a clerk. I could plausibly apply for a fellowship here, not just tuition reimbursement. My goal in writing a book was to share my perspective in some way that would impact others. What if working for an organization made a bigger dent than my book ever could? What if I also earned more? What if I did both, the book and the job? It occurred to me that my writing has been a pressure valve for my life, and that if I felt very busy again, it might blast its steam into any part of my schedule that it could. It also gives me more to write about. More power dynamics, more colloquialisms, more quirky characters. I have a window into something that I otherwise would not, which is how this particular profession handles the shift to WFH and positions itself against the pandemic. One of our colleagues, a young PhD from a family of medical doctors and researchers, is convinced that our strategy is not nearly cautious enough. This is interesting in the context of a beach community where everyone else is busy demanding the rights to surf, go to the bar, and have access to hair dye and nail art. We’re most likely continuing to WFH for at least the rest of the calendar year. I just learned this a few days ago, and it helps to validate my decision. Where could I work on my book when my husband and I are confined to our 650-square-foot apartment for the duration? When there may not be open seating in the library or the coffee shop for the rest of the year either? Cases are accelerating rapidly in our county. I see no (sound, rational) reason for a major shift in social distancing policy in the near future. I wanted something interesting to do. I wanted to be a part of something great and to be where the action is, instead of moldering away on my couch. There are intriguing financial benefits, too, beyond the obvious. I maxed out on life insurance and long-term disability, having had recent cause to believe that I truly could expire any day. What a load off my mind, that if I die suddenly, at least my poor hubby could buy a house. It’s a bit of a paradox, but having a day job is relaxing in many ways. There’s no time to fret about world events. Most of the day is highly structured. Now, if I find time to write a book, it’s remarkable, rather than belated. If I get published, it’s great news, rather than overdue. There is plenty to be going on with. So you want a job where you can work from home, but you aren’t sure how to get one. Maybe I can help.
One of the first things that happens when people are out of work is that they start doubting themselves and aiming low. They feel insecure about their abilities, maybe even defensive about their track record. Rather than think, Hey, now is the perfect time to learn a few things and become more competitive, it’s more common to think, I wouldn’t even make a good doorstop, or, I can’t even cast a good shadow. What I’ve learned is that employers don’t care what you did before. They only care whether you’ll show up and do something for them tomorrow and the day after. I spent a lot of time preparing for my new job. I read at least a dozen articles on tough, tricky interview questions. I scoured my resume and reviewed all my talking points from every major project I did over the last twenty years. I rehearsed answers to what I thought would be a sore point, which was, What had I done since I quit my last day job in January 2010? January 2010! Imagine my surprise when none of that came up? In two phone screens and a five-person panel interview, nobody asked a single question about any of my past jobs. A couple of things from my resume were mentioned, indicating that it had been read, but that was it. I put two important things on my resume: a list of all the software I know, by category; and a list of my skills. I’ve read that “skills resumes” are frowned on because they can be used to disguise a patchy work history. I don’t know if that’s true for most places, but it seemed to serve me well - and I *had* a patchy work history. I was transparent about the fact that I hadn’t had a traditional day job in over a decade. In my case, the majority of my most valuable skills were things I had picked up in between. The point isn’t whether you can prove that you’ve 100% done something under an official job title at an official employer. It’s whether you know how to do it, whether you can learn new things, and whether you are enthusiastic about giving it your best shot. This is where being unemployed, even for a very long time, can be an asset. It gives you the opportunity to study up. Someone close to me did this a few years ago. She had never really used a computer at work, literally did not even know how to right-click a mouse or copy/paste. She did a self-study Excel course, got over a 90%, and now knows all the advanced features I never learned even though I started using Excel around 1990. Since then she’s been promoted twice, has an impressive new job title, and makes a significantly higher income. That is my first piece of advice: Go through a bunch of job listings and look at what requirements keep coming up. (That’s why I went back to college. I kept reading job listings for which I was qualified in every single respect, except the bachelor’s degree. It was infuriating until it became simple and obvious). Stories keep coming up about young candidates who are shocked, stunned, and amazed that the job requires Microsoft Word and Excel. For those of us who are familiar with these programs, this might seem funny. Instead of laughing, we should be taking notes and realizing that we have been taking for granted what are actually very desirable professional qualifications. When we get mopey and fall into doubting our employability, we focus on ourselves and our shortcomings. We have no way of realizing that our supposed “competition” may be severely underprepared. I got my first temp assignment in an office because the woman before me quit two hours into her first day, saying, “I don’t have to do this.” They were looking for 1. Someone who would work for 8 hours and 2. See #1. It’s a similar situation with work-from-home jobs. They’re looking for applicants who are ready, willing, and able to work from home. Not everyone can do this. Sometimes these issues are not their fault; a friend of mine lives about five miles away from us, but the internet is so poor in her neighborhood that she needs two separate devices to try to get a better signal. If you have electricity, good wi-fi, a smartphone, and a computer you can use all day, you’re ahead of the game and more employable than you realize right now. Learning the basics of even one in-demand software title can be enough to put you over the edge. If you can pass a quiz, do a demo, or answer a few questions about what you can do, that’s usually enough. Start writing down all the programs that you have used, even if you only feel a passing familiarity. It may surprise you. Another approach is to take on a volunteer position and build your skills there. I spent the past three years in leadership positions in Toastmasters. They stepped up in responsibility, and I learned so much that I got back more than I put in. I’m absolutely sure that I reached a higher level of leadership through Toastmasters in that brief period than I would have if I had stayed in my previous line of work for ten years. Again, it isn’t what you’ve been paid to do under your official job title; it’s whether you can demonstrate that you know how to get things done. Unemployed people, and their friends, family, and neighbors, often say the same thing, which is: “There are no jobs out there.” This is demonstrably false. Also, you only need one. Talking about what doesn’t exist, or what you do not want, is a pretty useless way to spend time. Much more interesting to talk about what you do want to do. If there is something you really want to do because it fascinates you, that will shine through. If it is true about you that you really want to do a good job and be proud of yourself, that will show too. Right now, there are thousands of WFH jobs available. Some of them have been open for months or years without the right candidate turning up. Maybe that person is you. *** Some stuff you can learn for free: Microsoft Office 360 https://support.office.com/en-us/training Tableau https://www.tableau.com/learn/training/20202 Jira / Agile https://www.atlassian.com/agile/tutorials Though we’ve been referring to it with the acronym WFH, telecommuting is not the same thing as working from home. Technically I’ve been working from home for over a decade. This telecommuting thing is entirely different.
I did a variety of things in my past work life, often switching between different projects and different styles in the same day. I booked client calls, wrote on freelance and on spec, traveled, worked on planes and in my lap and in coffee shops and on a hotel bathroom floor in the middle of the night. In all those ways, my freelance life was (is?) both more versatile and less comfortable than what I’m doing now. Telecommuting is like being in an ordinary office, only at home instead of inside a cubicle. During my first week, I’ve spent more than half my time in meetings and webinars. Not only do we start on time, it’s necessary to start a bit early to make sure there is time for both the hardware and the software to connect. Unlike normal meetings in conference rooms, most people are on mute for most of the call, so it’s common for someone to be talking to themselves in an empty room for several seconds before everyone realizes their mic isn’t on. Picture this happening with people sitting around a table and it’s actually quite funny. Everyone is using different equipment, some company-issued and some more ad hoc. Most people have worked for the company for years - or decades - and others were actually hired after the shutdown. Like me, there are people who don’t have a physical desk, chair, computer, phone, or anything else. Our physical existence is hypothetical. I have the good fortune to have visited the building several times. I’ve met a few of my new colleagues in person, some through my husband and others through Toastmasters. I know where I will probably sit, if we start going back to the corporate campus soon. A few of the new hires can only look at pictures of the building and guess. One of the odd things about telecommuting is getting used to VPN. It’s like the movie Inception, a computer within a computer, or sometimes more. A desktop within a desktop, with its own wallpaper and its own software. “I’m opening a browser from inside a browser!” This is really important for security reasons, of course. It works well enough once you’re over the “nesting Russian doll” feeling. This process has been fun. The days are going by so fast, and there are so many things to learn and so many people to meet. It’s also been weird, because the interruptions are so different from the kind that are typical in an office. I joined a call with my boss first thing in the morning, and there happened to be an entire flock of crows freaking out for several minutes on the roof across from us. (“Us” meaning my household, not me and the person to whom I was speaking). Today it was a dog barking frantically in the alley on my end; last time, it was someone else’s neighbor’s dog barking in the yard next door. So many dogs. Cats are another one. Someone will be talking, chatter chatter chatter, and then suddenly a plaintive MEOW. Must be cat lunchtime. My parrot has her good days and her bad days. Sometimes she will play quietly in her box fort for hours. Other times she wants to be on the call and has a way of letting out a shrill whistle the moment I turn off mute. It’s like she knows. (She might). We’ve been joking about making her a little headset of her own. She is a biped who speaks English, and at 21 she’s certainly old enough to start contributing to the household. Maybe they’re hiring a paper shredder, who knows. Telecommuting has changed a lot in our household. My hubby and I sit at our own desks, together but apart, on opposite ends of our couch. We’re often on calls at the same time. We have the same schedule and the same days off. We work in the same department. This is how we met, fifteen years ago, though of course in those days we couldn’t have guessed we would marry and share a whiteboard together. This style of working from home is much more interesting, now that the world has shut down for who knows how long. The time passes very quickly. I like to imagine what I’ll be working on three years from now, and how much of what is new to me today will be routine then. What will a regular workday look like in 2023? |
AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
January 2022
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