NaBloPoMo: Navigating the waters of uncertainty

I've been neglecting my blog lately. This isn't an apology; it's more of a fact. I needed a break from writing, and I'm sure you needed a break from reading.

As you know, I've been desperately searching for a job. Any job would do, but I believed my heart was telling me to stay in journalism, if I could. And somehow I found myself being wooed by an actual newspaper. And here I am, working in the field I've always wanted to work in.

Well, that's not exactly true. While I have been on the path to journalism since my junior year of high school, it was not my first love. When I was a child I wanted to work with animals. Like most children I changed my mind about my future profession several times, but it always involved animals. From a horse trainer to a veterinarian, there was always a clear focus on animals in my daydreams. And I still would drop everything if someone told me I could make a living caring for animals without having to go to school or get specialized training. In fact it was the heavy emphasis on math and chemistry in all courses of study at veterinarian schools that eventually kept me from fulfilling that childhood dream. A fleeting obsession in the 10th grade led me to explore the idea of forensic science, but again the math and chemistry requirements were just too much.

There was a turning point at the end of my junior year that led me to where I am today. As I was registering for my electives I was given a chance work for a semester under a professional. I agonized over the choice between a vet's assistant and a reporter position at the local newspaper. As fate would have it, I ended up choosing the newspaper and that was it: I had the bug.

And since then I've never wavered. Newspapers held me under their sway through college and my first real job.

And now here I am, working at my second job in newspapers. I'm living the "dream." Except it doesn't feel like that anymore.

My excuse for ignoring this blog for so long was that all my creative energies had to be directed towards the job search. But a month after landing a job in newspapers (the only one in my group of displaced journalists to do so), I still haven't really returned here to celebrate.

To be honest, the dream I've pursued for 7 years is fizzling for me. Now I no longer obsessively read newspapers, I don't love working at one and I can't even remember why I loved newspapers so much to begin with. Don't get me wrong, I still respect the media. When I reach my first permanent home, I will likely have a subscription to the local newspaper. I don't hate my job, either. I more or less just subsist there. I go to work and I come home. I break that up with trips to the dog park with Miyagi and yoga sessions, but I largely stick to that routine. And I cannot say that I am happy. Or I could, but I'd be lying.

It's truly disconcerting to be so lost. Despite all of the instability and fluidity that has marked my life, I have never felt this unsure about where I am going. It's worse because I feel as though I am regressing. All my friends spent college with no idea where they were headed, while I had it all but intricately mapped out. Now that most of them are finally finding their way, I am suddenly losing mine. And it is actually a scary way to live.

Quick update on life

I'm sorry for the long absence, guys. What can I say? Sometimes life just gets away from you. So here is what has changed so far:

~ I am gainfully employed again. I now work part time as a page designer for both the Suffolk News-Herald and the Tidewater News. Part time is great because it gives me a chance to get back into the flow of working. Part time is bad because it is obviously less money.

~We set a date for our wedding and then promptly had the date taken away from us. We are in a holding pattern now which is giving me all kinds of stressed feelings. Hopefully I will eventually get over them and there will be a wedding in the near future.

~I have not cooked a meal in a very long time, which is unfortunate since it was such a great stress relieving activity.

This weekend the fiance and I are dog-sitting the fiance's family dog, Dylan. He's a sweet and mischievous 16-year-old English Setter. It's been lovely to get a chance to teach Miyagi how to be with another dog without having to play with them. He needs this lesson because he has a habit of getting into sometimes painful trouble when he won't leave a dog who doesn't want to play alone. They are currently cuddling together on the couch. It was another feat altogether to get him to realize that the couch was not his, a distinction necessary when teaching him to leave Dylan alone when he wanted to sleep on the couch.

Miyagi and Dylan nap together on the couch

Dispatches from the job search: Networking

The following is from a new blog I've created to record and cope with the trials and tribulations of my job search. Follow it here.

I wanted to get this topic out of the way because I've always found it to be sort of a confusing subject. And yet the No. 1 thing you're told as you begin any job search is network, network, network.
Here's the main principle: Introduce yourself to as many people as possible. It's so simple it almost makes you feel silly, right? I've never been big on networking. A lot of searching for a job, as Joe Grimm (recruiter extraordinaire and one of Poynter.org's job experts) explains it, is selling yourself to possible employers. That's not really my style. I prefer to let my actions speak for themselves. But here's where that philosophy doesn't hold water in a job search: Potential employers have never seen you in action and they can only base their decisions on what they've heard about you, whether their source is you or one of your references. And that's where networking comes in.
Back in the day networking required putting a lot of miles on your car and shaking a lot of hands.
Now, like almost anything else out there, the process has gone high tech. But in the end, you're still doing the same thing. Your connection to your boss connects you to everyone else they've worked with, which connects you to everyone those people have worked with and so on. And this doesn't even need to be just with your boss. Say you volunteer at an animal shelter (guilty). The volunteer coordinator might be able connect you to someone else in your field.
The most exciting and well-known tool for networking is LinkedIn. Think Facebook for professionals. It's a place where your profile includes your recent employment and your qualifications rather than your favorite movies or those embarrassing photos from that one party. You know the one I'm talking about.
Thursday morning, the day after I learned I was joining the ever growing ranks of the unemployed, I logged onto my little-used account with LinkedIn and "connected" with every person I could find at my company. By that afternoon I had received four recommendations (these are posted on your profile, which can then be viewed by your connections and anyone else you allow to see your profile). Recommendations can also be read by the connections your boss or coworkers have, thereby exposing you to professionals you have never even met. Essentially this is almost effortless networking.
It's actually kind of exciting when you get right down to it. So there you have it: A quick and simple way to network. Of course that's only the beginning, but at least it is a beginning. And every job search has to start somewhere.

Want to join my network on LinkedIn? Click here to see my public profile, or click on the LinkedIn badge on the right side of this page.

I will post the first few posts from "Dispatches" here, and then I will discontinue. I'll continue to do my normal posting here. Please follow both, if that's what interests you.

~Beth

Dispatches from the job search: On cookies and (un)employment

The following is from a new blog I've created to record and cope with the trials and tribulations of my job search. Follow it here.

I was in the 11th grade when I took an advanced writing class at my high school. By then I knew I was going to be a wordsmith, I just hadn't quite figured out where to apply my talents. It was in that class that I was introduced to the field of journalism. My senior year I was accepted into a mentorship with the local newspaper. From day 1, when I was assigned my very first story as a reporter, I was hooked.
When I graduated from college - armed with a journalism degree, a year of experience as the editor in chief of the school paper and an undying passion for the art - I took my first job as a copy editor at a hyperlocal newspaper. Unfortunately that was also the year the newspaper business began a nosedive that ended with a phone call and the giant cookie you see above.
Alright, the path to that cookie wasn't nearly direct as I make it sound. I enjoyed almost two years of wonderful people willing to teach me the ropes. I grew to enjoy designing pages and eventually became a little obsessed with the online medium that all newspapers are moving into. And I will be forever grateful to those who took me under their wing and fought to keep me around. But, alas, I couldn't stay there forever. It seems a twist of fate has finally bulldozed me a new path.
On Wednesday morning - St. Patrick's Day - I received the summons to the HR office that all of us were dreading since the announcement came that layoffs were imminent. I was among those who were being laid off. It was the third round of layoffs that I had experienced since joining the paper, and I suppose my luck had finally run out.
I'm not embarrassed to say that I went to a bar that night. Of course, so did the rest of the nation. It was St. Paddy's Day, after all.
My fiance made me promise that I would not attempt to do anything for a few days. Take a break; that was his advice. But I'm not much of a take-a-break kind of person. I did start my job the day after I accepted my diploma, instead of taking a week off like everyone said I should have.
So, after celebrating that I was one quarter Irish (and mourning my career), I made the giant cookie you see above. And then I ate it. With ice cream and peanut butter. Because I could. And then I fell into a coma.
I woke up this morning, less than 24 hours into my newly unemployed condition, and I was already bored.
And this is where this blog comes in. You see, I love writing. I realized about half way through my enormous cookie that I would not be able to survive a job search on writing cover letters alone. I also realized that many of you might be in the same boat as I am and could use my failures as lessons on how not to go about recovering from being laid off. And eventually, you could learn from my successes on how to find a job. At the very least you can laugh at me as I struggle to network, apply and interview my way into the next step in my life.
Won't you join me?

I will post the first few posts from "Dispatches" here, and then I will discontinue. I'll continue to do my normal posting here. Please follow both, if that's what interests you.

~Beth

Recipe sneak peak: Boozy Glazed Irish Brownies

I'm so sorry for my absence. The news of imminent layoffs at my company combined with a change-of-the-seasons illness to put me out of the blogosphere for a few days. In fact, it's been a week since I've made these super delicious brownies. Let's just say that after I got off work on Monday (when our editor announced the impending doom), I was really grateful that I had already made myself the perfect food to gorge on in my delirious depression. I was cleaning the pan on Tuesday before I realized I had not shared the recipe with you, my faithful readers. So I offer a sneak peek at the recipe I will post when I return home after work today.



And, don't worry. You don't need to see the industry you've invested the last 6 years of your life in collapse around your ears as an excuse to make this. It's just as good as a celebratory dessert.

A change is gonna come...

Dear readers, I'm afraid that I sit on a precipice. Yesterday our editor told us that due to outsourcing, copy editors and designers would soon be obsolete at my paper. Those are the two areas I focus on right now (while I build my online skills on the side), so this means I can almost feel the hairs of the scope settling over me as the powers-that-be prepare to lay off 10-15 of us copy editors and designers. We won't know until at least next week, and likely more than three weeks, whether we still have a place here at my shrinking paper. It's just another blow to the newspaper industry and to those of us who attempted to embark on a career in a field that is apparently dying.
My company has gone through 3 sets of lay offs in the less than two years I've been working here. This will be the first time I've actually feared for my job. And the future is hanging heavily over my head.
I do have enough saved up to cover necessities if I were be laid off (call it my 3-month emergency fund that I've steadily grown to cover 5 months because I am so loathe to spend money). But I have virtually no job prospects, at least not in the state where I hope to eventually attend graduate school. I certainly couldn't afford a dog if I were to be laid off, and the fiance and I have been seriously talking about adopting one in the next few months. And, as the fiance said, the wedding is not a necessity at this point.
So, my dear readers, it seems my steady little world has been largely upended. Not only do I not know if I will have a job in three weeks, I also don't know if I will be married in 2010. Right now the plan is to find a venue with openings, but we won't consider offering a down payment or signing a contract until April, when all of this will hopefully be resolved.

Directions

I've been thinking a lot lately. About my wedding and my relationships with my friends, and yes, even about how hilarious the new Big Bang Theory is. But what is ALWAYS in the back of my mind, simmering back there with the money issues and how much I want a dog, is what I want to do with my life. Every once in a while, it boils over and floods my brain with such extreme worry that it borders on anxiety, my shoulders tense up without me realizing it and suddenly I can't sleep at night, whether I'm being kept up by my thoughts or having vivid, distracting and disturbing dreams.
That's how my week has been.
It's not that I hate my job. If I get right down to it, I am thankful for my job. My schedule is such that I never rush to work. I work during the hours that I am naturally most awake and I get to flex creative muscles by designing pages and writing headlines. And I get paid and have benefits. I think I'd be in worse shape if I didn't have these factors in my favor.
But I still feel lost. I'm not doing what I always thought I'd be doing (writing) and I just feel like something is missing. I don't dislike my coworkers, but I'm not friends with any of them. And, I suppose, I don't feel like what I'm doing makes any meaningful difference.
All this comes together to make me consider abandoning journalism for a different field. I discovered a Web site where you can search for openings at nonprofits, and many of these organizations need people with my set of skills to come and widen their exposure to the public. I am beginning to feel that old excitement, of contemplating the possibility of changing my life for the better. I spend 8 hours a day at the workplace, I need to justify those hours doing something that I believe in. It's sad, but I have finally admitted to myself that I just don't believe in journalism anymore.

A rant on journalism

Apparently journalists on both sides of the new media/old media line are supposed to be duking it out on a virtual battlefield as they fight for supremacy. What? Why can't we be friends (sing it with me). If you're still interested in my views on journalism, head over to my journalism blog, Between picas and html for a lovely rant on the so-called war between journalists. I'm thinking we need to raise a white flag or we're journalism as a whole is doomed.

on the job search..

Let's just say that in the current condition that journalism is in, it is always better to be perpetually looking for jobs. Especially when your company is set on putting a smiley-face on the numbers while it secretly considers how best to stave off bankruptcy. Oh Tribune, why are you so grim...and so unwilling to give your "valued" employees a heads-up?

And so I scan: job banks, classifieds, journalismjobs.com, even media bistro's job bank (which holds relatively few newspaper jobs). Sadly it seems that these companies need a great deal of help, considering the sorry state of their ads. Case in point (errors idenified by italics):

DIGITAL CONTENT EDITOR
The ideal candidate will have Web content experience, including the development of podcasts and/or videocasts. This person will be expected to rap up projects quickly and should be proficient in all aspects of Web technology. This person should also have excellent document management and organizational skills. Video experience is a plus, as is an interest in the manufacturing industry. A Bachelor's degree in Journalism or Communications, or equivalent work expeirnce is required.
This position is responsbile for developing new eMedia projects, including e-newsletters, videocasts, web forums and other Internet realted programs. This position is also responsbile for editing content for style, grammar and spelling.

I'm gonna go with "help needed immediately". I am torn between wanting to work for them because they are so obviously in desperate need for editing assistance and not wanting to work for a company that has such a lack of editors that they couldn't take two minutes to scan their ad to correct such egregious errors. I mean really...it took me less than a minute to find these.