Diversifying Your Set of Skills
2.23.18
I don’t know if the fort will ever come down at this point, it’s getting cozier by the day. Aside from that, I’ve been running around the past couple days, attending interviews, sending out resumes and trying to stay disciplined to a minimum amount of words per day.
My newly found ambition all stemmed from a conversation I had with Heather the first day I
decided to start this glorified journal.
For the past few months, I have been chasing full-time jobs like a drug addict chasing a high and each time I have gotten excited, thinking, “I’m going to get this one,” the job is pulled a little further, just out of reach. Heather has helped me see that this focus on one full-time job is too singular and because of that, the other things I devote my time to, i.e. writing, local politics, seem even more laborious. Rather than focusing on getting part-time work in all three fields I care about, I’ve been putting all my eggs in one basket, dividing my mind into a competition of my interests rather than developing each of them individually.
Diversifying your career path is a skill that comes easy to Heather as she has been doing it since she was a teenager. For her, it made a lot of sense to develop photography alongside her equestrian training because she couldn’t see herself risking her body day-in- and-day-out for an entire career. Thus, she came across photography, which is now the main source of income—but she kindly reminds me that it wasn’t always this way
At the beginning of Heather’s photography career, she was willing to work for free or for peanuts and accepted jobs that others in the industry did not want to take. It was difficult because she still needed to make a living wage, but she was willing to do what she had to do to in order to gain experience. Jim Carrey has a quote something along the lines of, “you can fail at something you don’t like, so why not try and fail at something you do like?” It would’ve been easier for Heather to stay as an equestrian, but she thought about her life 20 years from then and had deduced that while it may’ve been easier in the short term, it would’ve been crippling in the long run to rely on one source of income. Ironically, failure for Heather meant limiting herself to one full-time position.
Now as I chase several jobs in each of my respective fields I feel more whole, engaging in conversations that cover an array of my interests rather than constraining myself to one. As I commit further to the development of my writing, political, and hospitality careers I also envision it all under one unifying umbrella in the future that Heather had the foresight to see at a much younger age. Framing my future in the context of an attaining elusive single goal has been a paralyzing approach of mine for years, but thanks to Heather, I may just be breaking free. Instead of looking at what I need, I’ve begun to look at how I can develop my interests in the diversification of my time, personality, and ideally, the stability of my financial future.
Unplugged Times
When I opened up my eyes in the fort (yes, it’s still up) this morning, the sun scorched my retinas like a prolonged flash from a disposable camera. It made me think of how far I’ve come from my hatred for the stream of sunlight that would find its way through the drawn curtains of my teenage years. In those days, the only things that were worthwhile before noon were McDonalds’s breakfast and The Price is Right with Bob Barker (remember to spay and neuter your pets).
After some reading in bed I took a stroll through the melting snow with Rumor, our Doberman pinscher who we rescued from a sandwich shop. It always amuses me how other dog walkers switch to the other side of the road to pass because of her breed’s reputation—little do they know that Rumor is scared of cardboard boxes, paper towels, washing machines and anything that’s loud; not to mention that she lets our paraplegic Jack Russell, Riddle, maintain the alpha role in our house (I must admit that I do enjoy this misplaced, stereotype-induced appearance of intimidation because my tendency to smile at strangers doesn’t exactly strike fear into people’s hearts). Taking walks like these, unplugged from the constant chatter of the Internet allows me to hone in on the trickle of the stream of mountain runoff, the honks of the distant geese, and the massive puddles that turn every sidewalk’s corner into mini ballets of pedestrian pirouettes.
Yet it’s still a struggle for me to leave the comfort of my couch, where I could be scrolling through the sea of infinite information and entertainment that lives in my phone, waiting, beckoning me to fall into yet another black hole of YouTube where after starting with one silly video I suddenly find myself, hours later, watching a clip of a cat putting on a bunny hat, leaving me wondering, “how the fuck did I get here?” It’s nuts how easy it is to be captured by these cheap, goldfish-attention-span videos that sate our lazy, passive curiosities, but that’s a real 21st century, first-world problem—anything I want, including all day McDonalds breakfast and all of the old episodes of The Price is Right are just a couple of convenient clicks away.
It’s unplugged times like walking through the snow with my dopey, intimidating Dobie that make me grateful for remembering the sound of a dialup modem coming through the receiver of our rotary phone as I try to hang up immediately, hoping not to inconvenience one of my older brothers by kicking them off one of their “super important” sessions on AIM in the basement. Perhaps it’s just my version of “back in my day,” but I can’t help but think that this evolution of technology invading our psyches is a bit more intrusive and worrisome than watching Elvis thrust his hips on a television set or the 60’s movement being reduced to a brand of countercultural consumerism. Perhaps we all want to be strong and intimidating but beneath it all we’re all just scared of paper towels and cardboard boxes like Rumor—either way, I’m just happy and grateful I can still muster the strength to shirk the comforts of convenience and enjoy the trickle of a creek once in awhile.