h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ok, hootizens, here’s a question: What should I do for a living?

More in the next post:

What should I do for a living?

Comments, suggestions, thoughts, critiques required. The wilder the better, all are grist to my mill. In the words of the small ads ‘anything legal considered’ though I reserve the right to consider some suggestions very briefly indeed.

I had planned to sit out the rest of my working life in a condition of pension-building predictability at a place I’ll call Carthage. Now Cato is getting his way, and it’s entirely unclear whether I’ll have a job when the dust has settled and Rome is in power.

So… what do I want from a new job?

Well, first things first: I need to pay my mortgage. And alongside that there is my pension, which frightens me every time I think of it.

Then there’s geography. I’m tied to the North West for at least the next five years and maybe the next eight.

The next thing is intellectual challenge. I get bored very quickly. (Who’d have guessed?) So I need something to make my brain sweat otherwise I resort to sarcasm and sexual adventuring.

If I am employed for my expertise (which is mainly in what they call Web 2.0 technologies) then I want to be listened to.

I don’t want to travel; there is only so much of your life you can spend at Heathrow. And I’m too old and have too much else in my life to want to ‘go the extra mile in this dynamical and highly motivated environment’ or to fall for any of the other ways that companies suck the naivete out of 25 year olds and turn it into money. So no travel and no sales, or not if I can avoid them.

Then there is what the Buddhists call ‘right livelihood‘. I think it’s time I did something useful in exchange for the oxygen I use up.

So where does this lead me? I’d love to manage the Web 2.0 strategy for a museum – Tweeting for Art would be fun, don’t you think? Other ideas I have had so far are learning sign-language and translating for the deaf in courts and in hospitals, and becoming a humanist celebrant. I’d worry they wouldn’t pay the mortgage and though they’d both be ways to make a difference to peoples’ lives, I’d have to get my intellectual kicks with the OU.

Any suggestions for ways of earning a living will be gratefully mulled over.

I thought you were t'other side of t'pennines.

Don't ask me! I have precisely the same issues. I'm desperately trying to beat swords into ploughshares at the moment.

My alternative career is Artisan Baker. People will always need bread. But I've not yet found a sensible way of making this happen.

I'm getting my intellectual kicks with some delightful, sharp as a very sharp razor Scandiwegian academic women. Sure - travel involved - but not via Heathrow (CPH Kastrup is *nice*)...and an excellent smoking opportunity en route.

Hey - it could be worse! You could have kids, too...

I'm not sure I can give you any ideas as such - but this guy writes rather a lot about paying back the rent for the oxygen, so to speak:

The Art of Nonconformity
Unconventional Strategies for Life, Work, and Travel
http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/

Might take a bit of browsing around as he's also writing quite a bit about his project: visiting all countries on earth (he does travelling!). But there's some in there about how to make a living and yet be giving to others and to society.

What's OU?

Have you considered self-employment Ben?

Or multiple careers/jobs so you get the range of needs met via different occupations?

OU is the Open University. What would generically be called "correspondence courses" in the old days.

Here in Germany, Ben, someone like you would do some kind of free-lance work. However, if you want to go into employment, you'll have to send out loads of unsolicited applications on the off chance. Perhaps you'll even persuade someone they need you although they hadn't realised they had up to now.

Make a comprehensive list of all museums, galleries, libraries, universities, colleges, schools and community centres within a manageable radius of where you are and send out hundreds of applications.

Or - if you're setting yourself up, the same recipients, but this time you're advertising.

Somehow that sounds too simple.....

One more opening - do you think you would be suited to teaching your skills to others?

I'll have a dig through the website, Santra, thank you.

I've no problem with the mechanics of it. I know how to get a job; it's what job to get that I want ideas with.

Freelance? Been there, done that, want a monthly pay-check. I thought about life coaching for a while, but realised I wouldn't spend my time life coaching, I would spend my time *marketing* life coaching, and if I wanted to do marketing I could do it *and* have someone else fix my PC when it broke and put money in my pension fund. Freelance is all too often another term for 'too cranky to get a real job'.

In fairness, the sort of portfolio I'm thinking of (some translation, some humanist celebranting, some whatever else) would have to be entirely freelance, but the WHAT has to come before the HOW.

OU is a little more than distance learning, since you can get research post-grad degrees through it. It's one of Britains unsung national treasures.

Teaching is a thought I'm thinking, though there are a LOT of people out there thinking much the same thing right now.

Thanks very much for your thoughts.

B

Ooh! I didn't know you where a humanist celebrant. I shall make a mental note for several years hence in case any of my kids get married. Or if I die.

In case of the latter, my chosen songs are:
(intro) Death Letter Blues - Eddie 'Son' House
Chase the Devil - Max Romeo
Vanlose Stairway - Van Morrison
(Outro) Dry The Rain - The Beta Band (If there's something inside that you wanna say/ say it out loud it will be OK/ It'll be alright/ It'll be alright...)

Why not run multiple part-time salaried jobs with good job security? I'm investigating a part-time one along my main job atm.

I'm not a humanist celebrant yet, Edward, but it's an idea I had about a year ago that hasn't gone away. I've not followed up on it, because I don't have the time to qualify or to practice while I'm doing my MSc.

"there are a LOT of people out there thinking much the same thing right now" Yes, but _you'd_ make a really good one, the kind that could change a child's/student's life.

Can't see you teaching facts without adding in essential life skills.

[OT, life coaching - last night I was thinking counsilor, but I knew that was too general for what I had in mind. As so often happens you've clarified my thoughts, life coaching is exactly what I thought you'd excel at and make a real difference with. Making it pay is the problem - as you've also already said.]

God, I could have written post 2 except for I'm in the south east and need hours to suit small children. The getting bored easily part is the thing that scuppers lots of jobs on paper, it is a real pain.

I've thought about trying to become a registrar, along the same lines as the humanist celebrant but working for the town hall so defined pay and benefits and pension. Not sure how tough that is to get in to and will require weekend working. Job involves hatches matches and dispatches, as well as spotting liars and cheats. Very people-centred. Think I'd enjoy it.

Have you looked at training rather than teaching? At Further Ed Colleges etc. Tends to be older, more motivated students and fewer hoops to jump through when not dealing with kids. Also going to be in high demand as the economy tanks and people look to re-train. I loved delivering training to interested adults (the uninterested ones, and yes I'm looking at that italian mob, were awful) but get fed up with the travelling with that job. If I could find a similar one based in the UK and with hours to suit (Ha!) I'd take it.

Have you done a random trawl of jobserve in the NE just to see what there is?

Well, for me it would definitely have to be training rather than teaching that I'd want to do. Kids? I don't think so!

Registrar-ing? That's ... interesting. Actually, another one I thought of was becomming a Coroner's Clark. I was deeply impressed by the one who came out to interview me after Dad died. But I doubt I've got the right balance of compassion and

By the way, can I put a Scottish / Italian friend of mine in touch with you Kelli? She's a colleague of mine and in the same boat, but she needs an excuse to go to Italy. I know you're not still in touch with the company, but she sounded really keen to talk to (ie email) you.

That should be "... right blend of compassion and toughness."

You can, but I seriously doubt I can be of any help. The company I worked for has been swallowed by Oracle and the company I was delivering training to has been swallowed by Vodkafone. Any in any case, anyone asking me about working in Italy will get the response: Don't! They are lazy and rude!* Your job is constantly made harder by strike action! Linate is sh!thole of an airport, avoid at all costs! Naples is horrible and scary! Italy may be nice for a holiday but don't try to get anything done there.

Probably best not to say any of that to someone of Italian extraction

*Disclaimer: not all italians are lazy and rude, just lots of the ones I got lumbered with. The ones in Milan were motivated and pleasant, but the transport system kept getting shut down because of strikes, and the power kept going off - same reason.

Write a best-selling novel from home

I've certainly thought about it GB. If only it was that easy.

Many years ago I got half a dozen Mills and Boone out of the library to see if I thought I could write them myself, and concluded that they are very skillfully written and I don't have those sorts of skills. But I thoroughly disgusted the former Mr Ben, who thought my brain must have melted if I wanted to read trashy cardboard cut-out fiction.

B

PS - The book-writing idea is actually a very good one GB. Just not fiction.

Yes - why don't you publish a set of decent manuals for things which have lousy manuals that come with the goods.

There was something on the radio about them a couple of weeks ago. The Instruction Manual, they said, was the epitome of human-ness, as speech and engineering are the two things that indisputably separate us from the rest of the animal world, and what better combination of speech and engineering than the Instruction Manual?

Sort of "... for Dummies" things, but not quite for dummies.

We have a pedagogic theme coming through here, don't we? And I dearly do love spouting off...

... hmmmm.

I am SO glad I asked hootoo - keep it coming!