Decisions.

My original intention for this blog was as a chronicle of a long process of career change. What was going to happen between the end of one job and the beginning of another. When i was first facing lay-off, i had no idea. Now, in the midst of job searching and career thinking, i have no idea. Day in and day out the absence of a job haunts me terribly. I have "turned a corner" in my thinking, comfortable in the knowledge that with our unique living arrangement (work trade for rent) the unemployment check each week does pay the bills and put food on the table and honestly i worked hard so that could be available. But it does no more than pay the bills. The flip side of the coin: i get time with wife and boys. But the job is still lacking, the feeling of providing and working at something is missing. I have searched, and continue to put nose to the pavement in search of work, but there is very little available right now and what is available is snapped up very quickly by the diligent and highly, highly qualified. It is obvious and ever apparent to me that i need a return to school.

We are in a frustrating cycle of work here, as a family. Feast or famine and at the times i should be feasting, famine beckons harshly. I want out of the cycle and into a career i can really get excited about, not just content to do my best. It has been a process of ticking careers off of a list--urban planner: out, construction management: out, chef: out, etc.--but i keep coming back to my love of language, writing, and reading. By language i mean the way talented authors can use language in simple ways to tell poignant and powerful stories (Hemingway is the quintessential author in this vein but Raymond Carver does it as well and Cormac McCarthy though in a very different and non-conventional way). So i keep coming back to teaching.

Career counselling has given me some tools to begin laying ground work to change careers. The best, to date, has been the Myers-Briggs personality identifier, i happen to be INFJ. Which, without going to deep, basically means I'm an Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling person who makes decisions based on the Judgment of the facts around before i make decisions (for more info, if you care, google INFJ and it will go into great depth about the personality type.) What has really helped with this assessment is the language to talk about and recognize the traits that were self-evident to me but i had no reference for them. Basically, the process I'm in, and the search for the ideal career, is a common struggle for people who have the personality i have. The right career for me is that of a writer (second most common for INFJ's) but i have to create a career path to get me there so i think teaching.

Not teaching because i don't know what else to do, rather teaching because i love good lit. and good writing and i feel that there needs to be English teachers in public schools with a passion for the subject they teach. This is subject, of course, to change. But for now, i am comfortable in my decision and the process of getting there can start today.