I need a new career

We Are The Mature Muthers

  On 9/1/2011 at 3:56 AM, The Overlook said:

  On 9/1/2011 at 2:49 AM, jules said:

indeed. very good stuff there bubba. getting interviews these days is very difficult. some companies used to be like, screw paying someone 70k, i am going to hire 2 people at 35k instead. well now it's like, screw paying someone at 70k, i am going to hire 1 person at 35k and tell them they are lucky to have a job.

Amen and flol.

 

The synchronicity in our lives is astonishing, Jules. Both 35. First-time dads, fucked up career scenarios. Big life questions, etc.

 

I'm in the precise same boat. I decided to pursue and MFA in mass comm and I think it's a waste of time. I wanted to make Hollywood films once upon a time, then realized that I don't like Hollywood and that's beyond a pipe dream to begin with.

 

Now I'm like...fuck it, I love my family and I just wanna kick back and enjoy the simple things until I'm dust. The end.

 

So the private sector is currently seducing me to make a grand return. We shall see. Bubba's advice was dead-on though. Just apply for weird jobs that sound intriguing. A lot of smaller companies out there still treat employees well and they're looking for diverse skill sets, which it sounds like you have in droves.

exact same boat here too 'cept i just turned 37. fuck! got 10 month old daughter who i want to properly provide for instead of just managing to get by... my other half has just returned to work part-time and i commute 1.5hours to and from work so lucky to see my daughter for about 1hr/day and can't be there to help out... we live in a 3rd floor flat and need to move somewhere bigger with a garden asap... i've got 12 years experience in interior design without relevant degree... with a small company that love, appreciate and rely on me massively but can't offer me any more development so my salary has topped out. i'm considering moving into architecture (initially as technician so drop in salary) along with home study to try and get some relevant qualification, even though the housing market is still totally fucked and getting the time to study would be almost impossible. jobs in my field, at my end of the market are few and far between. like you i'm in a culdesac, so all there is to do is back out and try another direction, or else sit here forever wondering where i could have gone...

in short, i feel ya.

*watmm fist bump*

  On 9/1/2011 at 4:23 AM, KY said:

  On 9/1/2011 at 2:49 AM, jules said:

  On 9/1/2011 at 2:46 AM, usagi said:

Jules is 50? Holy fuck. I saw your pics and thought you were in your late 20s or something.

 

50? wat? im 35 homie. christ.

i hate to derail the thread...

 

(so, why don't you just take up web design in your freetime? you really don't need an intimate knowledge of building sites as much as knowing barebones html/css/maybe a little bit of javascript [jquery? does anybody know? i don't lol], and a basic idea of what else is capable in server-side programming like ruby on rails or some shit. again, if anybody knows better than i do, speak up!

 

as far as html/css goes, that may be daunting. but as a designer who has an idea of hierarchy, you definitely have a leg up. as somebody who isn't interested in coding—like me; fuck coding!—it's really not as daunting as it seems. the other stuff is trickier, but i can't say exactly how much you should know.)

 

anyway, what do you look like? i thought you were that dude from tool

I have dabbled in HTML but only the very basics. CSS makes my eye twitch. I learn better when someone is teaching rather than teach myself but I really need to try to learn web stuff, you guys are totally right.

I have started to get some of my work together and get it online but I'm having trouble finding the time and I absolutely hate the write ups (the link is in my profile if you are interested)

does your good lady plan on going back to work after maternity leave jules? and overlook?

i (/we) really wish mine didn't have to, but we'd have no hope of getting a bigger place otherwise.

i'd need to earn another 10K for it to be feasable... or make drastic cut-backs, like no beer and wine.

yea she went back to work in june. we absolutely need her salary and most of all, her insurance is much much better than mine. if i were to have my wife and son on my insurance here, it would cost me close to $14,000 a year. hers costs us about $8000.

My wife is a psychologist and counselor. She will want to return to work, but not until our daughter is at least 2 years old. Until then, she's been counseling a few hours a week which helps immensely with finances.

I'm the one whose career was headed directly into the shitter. I kinda knew better about going to grad school but it was an itch I had to scratch and I'm glad I gave it a shot. Now, I'm just as glad to say that it's a waste of my time and get as far away from academia as possible. The hierarchical structure of universities, combined with the asinine tenure system, is enough to make me projectile vomit. You pick your poisons when it comes to professional life because no situation is perfect, but academia is definitely not my cup of tea.

  On 9/1/2011 at 2:56 PM, jules said:

yea she went back to work in june. we absolutely need her salary and most of all, her insurance is much much better than mine. if i were to have my wife and son on my insurance here, it would cost me close to $14,000 a year. hers costs us about $8000.

she must have had quite a short maternity leave then. my gf's had nearly 11 months and was absolutely gutted about going back. she's a teacher and even working part-time means shitloads of out of hours work which she doesn't have the time (or peace and quiet) for. things are getting stressful at the moment. thankfully we don't need to worry about health insurance here.

  On 9/1/2011 at 3:01 PM, The Overlook said:

My wife is a psychologist and counselor. She will want to return to work, but not until our daughter is at least 2 years old. Until then, she's been counseling a few hours a week which helps immensely with finances.

man 2 years would be perfect but it's just not possible at the moment.

when me and my brother were kids my dad worked 2 jobs so my mum could stay at home. i've been considering it lately but with my commute it'd be a nightmare and i'd see my wee one even less.

yea my wife had 90 days leave. and we pay $8000 for health insurance.

god bless the fucking usa.

edit: also daycare costs us $60/day which adds up to about $1300 a month. so its like this, we have to pay about $14,000 a year in daycare so my wife go to work and get the cheaper insurance that costs us $8000 a year. so this little guy added $22,000 in bills before he made 1 dirty diaper or ate 1 oz of peas. totally worth it but we are really struggling right now, not to mention the mental strain this puts on our relationship.

My wife had zero leave.

This country is an absolute shithole, don't get me started!

far from being a career, i have landed an inhumanely fantastic job selling out and playing elton john/muse/and beyonce keyboard covers with a busy and prolific wedding function band at 800-1000 squids a week. i already had my mouth shaping the 'i dont want to wreck my musical integrity' sentence before they told me the wage.

I wish I had advice for you, Jules, but I'm just here to bitch. My career in architecture has barely started and I already don't want to be an architect anymore. I worked at one architecture firm so far and am about to go get my master's (so I can get accredited) but all my friends who are employed are working 70 hour weeks. I feel the same as you, fearful about job security and angry that I have to learn so much goddamn shit to be relevant (I just want to use adobe and sketchup for fuck's sake). Most architecture grads are unemployed or working shit jobs for boring firms that just do corporate hotels in shanghai and dubai, and even the high end firms are stuck bullshitting.

  On 8/31/2011 at 10:39 PM, Philip Glass said:

Landscape architect. It's the best profession in the world (seriously)

Is it really? How many hours do you work, and isn't dealing with the math of topography, like, a huge bummer and stuff?

I'm unmotivated and want free time for music. Is brewing beer actually a real thing i can do for money?

THANK FUCK FOR THE NHS!

your system seems sooo messed up.

  On 9/1/2011 at 3:59 PM, The Overlook said:

My wife had zero leave.

as in zero paid leave or she dropped the babby and went to work the very next day??

  On 9/1/2011 at 4:43 PM, keltoi said:

as in zero paid leave or she dropped the babby and went to work the very next day??

Sorry, paid leave of course.

She took a month off and resumed work at around 12 hours a week after that. She still hates that she has to go to work at all.

Her family is Swedish. They get six months paid leave over there.

  On 9/1/2011 at 4:46 PM, The Overlook said:

  On 9/1/2011 at 4:43 PM, keltoi said:

as in zero paid leave or she dropped the babby and went to work the very next day??

Sorry, paid leave of course.

 

She took a month off and resumed work at around 12 hours a week after that. She still hates that she has to go to work at all.

 

Her family is Swedish. They get six months paid leave over there.

my gf was lucky with timing cos she got 3 months full pay, then 3 on 50%, then kind of "returned to work" but didn't really cos the summer holidays started, and got full pay again for 3.5 months.

give photoshop classes or something like that, charge a fortune.

  On 9/1/2011 at 5:36 PM, GORDO said:

give photoshop classes or something like that, charge a fortune.

Total students: 0.

i dunno, a dj friend of mine came up with the idea of giving mass albeton tuitions in a club, advertised it well, and is raking it in.

  On 9/1/2011 at 6:12 PM, messiaen said:

i dunno, a dj friend of mine came up with the idea of giving mass albeton tuitions in a club, advertised it well, and is raking it in.

that's actually a very smart idea!

id love the ingenuity/luck to come up with a great, simple business model and get comfortably wealthy off it. another pal is doing something which isnt original, but is in this city, which is to offer to all clubs/nights/festivals, that if they give him a small fee, instead of paying for their own seperate pr's, he will collect all the pr flyers in the city and put them in one plastic pack to give out outside clubs.

its not quite kicked off yet, but im sure it will, and considering this has been happening in london and manchester for ages, its not even exactly an amazing or original idea, its simply weird that no-one else has done it yet.

I'm only speaking for myself here... but my wife and I have been better off since I've been unemployed.

relationship-wise or financially?

i am assuming your wife makes more money than mine though because if either one of us were unemployed, we would be in serious trouble.

  On 8/31/2011 at 9:27 PM, jules said:

the work is being crushed by idiots............ it is not fun anymore.

 

looking back, all the "losers" from high school are either cops, teachers or own landscaping companies. either way, they are in stable jobs making nice money with amazing benefits or they own their own company. wtf did i do wrong.

 

Sums up how I feel mate. Looking back, though impossible at the time, as I would of had to turn my back on 90% of my school chums, being a copper would of been a good choice for me. Not that my friends are gangsters but they wouldn't of tolerated a cop. In my current job I have met a few of them and the perks/pay is second to none.

I am thinking of becoming a trainee train driver to become full qualified, over the pond in England this is a really good job to get. The pay and perks are top-notch. Of course the job isn't creative but I never went to university and the job does not require degree level education.

Either way, like you, I've had enough of what I do now.