Concentration and my perfect job

I’ve been working hard over the last few days – it’s just a shame it isn’t making any money. My ADD-like inability to concentrate has been replaced by a scarily intense level of concentration on some specific tasks – there’s never a middle road, it’s either scatty child or mad inventor. That said, it’s been good that my energies have been very usefully spent, even if only for a little while. I’ve been setting up a new hosting account for my numerous web sites, have successfully migrated most of them over (including this one), and I’ve set up the Drupal content management platform to run more. I’m also helping a friend in Cambodia with some work she’s too busy to do, and trying to catch up with months-old invoices that should have been sorted out last year. Amongst all of this I’m still applying for jobs.

My time is actually being used constructively for a change – better than usual, at any rate. It’s incredible how just once in a while you can achieve a remarkable level of focus that sees you working until 3am, overflowing with ideas, solving problems, tweaking things, and scratching those little itches like Outlook tasks that have been sat there for a month in bold red, staring accusingly at you. I still have a lot of them to get through though.

I still don’t have a job, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t getting to me a bit. I’ve been charmed by agencies, commended on my CV, but have now received several e-mails to tell me that ‘unfortunately, I have received applications from candidates whose experience more closely match my client’s specific requirements’ – a beautifully soft, fluffy way of phrasing a rejection that sounds straight out of a book of business bullshit phrases. It’s the same book that features words such as ‘solutions’, ‘partnerships’, and ‘synergies’.

The job search continues, meanwhile I’ve applied to go on Jobseeker’s Allowance. The irony of it is that since I came back I’ve been working to kill off my web business, when I could be trying to get more work – but there’s a good reason for that. It never made me any money in the first place, and while I’m not that certain of where my career is heading next, I know it has got to be about more than web sites. The idea I had until recently of getting a flat and a nice webby contract in London seems to be an increasingly distant possibility – but that’s not such a bad thing. I’m starting to realise that last year’s trip is still having a significant effect on me, and that I’m just taking a while to arrive at some conclusions I maybe didn’t have an opportunity to reach while I was away. That probably sounds like over-profound bullshit, but I’ve had all the time in the world to peer at my belly button just recently.

I’m quite chuffed to find out that I should be a journalist, according to the fifteenth psychometric test I’ve done this month – results from these tests are rarely revelations, but they can give you useful confirmation that you’re mentally heading in the right direction. I have had enough time to figure out my ideal job:

Extensive foreign travel, with a base that may be in the UK, maybe elsewhere, but a place to crash out when the need arises. A mixture of roles, not one single responsibility. Writing for newspapers, magazines, radio and TV. Some photography. Involved with sustainable tourism, development work in poorer countries, education, possibly health.

That may all seem a bit vague, but it’s a start. I remember a valuable lesson from a counselling course taken in college, that one of the most important steps in resolving issues in your life is to understand where you are, where you ideally want to be, and then working out how to get from A to B. I’ve got to work that out now.