It’s been a little over two months since I got laid off. The job I had was good, great even. The layoff, as it turns out, freaking rocks.
When this all started out, I found myself adrift in a sea of other unemployed techies, all vying for the few jobs that the want ads hold these days. I came to realize that, as a sysadmin, I suck. Sure, I do good tech support, I get problems fixed in a jiffy, I know my way around various operating systems. But I’ve never had a single class in large-scale network architecture, and that’s a really hard thing to learn by just sorta doing it. Especially when you have a whole lot of other things to take care of during the day. So, I sucked at it, and eventually, I got laid off. The two may or may not have been related.
So, I spent the first few weeks of unemployment flailing about. I got on unemployment, I contacted the county’s job center, I updated my resume, I wrote most of a novel, I applied for everything out there, and I figured something out. I don’t want to be a sysadmin. I don’t particularly like it. Not just the work itself; there are parts of it that I love. But the idea that I’m in a career that necessitates my being in the midst of a corporate culture for the rest of my career is unwelcome, at best. I can get along within a corporate structure, but it’s not a lot of fun for me.
I kind of got thrown into this job category, years ago. I just had a knack for computers, and an old employer needed some help with a database, and then our neighbors in the business park needed some help with theirs, and suddenly, I was in the middle of last decade’s data boom, with no training and no idea what I was doing. I just learned as I went along. And I did pretty well, wandering from database work to tech support to hardware work to web design to system administration, blurring the lines between all of them as I went. But now, at the end of all of that, I have a big, broad, scattered understanding of the computer field, no certifications, no degree, and no job.
Okay. I’ve picked up and started off from a lot closer to scratch than that. I was a window washer when my boss asked me to look at their database way back when, just having spun off five years on the renaissance fair circuit. I find I have a knack for a lot of things; comes from having done a lot of things.
During my first initial jobless flailings, I was told that I should take a class at the county job center. So I did. I filled out a bunch of forms, and took an aptitude test. When the class was over, I asked the instructor what I had been doing there. He muttered something about ‘re-training opportunities.’ I was told I had to take another class, one on job seeking skills, that would take three days. I took it, got some good tips, got some good laughs, and was told that, while this class was necessary to qualify for re-training funds, there were currently no funds available, and wouldn’t be for months. Then I was told that I had to go see a counselor at the job center. So I did.
She told me I qualified for educational funds. That I had scored the highest marks possible on the aptitude test. That there were dozens of courses in my field that I qualify for. And that, since I’d been laid off by the university, I qualified for funds right away. So, what do I want to do?
So, starting tomorrow, I’m enrolled in a year-long web-based programming curriculum. The package includes over a hundred courses on a big variety of languages and applications. I haven’t done much programming, really; just database stuff, VBA, some Visual Basic, and that’s about it. Okay, so I haven’t done any programming. But the parts of my career in computers that I look back on most fondly are when I’ve been creating things; databases and web pages. I have no idea whether I have an aptitude for this, but there’s enough scope to the courses that I feel confident that I can find something I enjoy working in. And there are a few projects that I’d love to start work on…
What does this mean? It means that I’m staying home all year. That my job is going to be sitting at this computer and filling my brain up, then doing projects with what I’ve learned, and then fixing the projects. It’s going to be tight, financially, but there just aren’t any jobs out there right now anyway, and it’d be just as tight living on the income from one of the service industry jobs I might be able to get.
What I was wondering, after that whole long diatribe, is if anyone has any experience with this kind of web-based education? I’m pretty excited about it; I like blowing through material at my own pace, and classrooms leave me kind of bored. But I’m worried, too; I need to keep focused on this, I need to do 24 course hours per week at least, and I need to come out of it in a year having learned something useful. I’ve spent the past three days cleaning out my office, making curtains for it, clearing space on my hard drive, installing a new (thanks, Jason!) motherboard and chip, and getting some room made in my filing cabinet. I’m planning on making sure to exercise every day, and hope to lose some weight over the course of this year. I’m also hoping to finish up my novel, and get through most of the editing process.
Any advice on how to deal with a totally homebound year? It’s not going to be house arrest or anything, but there’s going to be very little contact with people, except my boyfriend and our circle of friends. Should I think about volunteering somewhere, or something like that, just to get exposed to people on a regular basis? I’m a bit worried; by nature I’m a bit of a hermit, and work is usually what keeps me grounded, and keeps my acting-normal skills honed. Will I be completely bizarre after a year of isolation? Or will it suit me so well I’ll never want to work again?
Basicaly, I’ve been handed exactly what I want on a silver platter. Now I have to see if I can live up to it. Any help would be appreciated.
- but, for some things, be disciplined and go and research in the library; go to museums; give yourself set times for study and set times for going out and about. I say this because study, like the 'net can be addictive and before you know it, you’ll be a fully fledged book basher.