I don’t know what to do with my life. I was hoping you could help.
Let me tell you a bit about myself. I’m going to be very honest here; I really need some outside perspective on what I can, or should, be doing. If you feel like slogging through all this and pointing me in a direction which seems like it might make me happy, I’d appreciate it. All questions will be answered as promptly as possible.
The Brief Biography
I was born, then shortly thereafter my father died. My mom, left with scant inheritance and three young children, did what she could to keep us fed. Specifically, she worked at the White House. Unfortunately, she could have chosen a better administration to join up with; shortly before a certain resignation hit the news, my mom realized that there was about to be a political shitfest, and she’d be in the middle of it. So she did the obvious; she packed us up and moved to Spain. We spent five years in the land of Franco, learning to be bilingual and wandering about.
After that, Florida. Then Ireland. Then Rhode Island, where I spent my junior high and high school years. I was a good student when I was interested, and a bad one when I was bored. Oh, except for Spanish class; somehow, that teacher managed to knock all knowledge of the Spanish language right out of me. Solamente hablo un poco, these days.
Now, at this point, we weren’t very well off; that affected my choice of colleges. That, and the guidance counselor who had determined that I was retarded, no matter what my ACT and SAT scores said. Rhode Island College. State school. Double major in English and Film. Extra-useful. Especially since I was pretty much paying for everything myself. Once again, my level of interest directly correlated to my grade.
Then I took a year off, and discovered the real world of apartments, menial jobs, and towards the end of the year, drugs. Pot, hallucinogenics, and booze. When I went back to school, I was stoked for some serious philosophy, man. Yeah.
You saw this one coming; dropped out after another year, about two semesters short of graduating, if I’d ever really focused on anything. Spent a while doing the menial job/apartment thing, until (I kid you not) the voice of God told me to leave. Like most divine revelations, this one lacked specificity, and so with little to go on, I packed things up, got stuff in order, and followed a vague notion to Peterborough, Ontario. Where I stayed for a month, soaking in the culture, and realizing that I had no idea what I was doing.
I wandered south again, worked as a dishwasher on an island off the coast of Rhode Island, redundantly enough, until I met a lunatic who wanted to wander off again. We stocked up on drugs, bought an old car, and headed, I think, south.
A few days later, I think, I woke up in the parking lot of a Renaissance Festival. Where I found shelter, work, friends, and most importantly, a sense of community that I’d been missing my whole life. I did Ren Fests for five years. I did everything; carpentry, craft work, puppetteering, juggling, street vendor, booth hawker. I was good; I drew a crowd when I wanted to, and made people laugh. It was a blast. A great five years.
Eventually, though, I’d done everything that I was interested in, and I wanted out. I knew a guy in Tucson who made puppets, and worked a deal where he’d use me to staff a booth in a local mall selling them. Great puppets, by the way. The guy who made them, however, was psychotic. Anyway, after a couple of months, I ended up still in Tucson, living in a teeny little apartment, working as a window washer.
Now, during the Ren Fest days, I’d finished a major construction project, and gotten myself a computer. Leading Edge, if that means anything to the grizzled tech geeks out there. One meg of non-expandable RAM, 20 meg hard drive, DOS 6.22, and a lethargic modem. Oh, and one of those snazzy new CD-ROM drives. I’d get stoned and play around with batch files in DOS, making the system do funky things, and I’d wander about on BBSes in the long evenings when I was wondering what I was doing with my life.
As things turn out, the entrepreneurial pair who owned the window washing business were computer-minded folk, with little knowledge of computers. They had paid a guy an outrageous sum, in the tens of thousands, to make them an Access 2.0 database with which to keep track of customers, billing, routing, and reporting. And, due to their consultant not understanding the nature of relational databases, the whole thing crapped out as soon as they got a repeat customer, and the consultant, understandably enough, was nowhere to be found.
So the bosses came to me, and asked me if I could take a look at it. I had messed about a bit with Q&A, a primitive database program, and I much preferred the idea of sitting in an air conditioned office playing with a computer to going out and washing windows in hundred degree heat, so I said sure. And in a few afternoons, I had their database up and running again.
Which led to some more reports. And some more forms, and some more queries, and I began to really enjoy the sensation of power that came with being in the lovely office, while my boss was out washing windows in my place. It was about the time when I realized that the database was pretty much finished off, when the guy who worked next door wandered in. It seems the bosses had been bragging about their database guy, and he had some Access problems he wanted to talk about…
That was how it was in the early 90s. I had a knack, and there were tech jobs everywhere. I never did take any classes, never got a certification, I just showed people what I was capable of, and that was that. I bounced around from job to job for a bit, got ahead, got a nicer place, got a better computer. And then… AOL.
I worked for AOL for a year, for a steady paycheck and a set of stock options. And I got the options, after that year, a few grand. By which time, I was batshit crazy. That place is hell to work for, and my pot smoking kept getting worse and worse. I gave up smoking with other people, became more withdrawn and paranoid, and after I quit AOL on my one-year anniversary, spent a few months as a recluse, smoking myself into oblivion. Cable TV, internet connection, a pound of weed in the fridge, and I was good. Only went out at night, of course, and didn’t talk to anyone for weeks.
Wow, this is getting confessional. Still with me? I think this is all relevant; if you’re going to help me figure out where I go next, I think you should know where I’ve been first. Anyway…
Eventually, the money ran out, and with a big pile of weed still left but no money to pay the rent, I found a Narcotics Anonymous chat room on IRC. Saith the newbie: “Does marijuana qualify as a narcotic?” After an evening typing with sober people who knew where I was coming from, I hit my first meeting the next evening. Did 90 meetings in 90 days, got a job, got the landlord to hold off on evicting me, and threw away all my dope and paraphrenalia. That’ll have been eight years ago this July.
Clean, sober, and in the best tech market ever, I continued to move up. Better jobs, better pay, better circumstances, until once I had reached a job with the most stable employer in the state (the state itself, of course) where I was happy and well-paid and well-liked and wanted to stay there forever…
I got laid off.
For the past few months, I’ve been soaking up the unemployment checks, taking courses in programming, and wondering what the hell I’m gonna do with myself. Which has been fun, but all good things must come to an end. Which brings us, pretty much up to date. I’ve got a couple of months worth of academic unemployment left, and then I’m on the market again. But… which market?
So, what?
So, now I find that my career of ten years is gone, never to return. Yeah, I know, the tech market might pick up again sometime, and there will be computer places hiring, and geeks everywhere will rejoice. But I think I’m pretty much out of the running. For people like me, who just had the knack, but no formal training or certification, and who never really made it much past hardware jockey, there’s no place left. Or at least no place good. Especially since, let’s face it, I was never a really great computer guy to start with; I was a good computer guy, with good social skills, which let me communicate well about computers. But they never were my lifelong passion, and I never got the fundamentals that come with having a formal education in the subject. So I bid my old career goodbye, and look forward to my next one, whatever it may be.
Which brings us, at long, long last, to my point.
About freaking time!
Tell me about it. I had to type all of this.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, so what does this washed-up ex-hippy-druggy guy have to offer a prospective employer? What makes him think he’s worthy of a job that doesn’t involve the phrase “Do you want fries with that?” And you’re thinking, why doesn’t he shut up already?
We’re almost through. At least I think we are. We’ve gotten to the point where I explain what I can do, which comes just before you all suggest what I can do with it. Ready?
Skills, qualifications, abilities, etcetera
First off, I’m a nice guy. I make people laugh, put them at ease, settle conflicts, solve problems, and create peace and harmony wherever I go. Pretty much. But I am good with people; I can talk to anybody, about anything, for however long. In the words of Maude, “They’re my species.”
As a side effect of the above, I can sell things like freaking crazy. I’ve never been in a retail position where I wasn’t the top salesperson of all the people in the business. I had one boss pull me aside back when I was hawking food at Ren Fests, to show me a couple of graphs he’d printed from his Excel spreadsheet. He lined them up; for every trough in one, there was a crest in the other. He pointed to the crests, and told me that whichever booth I was at, that was always the top booth in sales for the day, by a long shot. He was a great boss.
I’ve sold everything from pretzels to computers, and had a good time doing so. For the most part. I tend to burn out of retail positions after a year or so; I like people, but it’s draining to do that sort of thing full time.
I’m also a decent craftsman. I’ve made pottery, rocking horses, puppets, jewelry, leatherwork… pretty much anything that would pay during the week at the festivals. I got a reputation as a reliable producer of quality work, and was at one point considered to be the second-best bamboo flute decorator in the US. Really. Currently I paint miniatures, play guitar, sew, and cook. Jobs where I’ve spent lots of time working with my hands are the ones I remember most fondly. I really miss that.
My computer skills aren’t excellent, but they’re way above average. I’m a good hardware tech, troubleshooter, maintenance guy, and computer tutor. Networking skills are pretty much up to a small office level; enterprise level stuff leaves me in the dust. I do Access development off and on, and am currently working on exploring the .Net platform, with an emphasis on C#. Not great at it yet, but I catch on quick.
I also came up with some decent web pages in my time as a web designer. Keep in mind, though, that this was back in the days when a web page meant HTML, and not much else. But my photoshop skills are still pretty sharp, and I know how to make things look good on the screen.
My writing either speaks for itself, or it doesn’t. By now you’ve read enough of it that you can judge whether I communicate well or not. One thing’s for sure, I’m not scared of word count.
I’m reliable, I’m punctual, I’m flexible, I’m bendable. I’m in reasonable shape, mentally and physically, and I have good transportation. I’m in a great relationship with a wonderful guy (and for those of you not keeping up with the MrVisible Saga, yes that does mean I’m gay.) I’m looking for long-term, stable employment. Despite having had an astonishing number of jobs, I’ve never been fired. I’m willing to relocate if the offer’s good enough. Oh, and I’m pretty much debt-free, and right now I can be had for cheap.
So, whaddaya want?
Given what you’ve read about me, in all its profuse entirety, I want to know what you think I should do now. I’m hoping that you can offer some guidance as to what you think I’m suited for, and what you think would make me happy. I’d love to hear from some Dopers who have been where I am now, looking at the crossroads of infinite possibilities, who could tell me how they figured out which path to choose.
I often think of these boards as the modern-day equivalent of the oracle on the hilltop. I come to the boards when I want knowledge, wisdom, insight, and mockery. And right now, I need them all, in spades.
And so I ask you, O Dopers…
What should I do with my life?