What Should I Do?

It’s the age-old question isn’t it? Well, perhaps it’s more a construct of modern society. Only a few decades ago I wouldn’t have had the scads of choices I have now.

In this post, I’m referring to career choices and related activities. I’ve been contemplating switching to a different job, but because I don’t have qualifications specific to any field (that I’m interested in working in) I’ve been considering different continuing education opportunities. Because I don’t have an actual job or particular career in mind it’s hard to know what I should try to learn. But without qualifications I’m unlikely to land a job either.

Areas I’m interested in include: insurance, payroll, bookkeeping, writing, editing, and general supervisory work.

But what I realized tonight is that most of the above options generally involve working alone, or mostly alone, at a computer, doing some kind of repetitive route work. And while I am excellent at that type of thing, it’s not really my dream. It doesn’t really fill the gap in my psyche.

What I actually want to be doing is engaging with people. I want to give presentations, discuss things, act goofy or exuberant. All fairly weird things for an introvert to want. But that’s who I am. Things that aren’t easy for me are usually more enjoyable than the things I can do without thought or risk.

So looking at my continuing education in this new light I’ve been brainstorming what I should actually be learning:

• presentations, including software
• education, various age levels
• animation (I want to make videos for Youtube)
• acting (always an interest of mine)
• personal finances (generally the theme of most of my presentations)

I feel good about tonight’s thoughts. They bring back focus to my meanderings and give me a motivation for working as much as I am right now.

Related to this I’m going to be giving two presentations next week to colleagues at my regular job, about our employee share ownership plan. I gave a presentation to my own department and it was so well received that I’ve been asked to give it to other departments as well. I’m looking forward to the opportunity.

Also, as an example of the things I like to do, here’s a Youtube video of me doing a recent reading of some random writing I did as a teenager.