Achtung!

Again with the freaky horoscope.

This is what Free Will Astrology gave to Geminis for this week:

During this phase of your cycle, you'll generate good fortune if you brainstorm and meditate about your relationship with work. I urge you to empty your mind of everything you think you know about the subject. Adopt a fresh and innocent perspective. Here are some questions to prime your investigations. 1. What's the quality of the experience you want to have as you earn a living? 2. What gifts do you want to give to life as you toil at challenging tasks that are interesting to you? 3. What capacities do you want to develop in yourself while doing your work? (P.S. For your Halloween costume, why not pretend you're doing your dream job?)


...BUH.

The biggest Identity Crisis I've been dealing with lately is figuring out What The Furk I Want To Do. Just today I was thinking about it. For a friend's Halloween party this past weekend, I was tempted to dress up as a Marketing Executive, so that last line is especially Buh-Worthy. I read that and pointed a finger at the screen, all "Oh, I see what you're doing there, and it is NOT COOL."

The thing is, I love Marketing. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was an Accounting major when I took a Principles of Marketing class, and just fell head over heels for it. True, I was already falling out of love with Accounting, and, yeah, maybe I was looking for a way out, keeping my eyes open, and yeah, maybe I could have been clearer about what I wanted out of the relationship from the beginning, but that's not what this is about, so let's not get into the past, okay?

The point is, from my first day of Marketing, I was hooked. The analysis, the creativity, the strategy, my GOD it was exhilarating. Principles of Management was also a favorite class, for basically the same reason: all the reasoning behind all the decisions. The psychology, the emotional intelligence, the behavior analysis, etc etc. Finally, Advertising, which was analyzing existing commercials and campaigns and making up our own. Those homework assignments were some of my favorites in my entire school career, from kindergarten till now, and I could that from now till I was 500 years old.

(Doesn't hurt that all three classes were taught by the same teacher, who could make Tax Accounting interesting, I'm quite sure.)

But all my other business classes made me twitch. The classes on economics, the legal sides of things (torts, libel, etc), business basics, etc. And Sales may have been the worst class experience of my life, if only because the idea of being a sales person makes me nauseous with terror.

I am not a salesperson. I am not a leader. I am not a manager. What I love about Marketing is not the sales, the manipulation, the idea of being better than the other team. I love the analysis, the strategy, the psychology behind it all--I love the creativity. If I could just analyze commercials or campaigns for the rest of my life and be paid for it, that would be hunky fucking dory. Seriously.

But being a team member in an agency where it's Pressure and Crunch Time and Stress and Throwing Together A Campaign Fix At The Eleventh Hour? Count me out. Please. I'll ruin your carpet.

So there's that.

As I had mentioned in another previous post, I'm a writer. Except I hate to say that. Because I don't write...not nearly as much as I want to, need to. When the feeling hits me, when I get in the groove, when the celestial beings get together in a conga line, I can write for hours, and well.

When the juice isn't flowing, when the celestial beings have had too much to drink and couldn't stand up let alone conga, nothing comes out. And then it's work. Hard, horrible, frustrating, debilitating work that I just can't force myself to do. I'll gaze at the page, I'll pull my hair, I'll stare into space, waiting for SOMETHING. ANYTHING. PLEASE.

I would love to be a writer, the way I see it in my mind. Working at home, tapping away for hours in an office. No, not the Perfect Life, a mansion earned with my best sellers, only working eight hours a week and doing cross-country book tours. Just a small room, messy but well-lit, with a computer, being able to sit or sprawl or whatever and work out the stories in my head. Maybe go down to the local coffee place for a change of scenery. Not rich from it, by any means, but Doing Well Enough, thank you very much.

Except I hit these blocks, and they stop my in my tracks, and it takes me months to recover. And I can't discipline myself to save my own life, can't say "Okay, x time on x day every week, I go to this spot, and I write, and I don't care what comes out, but by god, something will be written." I suck at it.

I don't have the flow, and I don't have the will power.

So there's that.

As I have mentioned in no previous posts, I love to edit. This stems from the same sapling as my love for writing, but was realized because of my boyfriend, Ryan. He finished up his Bachelors in Psychology in December 2008, and let me tell you, he's brilliant at Psychology. He is both articulate and passionate when it comes to this subject.

However, he's not the greatest when it comes to English. His grammar and spelling can leave something to be desired, and that's where I stepped in for the last year of his degree. After he slammed out another research paper--and, in case you didn't know, Psychology students write A LOT OF FUCKING RESEARCH PAPERS--I would lovingly attack it with a red pen, marking up the errors and inconsistencies. I ate it up, I would hand him back the first draft and eagerly await the second draft, or the next paper that was due.

That Halloween party I went to? I ended up going as a Grammar Nazi. Suit, red arm band with a "G" on it, ruler, red pens, copy of Strunk & White in my pocket. There you go.

This past spring, I got a little more serious about this fairly-newfound love for editing, and looked into what might happen so I could earn a living doing it. From what I found, it seemed there are two avenues for such a thing: find a job at a publishing house, or freelance. The second option brought to mind the same image as being a writer--namely, that of being able to work from home, doing what I loved from the place I love.

Except there's one thing freelancers lack: structure. There is no office, there is no time clock, there is no payroll department, there is no manager to give you work to do. There is just you, and your talent, and your willingness to promote yourself up the wazoo. If Real Estate is about location, location, location, then freelancing is about promotion, promotion, promotion.

Here's the part where you scroll back up and read about what I am not: a salesperson. I couldn't sell someone else's products, how am I supposed to sell my own? When it's not even tangible and all anyone has is my word that I don't suck?

So there's that.

Marketing. Writing. Editing. Three areas that make me happy, that I could do for days on end and be quite content. Three areas that have a list of cons just as long, if not longer, than the pros.

Reading that horoscope was like receiving a slap in the face. I know that all I've just written doesn't exactly address the horoscope. What all these many paragraphs are is background to what's going on in my head before I even start thinking about those three questions:

1. What is the quality of experience I want to have as I earn a living?
2. What gifts do I want to give to life as I toil at challenging tasks that are interesting to me?
3. What capacities do I want to develop in myself while doing my work?

I'll get back to you.