When Your Career Ladder Looks Like a Jungle Gym

My resume was a great conversation starter at an MBA recruiting event I went to this weekend. My takeaways were that I can likely get into at least one of my top choice schools if I manage to get a really, really high score on the GMATs (as in, over 700.) Most schools seem to like that I'm not the typical MBA candidate, which is a good thing.

But this post isn't about my quest to get an MBA, or it isn't directly about this quest. Instead, it's about moving up, down, and diagonal on the career "ladder."

My current job is a huge leap up from any positions I had before in both responsibility, salary, and company respect. But it's a six month contract which is ending soon, and likely won't be renewed (more to do with the state the company is in than my work here, my boss wants to keep me on.) So I'm in a pickle. Where do I go from here?

The biggest problem is defining my career goals and understanding how my next steps will get me there. Incredibly, with the large-name company on my resume I'm getting calls back on my applications from other respectable companies. That's not to say I'll get past the first interview, but the phone is at least ringing.

It isn't clear where I'm supposed to step to go up in my career. Most of the jobs I really want require an MBA or a lot of luck. Then there are all these very good jobs that are all so very different and can lead me in very, very different directions. Do I want to do customer support? B2B or B2c? General marketing? Social media marketing? How do these answers change when each option has a specific company attached to it? How do they change when each company has a salary attached to it?

Honestly, I'd be happiest doing online customer support. Because I love helping people and solving problems. That role is at an excellent company, but I bet my pay would be cut in half. Or maybe I could negotiate a little more, but I can't imagine they'd pay a customer support person the same amount I'd make as a marketing manager or even marketing assistant. I'd be happier in the short-term, and there's a chance getting a foot in the door at this company can lead to bigger and better things, but is it really a step up in my career? Should I care?

When it comes down to it, I need to look at what I'm good at and what makes me happy. I know I get the most reward out of helping people, solving problems, etc. Those types of jobs don't pay as well as selling to people. Ideally I'd find a role where I can solve problems and help people while developing and marketing products. That may require an MBA. Right now I can possibly get hired as a social media manager, but that career path is limiting. It's also all marketing and not as much about improving a product. It can be, it just depends on the role, product and company.

Regardless, the pickle I'm in now will only continue to, well, pickle, before I can take a bite and discover the taste of my future.

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Who Needs $90 Wine?

Apparently the price of wine heavily influences how much people enjoy it. A team of researchers at Stanford and CalTech set out to prove this, and gave testers two glasses of wine to try. One was a "$90" glass of wine, and the other a "$10" glass of wine. What the subjects didn't know was that these two glasses of wine were actually identical.

"Specifically, the researchers found that with the higher priced wines, more blood and oxygen is sent to a part of the brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex, whose activity reflects pleasure," reports CNET.

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I Need a Job.

Welcome to the world of unemployment. It's not that bad of a world, minus the whole losing money every second of the day sort of thing.

The good news is that while I'm officially unemployed (sans unemployment insurance, since I resigned), I've picked up a few random freelance gigs here and there. My uncle always needs random work done for his e-marketing firm, and he seems really happy with the work I've done for him thus far, which makes me feel really good. Yea, he's my uncle, but he's also a really talented marketing entrepreneur and I know he wouldn't be hiring me for more jobs if he felt like I didn't have the chops.

I have a steady income (1/3rd my rent) each month from ongoing writing assignments from him, with occasional extra work for the firm. This month, in addition to my normal copywriting, I did my first official web page design assignment for him. I guess he liked how the design looked but wasn't thrilled that I turned a pure HTML document into one with CSS. Oops. I was so confused by the original HTML document, given that it was causing Dreamweaver to have a hernia or something. Half the code turned GREY and I couldn't edit it. Now, maybe that was a template that I was supposed to work in, but there was still some weird code that was making the layout all wonky. I kept the layout exactly the same, except I revamped it in CSS. Hopefully that's not too awful. He wasn't exactly clear on the directions, I was just told to take a pre-existing site and make it look better, and that I did. Oh well.

I'm also writing a bunch of copy for a start-up social networking-esque company. It's all contract work, but who knows, it could lead to something more. So this week is booked solid with contract work. Next week, my sister comes to visit and I'm "taking the week off" to show her around town. Then I'm going to start focusing on my job applications. Well, I've been applying for jobs left and right, but am not sure anyone is going to consider hiring me full time since I was only at my last job for 4 months. That looks really bad in the eyes of a potential employer, and I can't blame them for doubting me. It's just frustrating because I know I have so much to give, it's just my last job wasn't right for me. I'm not a newshound. I'm somewhat socially anxious, which doesn't really align with a career in journalism. But how do I explain that to potential employers? "I quit my last job because talking to strangers makes my heart explode." Yea, that's going to help me land a great job, for sure. :(

In any case, I'm hopeful that something good will come along if i'm patient and bide my time with contract work. If I can manage to turn the contract work into a full-time profession, all the better. But for now, I'm crossing my fingers that I can manage to pay for my rent, basic bills, health insurance cobra, and food until something full-time comes along.

Meanwhile, i've decided to focus my free time on getting into shape and figuring out how to be healthy inside and out. I've stopped taking the anti-depressents (wow, I took them for a whole 25 days, and now, I'm done) and am looking into herbal stuff instead. (Yup, I bought some St. John's Wort.) I can't figure out if all of the nutritional supplements end up costing me more than a psychiatrist and Lexapro, or if they end up costing about the same. In any case, I figured out that my lack of energy and dizziness is probably caused by iron and other nutritional deficiences. This week, I even tried eating red meat (I've been a vegetarian for about 10 years, though I started eating fish a year ago) - but after downing a half-pound hamburger yesterday I got sick to my stomach. Let's just say an hour or so after eating that burger, I only digested about half of it. The rest? Don't ask. (Yuck.) So I'm done with red meat (again) for now. Instead, I'm looking into other supplements to help the cause of mission get healthy (without - getting broke.) Think I can do it? Well, I certainly hope so.

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