my potential new job
Jan. 28th, 2007 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321I've sort of narrowed it down.
My potential new job would involve planning and designing projects, evaluating proposals, persuading and communicating with people in writing and speech in a small team of like-minded people from international backgrounds / different cultural backgrounds who share similar social and ethical values but part of a larger international non-profit, public-sector or charitable organisation. I'd like to be involved in supporting creative people in the arts in an environment that values my contribution, offers respectful feedback and allows me to get on with it with minimal supervision. I would like to draw on my knowledge of languages and my passion for literature, narrative and the arts, also my commitment to democracy and freedom of expression. I would like a job that offers flexible hours so that I could write a novel in my spare time. Plus, ideally, that pays me better than my present job.
So I've been looking at sites like the Ford Foundation, UNESCO, the European Union and suchlike. I'd really like to work for Unesco or the EU but I can't move to Paris or Brussels just now. Still, t'sons will be grown-up one day and I could move into areas now that would give me experience and skills for transferring to EU/Unesco one day.
Anyway, that's where I'm at now. I think on Wednesday I will visit the careers service and look at all the info. Also, I plan to go to the Open Day of the Ashridge Business School in March.
This is all doing my head in a bit. I've talked to several people now, and some are enthusiastic, some are helpful, some know friends who may offer useful advice and have undergone career changes themselves, others are skeptical and warn me about jumping from frying pan into fire and abandoning my Book.
It is an odd thing about the Book. The Book has been with me for over five years. I've had 1 1/2 years of research leave in total for the researching and writing of it. I have a finished manuscript of over 100,000 words that needs revising. I have currently no interest or motivation in revising it or writing a book proposal in order to get a book contract. It's like going to the cinema and paying your seven pounds and finding, ten minutes into the film, that the movie is rubbish. You can stay and get your money's worth, or you can leave. I always leave, thinking that I've already wasted seven pounds, I'm not going to waste 1 1/2 hours of my life as well. So with this Book, I'm thinking, I've spent five years on it already, and some of it was joyful but recently it's just been a slog and a struggle and a millstone around my neck -- so am I going to waste yet more years of my life on this thing?
The thing is if I've lost the motivation to publish, this is a real surefire symptom that I don't just want a better job but that I want to get out of academe. No matter what wonderful department with what lovely colleagues I could be at: the pressure to publish will follow me around anywhere within academe. And I'm just sick of it.
T'h is very sorry about my Book. He has always had great faith in it and thinks it is brilliant and original and that the time for it is now. This is all no doubt true; I seem to be cutting-edge right now, narrative is 'in', but I just have no lust for it. Maybe the motivation will return once I'm out of my horrible job: this is not known.
All of this makes me feel strange, though. These are momentous thoughts for me. It is anxious-making.
My potential new job would involve planning and designing projects, evaluating proposals, persuading and communicating with people in writing and speech in a small team of like-minded people from international backgrounds / different cultural backgrounds who share similar social and ethical values but part of a larger international non-profit, public-sector or charitable organisation. I'd like to be involved in supporting creative people in the arts in an environment that values my contribution, offers respectful feedback and allows me to get on with it with minimal supervision. I would like to draw on my knowledge of languages and my passion for literature, narrative and the arts, also my commitment to democracy and freedom of expression. I would like a job that offers flexible hours so that I could write a novel in my spare time. Plus, ideally, that pays me better than my present job.
So I've been looking at sites like the Ford Foundation, UNESCO, the European Union and suchlike. I'd really like to work for Unesco or the EU but I can't move to Paris or Brussels just now. Still, t'sons will be grown-up one day and I could move into areas now that would give me experience and skills for transferring to EU/Unesco one day.
Anyway, that's where I'm at now. I think on Wednesday I will visit the careers service and look at all the info. Also, I plan to go to the Open Day of the Ashridge Business School in March.
This is all doing my head in a bit. I've talked to several people now, and some are enthusiastic, some are helpful, some know friends who may offer useful advice and have undergone career changes themselves, others are skeptical and warn me about jumping from frying pan into fire and abandoning my Book.
It is an odd thing about the Book. The Book has been with me for over five years. I've had 1 1/2 years of research leave in total for the researching and writing of it. I have a finished manuscript of over 100,000 words that needs revising. I have currently no interest or motivation in revising it or writing a book proposal in order to get a book contract. It's like going to the cinema and paying your seven pounds and finding, ten minutes into the film, that the movie is rubbish. You can stay and get your money's worth, or you can leave. I always leave, thinking that I've already wasted seven pounds, I'm not going to waste 1 1/2 hours of my life as well. So with this Book, I'm thinking, I've spent five years on it already, and some of it was joyful but recently it's just been a slog and a struggle and a millstone around my neck -- so am I going to waste yet more years of my life on this thing?
The thing is if I've lost the motivation to publish, this is a real surefire symptom that I don't just want a better job but that I want to get out of academe. No matter what wonderful department with what lovely colleagues I could be at: the pressure to publish will follow me around anywhere within academe. And I'm just sick of it.
T'h is very sorry about my Book. He has always had great faith in it and thinks it is brilliant and original and that the time for it is now. This is all no doubt true; I seem to be cutting-edge right now, narrative is 'in', but I just have no lust for it. Maybe the motivation will return once I'm out of my horrible job: this is not known.
All of this makes me feel strange, though. These are momentous thoughts for me. It is anxious-making.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-28 11:30 pm (UTC)About the book. Of course, t'h has good points there but if you are so not motivated right now, it would probably not happen anyway, so why punish you with trying anyway. No. And really, maybe you will want to do it next year or so. Also, if you want out of academics (and that's for sure, obviously), then it's not really important anymore anyway, if now would be the perfect time. So no hurry, right?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-29 09:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-29 09:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-29 03:22 am (UTC)And yeah, it is a shame about the book, but I can see your motivation to move on.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-29 09:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-29 09:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-29 09:13 pm (UTC)I'm not burning my notes or destroying my hard drive so the book won't run away. I'm just giving myself some time off here, and then at the end I'll see if I want to do anything with that millstone of a book.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-29 09:14 pm (UTC)