Work and weekend

[vaneramos]

Thursday I arrived home late from work and skipped my appointment with myself, but today I got back into the career-finding groove. I finished the Ponder Your Passion worksheet, and started compiling a virtual scrapbook of images and information related to some themes that arose.

I can see how the scrapbook will be useful, because it leads me to different ideas. I only had time to explore one theme today—food—but a search for images led to a school offering a program in hotel and restaurant management, and a Bureau of Food Control. Whether or not these specific career threads appeal to me, it's an interesting way of brainstorming, and will lead to useful resources at the same time.

It was a full weekend. Marian and Kerri joined me and Danny for a Stratford excursion to see As You Like It with Brent Carver as the melancholy Jaques.

A couple days before, we realized this Saturday was also Nuit Blanch so after the show we hurried back to Toronto to partake. We didn't have time to plan, which turned out to be a serious handicap. Two years ago I spent a couple hours figuring out priority things I wanted to see and considering how to get around, and got a lot more out of the event. This time we had only a general idea of areas we would like to hit, and no guide book. The outcome was less satisfying, though what we saw had more of the thoughtful factor, less of the whiz-bang.

At the Mystic Clay Pad (photo above), text messages transmitted from around the city were projected onto wet clay, visitors were invited to inscribe the messages before they disappeared, and eventually the inscriptions were covered with fresh layers of clay. Marian, like me, participates compulsively.

At Trinity College Chapel, a group had arranged an exhibit called Procedures in a Time of Plague: rituals for human contact in pandemic times, where guests were invited to run remote control paxbots with inflated rubber gloves for arms around the floor of the church. The goal was to make high fives to "pass the peace" safely, using robots as proxy. The waving hands rendered the lifeless things endearingly hilarious. They kept tangling in hugs.

Comments

Damn I missed that

[weebax.livejournal.com]

I went out west to Liberty Village and it sucked. Downtown was nice and so was Queen St. West.

Re: Damn I missed that

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I was tempted to go to Liberty Village, too, because it was so amazing two years ago, but I got the impression the best stuff would be elsewhere this year. I'm glad we didn't go there, but it's too bad we didn't venture into downtown.

[artricia.livejournal.com]

FWIW, when I started looking for a career a year ago, I took some personality tests (Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Strong Interest Inventory). I also spoke with a counselor about what the results were (I was on the line a lot), what they meant in the real world, how they translated to work and career choice. And I read a little about them from a career standpoint.

At the time, it felt like spinning my wheels and mucking about. These days, it allows me to write and talk fluently about what I can bring to a job, and allows me to think more clearly about what kind of job I want, even though I've still got the same background and history, and I still work with language.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I know my Meyers-Briggs type, so I should look into that. I haven't had much success in the past finding good job counsellors, and I imagine it will be even harder now that I am not unemployed.

The question of "what I can bring to a job" is a tough one for me.

[artricia.livejournal.com]

I like my job counsellor -- she works at my university's counselling center and was recommended by my therapist, who I love.

The career counsellor recommended to me a book called _Do what you Are_. I think most of the photocopies she gave me are from that book. What was most helpful was not so much finding out that I'm INTP as reading a bit more about what that means socially, when I'm looking for jobs (what kinds of strengths to highlight, what kind of weaknesses to work on), when I'm on the job, and so on. For that matter, there was a little interpretive information on the tests themselves. I think I paid $30 to take them; I was supposed to, anyway, though they might not have charged me.

In any case, a trip to your library to check out the book might be helpful. FWIW, it took a good year or so for the information to percolate in me.