Dreamer, you know you are a dreamer...

I need to decide what I want from my career. I’ve spent plenty of time trying to figure out what I want in life, which turned out to be a lot more rural than I thought. I did an exercise from the “What colour is your parachute” book, where you draw a picture of your ideal home-life, one of your ideal holiday and one of your ideal job. The holiday was a piece of cake, it was palm trees and sand, sunshine, a cocktail and a good book (possibly also to include something to knit). The home was a little more taxing, but generally not hard. House, garden, pond, a dog, a sheep/goat, chickens, that sort of thing. Rural, like a smallholding really. Work, however, I struggled to represent. It’s meant to be the ideal, so you should show something that in an ideal world you’d be doing. I guess my first thought was that in an ideal world I wouldn’t have to work. As much as I love knitting, I’m not sure that it’s career material. I probably wouldn’t love it anymore – after all, I used to love computing, now it’s just a means. I admit, too, that I can be pretty lazy. (don’t scoff) I don’t know whether I would get on with anything outdoorsy, I do tend to get cold. However, I am prepared to wear thick sweaters and lots of layers. I wanted for the longest time to be an archaeologist. I doubt that there’s much money in that either. Yes, I confess once more: I am quite materialistic. I’m a child of the 80s and it’s hard not to be! (That’s two confessions in one post!)
So, I still don’t know what I want from work these days (aside from to be well paid). I have to start saving up though, that gives more options in the longer term, doesn’t it?
People tell me that I’m quite ambitious. I don’t know about that. I know what I want and I go for it (or I did, but now that I got what I wanted I don’t know what I want next) so, I guess that all I have to do is figure out what I want.

Well, I do know that I am going to want to be doing something which is flexible. More so than now. I don’t like being constrained by “key periods” as to when I can take a day off or whatever. Some things should be sacred, but aren’t. I’d like to not work on my birthday, perhaps I was spoiled by never being at school on my birthday (it being Dec 31) but I don’t think that’s such a difficult thing. Yet, with that being “key” (so I'm told) the chances are that I’ll have to come in to the office and do nothing with the sparse smattering of other workers who don’t have the day off (it’s not usually many).
I guess I sort of knew that when I was first employed – though they never mentioned having to work the 31st Dec, only the 1st Jan. but I do know that it comes with the territory now, so I might as well get used to it. I still think that it sucks, but I’ll not work in a team that I'm not interested in working in just to get away from one day being irritating.

There’s something out there, and I’ll probably not find it straight away, but I will eventually find it if I look. If I look, that’s the key isn’t it?

I have to commend my sister who does look for new work if she fancies a change. I wish I was so proactive about my career, but it’s pretty scary too. I don’t think that Gayle’s fazed by it at all. It’s the thought of all the things that I’d have to do. You see, the problem with living in a small city is that there are less employers, so the chances are that you might have to go elsewhere if you want to get different work. I don’t know where.

I’d love to work abroad, somewhere warm. I wouldn’t have as much use for my handknit scarves then, but I could learn lace-knitting and have dinner outside sometimes. I just don’t know what I really want to do. Did I rush into work too soon – should I have travelled the world first? Nope, too sensible – where would the money have come from? But that said, every time I think I have some money together I end up having to spend it, which sucks.

So, anyone – any ideas about what I do to decide what I do?