I lost another friend

Writing, copy editing, interviewing, basic Microsoft Office, content management systems ( Zope and Saxotech), video (Brightcove, Tout and Youtube), SEO headlines, using social media to promote product.

 

All those skills, separately or together, can be translated into other fields.

Are you on Linked In?

If not, why not?

 

Haven't gotten around to it yet, I guess.

Are these skills that can make me stand out among other applicants or are they just basic things that it's assumed everyone applying for certain jobs have?

 

Depends on the job. Journalism, PR, business, marketing, politics, sales.

Get on Linked In.

What do you want to do? What have you always wanted to do?

If you want to write, write. No one can stop you.

Take a job as a janitor, like Bukowski, and write on the side. Or a hotel clerk, like Nathanael West. Or an insurance executive, like Wallace Stevens.

 

I'm already sort of doing that. I'm still covering football games and other stuff while holding down a regular minimum-wage job.

There's nothing for me in sportswriting anymore as far as full-time work goes. I'd like to do something involving writing full-time, but at the moment, I don't know what's possible. I know I don't want to do sales.

 

I'd like to do something like that.

 

Then do it.

 

My tiny shred of advice for that second career. If you want to write sports stories and can’t find a full time job, don’t take a full time gig where you have to write things like tech reports or odd blogs. Save your writing for yourself. Work at a hotel or a supermarket. Managers of gas stations here in Gilead make $50 grand a year. There are a lot of times I think about doing that and then get back to freelancing.

 

Hey, most any clerical position is going to match with an ex-journalist's skill set. And it can be a pretty good job.

 

I get it. Writing and copy-editing and the like seems very esoteric, and unlikely to you to translate to other jobs, and while most journalists use some computer programs, they are generally not actually tech wizards, so you are probably uncomfortable saying/thinking that you are actually really knowledgeable in such skills.

What I've gotten from all this is a general lack of confidence on your part, but I'd like to ask: What have you actually done, or applied for that might get you going in a better direction, or to a place that, even potentially, you'd like to go?

Because posters like jr/shotglass are right. There are simpler but good jobs out there that you might like, or that at least would get you started on a better path and into a better frame of mind. I get the feeling that your defeatist attitude, and just having an answer, or a question, for virtually anything that anyone suggests, is just killing you -- and stopping you from getting anywhere.

You need to start somewhere, and just do it, and see what happens.

I've suggested it on here repeatedly, but go onto city, county and state sites and start applying, and testing, for jobs. There are myriad jobs -- some full-time, many part-time and many long-term temporary, but all are pretty good, if not always exciting -- and they would probably make you feel better and put you on better paths of opportunity than where you're at now. I had opportunities from doing that for Social Services jobs, an HR job, Sheriffs/911 call-in jobs (a great option for sports-writers, actually), Library jobs, etc., all through applying/interviewing for county positions.

Do the testing that Neutral Corner suggested for possible ideas and directions. (Do you have an actual Job Center in your city? Mine has one, and it, too, can test some of your skills, help you improve certain things, and perhaps point you to job listings). Heck, apply at Walmart. (That's when I did it -- when I was so down and desperate that I actually WANTED something just "easy," that I wouldn't have to think about, and that I thought I wouldn't care about, that maybe wouldn't last forever, but that would give me a little money. And now, it has become much more than that for me).

The point is, you're stuck, and what you have to do to get unstuck is to actually DO something -- something that makes you feel like you're doing something -- and take steps, instead of continually questioning/wondering why maybe you shouldn't. (That is your depression kicking in).

 

Agree with WT here: look for civil service jobs.

 

Sounds like he just wants to mope so that the sad violin music doesn't stop playing.

It's like 12 pages of Waltz No. 2 ...