Tag: job hunting

Changes.

Changes.

Some of you may know that I’ve been looking for a job for some months now.

Well, as of this week, I’ve finally found one!

I’ll be working as a Website Administrator for a local information service. Between three days at work and two days volunteering at the Museum each week, that isn’t going to leave me very much time for anything else.

As a result, I’ve had to make the decision to stop taking on custom sewing requests completely. This includes the sewing lessons that I’d been planning to start giving this year.

I’ll still be sewing and knitting – starting with a pair of trousers and a cardigan to wear to my new office! But updates to the Etsy shop will be sporadic, as I’ll mostly be making things for myself rather than to sell.

I know it’s supposed to be the craftsperson’s dream, to get out of the rat-race and work solely for yourself. But I’ve been doing that on and off for almost ten years now, and I have to admit that I never once managed to make a living wage without relying on part-time jobs to help me out. Then I had a prolonged period of ill health that meant I was barely able to work at all, and being self-employed rapidly turned into a nightmare. I’ve been looking for a new job for the best part of a year, and I’m over the moon to have been accepted for a position that I think I can really enjoy.

I have just less than three weeks to get myself ready, and I’m really looking forward to it!

Travelling Massage Therapist.

Marwell Zoo
(These guys are Emperor Tamarins. They live at Marwell Zoo.)

It has to be said that I’m not having a great deal of luck with my job hunt. I’ve applied for a few things, but there simply aren’t very many jobs out there at the moment.

So, with the help of Seth Godin, Havi Brooks and Chris Guillebeau I’ve been doing a bit of creative thinking, and trying to work out what measures I could take by myself instead of having to rely on somebody else to provide a job for me.

The answer turned out to be something that I’m perfectly qualified for – massage therapy. However, my chances of finding a job at a local salon are quite slim. (My hair’s pink, I don’t wear make up and I’m not tanned – these things are immediate disqualifications in the beauty industry.) I also don’t want to give full body massages. They’re extremely hard work, and my own body isn’t well enough to manage it at the moment.

But there is something I can do which will suit me, and will also reach out to the kinds of people who might never think to go to a salon – and that’s working as a travelling beauty therapist.

By providing seated massage, I can limit myself to working on smaller areas of the body such as the feet & legs, hands & arms and shoulders & head. It also means that my clients don’t need to get undressed, or clamber onto a couch. The treatments can last as little as 10 minutes for an introductory session, or more in-depth massages can be combined for up to an hour.

I’ll be travelling by bus, bike or train, so my range is fairly local, and I’ll need to keep my equipment to a minimum. But if I travel to people’s homes and offices, all I need them to provide is a chair and possibly a table.

I think this will work really well if I can travel to an office space, or perhaps a local community centre, and offer treatments to a number of people from a single venue. It would also work really well as a pampering session – gather a few friends round on the sofa, and take it in turns to enjoy a relaxing foot massage!

I’ve made a start this morning by making a poster and asking the proprietor of my local shop to put it up in his window. The next step is to design some flyers, have them printed, and then I can use my lovely new bike to deliver them all around the neighbourhood.

I’ve also written a page on the Scents & Stones blog, explaining how it’s all going to work.

If you think your workplace might be interested in hosting something like this, or you fancy signing up for a pampering party, please could you let me know? You can leave a comment below, or send an email to claire@eternalmagpie.com. Thank you!

Head in the clouds.

Little fluffy clouds

I started working for myself for two reasons.

  1. I went to an event with a lot of independent traders, and came home thinking “I could do better than that”. And I did. For a while.
  2. I became frustratingly and unpredictably ill. Working for myself gave me the flexibility I needed to work as much as possible when I was well.

For a long time I’ve combined working at various part time jobs with working for myself. This gave me a convenient source of regular income, whilst also allowing me the time to work on my own projects and business ideas. In 2008 I became sufficiently ill (ironically thanks to the medications I was taking) that I could no longer reliably hold down a part time job, so since October 2008 I’ve been working entirely for myself.

My bank balance sadly reveals that I haven’t been making a very good job of it, and so I find myself in the position of looking for a job again.

Unfortunately, the down side of being a “magpie” is that I find it terribly difficult to stick to just one thing. When it comes to getting a job and staying with it, that’s a bit of a drawback in terms of finding something that isn’t going to bore me to death after a few months.

Since I left University I’ve taught myself to sew, to make alterations, to draft my own patterns, researched historical costume and learned to make corsets, studied the Pre-Raphaelites, learned how to use a digital SLR, taken up wildlife photography, learned to knit, written and published my own knitting patterns, taken life drawing classes, qualified as a professional massage therapist, designed, built and run an online shop, made jewellery using semi-precious gemstones, studied historical crafts, written sewing tutorials, volunteered to study 19th century smocks and signed up to give a workshop on smocking, made my own slippers, recycled pillowcases into tote bags, made my own soap, bubble bath and body lotion, taken up clog dancing, researched sustainable textiles and fashion production, started writing this blog, set up my own t-shirt printing business… and that’s just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head.

On the job front, I’ve designed and built websites using a number of different systems, trained other people to use them, written instructions and documentation, typeset, edited and proof-read all sorts of things, fitted and altered bridal dresses, worked in a library, and sold cosmetics, fabric and books.

The list of things I want to learn is as long as my arm (and growing by the minute), but the three things that are vying for my attention at the moment are training to become a qualified aromatherapist, learning to make my own shoes, and learning to make silver jewellery.

The problem with looking for a new job is that it’s very difficult to condense all of this into a coherent and appropriate CV! The other problem with looking for a job is that I don’t want one. Not a job in any conventional sense that I can think of anyway. The thought of having to pick one thing and stick to it seems completely ridiculous to me. How on earth would I choose what to do?

The primary skill that I bring to everything I’ve ever done is relentless enthusiasm.

I have a peculiar ability to be interested in just about anything – until I’ve understood it, figured out how it works, or learned how to do it for myself. After that I’m quite happy to move on to the next thing, whatever that might be.

Unfortunately, as far as I’ve been able to tell so far, that’s not a job.

I don’t need mountains of money. I’ve never aspired to be especially rich. But obviously I have bills to pay, so I need to earn some kind of a living.

So, I guess what I need to find out now, is how to get paid for being relentlessly enthusiastic about things.

Your suggestions are extremely welcome!