Welcome to The Ready Room, where I explore random topics to help you kick off your week.
This week let’s talk about opportunity: “a situation or condition favorable for attainment of a goal.” At least, according to dictionary.com.
However, these favorable situations don’t sit around and wait for someone to stumble upon them. Life moves. Opportunities appear and disappear. Trends rise and fall, and somewhere in the middle of it all is you.
Know Your Goals
Last year I wrote an article on goals. These are crucial to help writers navigate their careers, but the same could be said for almost anyone. Goals are important and give you something to aim for. But not just singular goals, we also need smaller milestones to achieve and reward ourselves for.
Having a target, whether it’s for your career, a bucket list, or simply to make the shift from the life you have to the life you want, helps give you a broader sense of what you want and where you’re going. You become familiar with your own likes and dislikes, and with what you’re willing to pioneer or stay far away from. Goals provide a roadmap. Navigation beacons to offer a core focus to whatever it is you’re attempting to pursue.
When Opportunity is Revealed
That moment when the mist rolls aside and the shadow stalking your movements shifts into tangible form. We’ve all seen it at least once. Felt that moment where we see a place for ourselves to move forward, or to pioneer something new and wonderful. Then comes the question: do we?
Twice in my life I’ve found myself in a strange position: a career trap. I didn’t have a job, but I had a skill set. I spent several months with a temporary placement agency and worked for more than a dozen companies until I found a home. The office was clean, the people were nice, and most of my co-workers were in Alberta and Toronto, so it gave me a chance to polish up my high school French skills.
But I was miserable. I had a child to take care of, family living in my home who were restarting their lives, and my job was the same as every one of my temp jobs. Type in data, make some phone calls, and occasionally answer the switchboard. I could do it, but man I was bored. Blue and white walls, open cage space, and the lady at the front desk got lazier at her job. Soon I had switchboard calls assaulting me all day long—to the point where I couldn’t even do my job.
If you’ve ever seen the movie Office Space, this was my life. Complete with the annoying woman with the high-pitched laugh. I desperately needed to break away from the cold climate of the workplace and breathe a little magic back into my life. So I searched for another job. And searched. Soon I discovered that another job wouldn’t help anything, because I would end up doing the same thing anywhere: typing data, answering phones, and watching my life spiral down the drain into the icy abyss.
Be Brave
So, I did the unthinkable (especially for a single mom). I quit my job, applied for every bit of financial aid I could get, and went back to school at a local community college. It was the hardest two years of my life, and I had no idea if anything would change. People called me insane. One friend even went so far as to try to pressure me to quit my psychotic notion, promising he’d get my job back.
I didn’t care. I needed a change. For two years I suffered financially. I scaled away the naysayers from my life and charged ahead. Attending classes, fighting through projects, and trying any new thing I could get my claws into. I even took an art class (I suck at drawing) and found a passion for working with charcoals. I got to create a mathematical project on Lord of the Rings, study two further years of French, dig into archaeology and anthropology, study flora and fauna on the campus marshlands preserve.
Basically, I got a chance to feel alive again.
The Result
Then came the scary part. Graduation. School done, I had a diploma in the mail, and it was time to enter the work force again. I spent two days tweaking my resume, then realized I was setting myself up for failure. My resume listed all my previous jobs, the work I’d done over the last decade, two years of campus work, and a degree. Nothing was different except the degree.
So I said fuck it. I gutted the damn thing and only listed my two campus jobs: computer lab and student body tech representative. Added the degree and changed my top goals. I wanted to be a web developer, something I’d been studying on my own since I started school. It had nothing to do with my degree, and I’d never done any such job in a professional capacity. But I wanted it, and I knew how to code.
I applied everywhere and had only a few weeks before I had to resort to the old lifestyle. It was a long shot.
And I got it.
Fast forward fifteen years, and here I am. I work in the digital world caught somewhere between mathematical logic and artistic creativity, and I love it.
Take Your Shot
Opportunity doesn’t always reveal itself, but when it does, you need to be prepared. Do you flip over all the tables and take your shot, despite the sea of naysayers? Or do you decide the timing isn’t right and keep forward on your chosen path a while longer?
There’s no wrong answer.
Some opportunities aren’t right or fall at the wrong time. Some need to be seized. The more you know yourself, your goals, and the direction you want for your future, the easier it becomes to spot those lurking shadows and make an active decision. If the opportunity is right, charge ahead and don’t question it. Even if it doesn’t work out, maybe you’ll have a chance to breathe a little magic into your life again.
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