5.5 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Began My Wishy-Washy Career

This little beauty comes from JUDAIKITSCH with photographs by Dwight Eschilman 

Lists of the 5, 7, 12 things that you couldn't live without knowing until someone thoughtfully took the time to compile them in a neat ordered way, are a dime-a-dozen on my favorite social media platform.

I have two observations to make: Lists annoy the crap out of me but I inevitably ALWAYS click on the link - Wow 5 ways to make a million dollars with teeth whitening/acai berry trials - who can resist?

Here is my list for you before you embark on a career like mine otherwise known as "I do something very elusive that is hard to describe".  I was laid-off in January of this year.  About the same time I stopped watching Mad Men - this is not a coincidence.  Now I am a consultant which means I get paid by companies to do a job they don't think critical i.e worthy of a permanent staff position.  Mainly I love it and surprisingly I'm almost making a living but its a long way from my web 2.0 days of big budgets and technology so complicated that even programmers looked confused when you created a pretty diagram for them. So here are the 5.5 things I've learned from redundancy, read them carefully and take copious notes.

1. You own more cosmetics and body products than you think. At least I do. Every time you traveled for work and you popped into Duane Reade, Wholefoods or Bath and Bodyworks and picked up that little tube of lip gloss - well now is the time to dig it out from the recesses of your wheelie bag.  I thank God daily for Burts Bees, Badger and Target in equal measure. I honestly haven't needed to buy any beauty products for 12 months.
2. You can do so much more than you think you can.  Who knew that I could create a landing page and link multiple domains?  Who knew that I could fix (VERY) basic code on a client's blog? Who knew that I could run an effective e-mail campaign and who knew I could figure out which was the missing audio codec to get an AVI to play? I used to pay people to do these things, now I do them myself.  
3. It sucks.  I mean it is literally awful to readjust your life style and your spending to reflect a different financial reality however there are redeeming moments.  I don't meant to sound like a Hallmark card but I recently finished something small and low tech and the amazement on my client's face when I showed her how her brand might look if she were to, gasp ... take it ONLINE, priceless.
   
4. Escapism is very important.  In my darkest moments after coming back from the sweetest vacation in July and realizing that in this market the job I left was not coming my way anytime soon, what did I do?  Stayed up for 2 days straight and watched True Blood, every last drop of it. I dreamed about it, watched it, breathed it and I even found clips on youTube from Comic Con.  I have since read all the books, watched both seasons often and everytime I feel a little pang of OMG, guess what I re-watch?  (The same goes for Vampire Diaries and the New Moon series). In fact my current twitter faves are tied between Sookie a person pretending to be a True Blood character and BuzzEdition, everyone's favorite Social Media Maven.
   
5.  This is really 4.5. Money does matter.  Anyone who tells you that it doesn't, is either very wealthy or very stupid. This blow is lessened by the good news that there are other things that matter as well. 
6. I've been told that as a Marketing person in the current economic climate my lot is going to be tough.  I have two choices I can get a job that you can describe in a sentence. For example, "I'm a symbian programmer"  (Yawn) or "I do sales" (not going to happen).  Or I can ride this wave, learn my lessons and save more money when the market picks up in preparation for the next time round. Most importantly though, I can and I do thank my lucky stars for my sense of humour.

In case you are curious my previous title was Director of Productions and Branding ...