Posts Tagged ‘Economy’
10 Ways to Get Hired : CareerFuel
September 11, 2013Barack, Joe: Thanks Helping Me Find My Career Sweet Spot
January 22, 2013
Dear Barack, have you thought about a White House blogger from outside the Beltway?
When I started blogging, I promised myself that I wouldn’t just write to be writing.
I had seen too many self-indulgent rambling passages that people passed off as blogs, so I wanted my work to be worthwhile should somebody stumble across it and invest the time in reading it.
Blogger Jeff Bullas reported that in 2012 there were 429 million blogs, according to statistics from WordPress.com. From that number, there are 500,000 new posts a day and 400,000 comments are posted.
So in other words, thanks for finding me and reading my blog.
Because I am a job seeker, I pore through a lot of blog posts during the course of a day looking for new insights into perfecting the hunt and landing a job. Somehow my email has landed on a White House mailing list and amongst the random notes for growth hormones, unsightly hair removal and testosterone replacement was a note from Joe Biden that was titled simply, “If not now, when?”
Cool, I thought. The White House really cares about my job search. Barack and Joe are riding to my rescue. This couldn’t get any better!
Now I’m pretty sure I got on the White House email list because I have repeatedly attempted to get the president to send a recognition letter to my son acknowledging his earning the rank of Eagle Scout. It’s OK, by the way, son No. 2 is now getting close to becoming an Eagle, so maybe the White House can save some postage and just mail the two certificates together along with an offer to become the official blogger of the Obama administration.
What Joe was writing about was guns and gun control, but what I really wanted him to be spending time on is rebuilding our economy by helping people who have been without a full-time job so long they’ve either fallen off the radar or run out of unemployment benefits.
I don’t have the answer to guns and violence in our country. By I do see neighbors and friends fighting the good fight and watching their retirement funds and rainy day accounts slipping away as more burden is placed on the middle class.
Bruce Kasanoff recently penned an interesting article that we all need to take to heart. He suggested finding a sweet spot in our life and then pursuing things that fall within those parameters. The idea comes “Who Are You and What Do You Want?” by Mick Ukleja and Robert Lorber.
First, don’t be afraid to get messy in this exercise. First make ovals containing your strengths, passions and obligations. These should appear in a graphic shape like in fourth-grade math so that the ovals overlap.
It might take you two or three attempts, but ultimately the goal is to find where your obligations, strengths and passions coincide and build from that sweet spot.
I know most of us have this giant oval of obligations: Bills, taxes, rent, food, unexpected car/house repairs, the next shoe dropping, anything Suze Orman or Dave Ramsey said we should be saving for.
And it may take some soul searching to find out what you are truly passionate about. I know in my case I’ve let obligations stand in the way for such a long time that it is hard to let my passions show through for fear of not meeting my obligations.
Often times, societal expectations based on your perceived strengths can keep you from believing in your passions, and meeting your obligations simply serves to exacerbate the ability to dream and find the sweet spot.
So while I’m waiting to hear back from Joe and Barack about the whole White House blogger thing, I’m going to draw up some ovals and try to find that sweet spot. And if you have any influence with the West Wing, I’d still like those Eagle Scout certificates.
Must have been talking about finding your sweet spot and going for it!
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