Plants, Guppies, Pie, and Volunteering

I wanted to show you some of the marvelous new plants in our fish tank. They are such a lovely shade of purply, magenta green. I'm really loving them.
And the much-anticipated baby guppies arrived yesterday! I have been watching the mummy guppies grow rounder and rounder every day. I think about 2-3 baby guppies survive each time, but this time I counted 7. Hopefully they'll stick around! We lost a few fish when we introduced some new species of fish at Christmas-time. We found out a little too late that they were predators, oops! See that guy above? Yup, he's a meat eater! He went back to the pet store promptly!
And this delightful concoction is my sister's homemade pumpkin pie! Oh yum! It smells so delightfully aromatic and spicy in my house right now. I can't wait to eat it tomorrow. It's sitting on the kitchen table now (waiting just for me!)

Tonight I went to a volunteer orientation for a local senior's care home. I think it's one of the loveliest care homes I have ever seen! The walls are painted by an artist to resemble forests, glens, gardens, and fields. They even have an entire stair well painted to resemble the Grouse Grind so that the seniors can go "mountain climbing" and "hiking" every day. Even the floor is painted near the edges to look like grass and moss! I've never seen anything like it.

I like it very much there. They also have overfed cats (one seriously looked like Garfield...), aviaries, and giant fish tanks. It seems like the perfect place for me!
The part that touched me the most though, was how volunteers can bring meaning and purpose to their lives. Some of the seniors lived very active and exciting lives, but now they are confined to their rooms, trapped in an old person's feeble, sick body. If I go to visit them, I can talk with them and allow them to relive their exciting lives by encouraging them to share their stories. They are very lonely in their rooms. Apparently loneliness is one of the major problems they experience, and visiting is not one of the hottest volunteer jobs.

Lucky for me, I love visiting and chatting up seniors. I never knew being a chatterbox would be a useful trait, but apparently it is one. So, chatterboxes take note: if you have a few hours of free time and a generous spirit, go to the local senior's home or hospital and sign up to be a visitor. You can be like a bee pollinating flowers, and bring joy and good health to a lot of lonely people.

I never thought my search for greater meaning in my own life would lead me to try and bring more meaning into the lives of others, but I guess that's how things work best.

Have a wonderful day!

A Day At The Fair And Soccer Pitch

In addition to meeting up with old friends, I have been eating good food and hanging out with my awesome cousin from out of town. Here are some pics:
This is the yummy pulled pork sandwich I had at the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE). It was affordably priced for fair food, and quite filling! Mmmmm!My sweetie brought me a cherry margarita with an umbrella. He knows I like those umbrellas.
Yes, and then I ate this hen and her chicks... alive. No, no, just kidding! These cuties were hanging out in the barn area. I found them too irresistable to not photograph. Ah, I love animal babies.

I did eat a half chicken roasting on an open charcoal pit though. They have that at the fair every year and it's soooooo goooood! That chicken is totally overpriced, but it's a tradition. (And traditions must be obeyed when they smell so good!).
Later on that night, we went to a soccer game. I was trying to snap a picture of the pitch when the mascot noticed the camera-happy fans around me, and began to strike sexy poses for us. It was very amusing.I like the way the soccer pitch looks when it's partially lit by artificial light and twilight. It's nice.

So here I am back at square one in the job arena, but advancing quickly in the living life section. The anxiety of not having a job anymore is catching up, I'll admit. I don't really know what to do with myself regarding that. However, I am valuing the opportunity I have to take a breather and catch up with all the friends and life experiences that I've been missing out on.

I hope you have a good day!

Finding the Perfect Job is Hard Work

I have decided that finding the perfect job is hard work. On the flipside, finding any old job would probably be easy. I guess the question is just how hard I'm willing to work to find that elusive magic pay cheque.

Ah... the magic pay cheque. The one that's big enough to pay all your bills PLUS purchase all of your needed and unnecessary goods. The one that's big enough for you to save to buy a house, save for retirement, and even save for a relaxing or exciting vacation. Yes, THAT magic pay cheque.

I want it.

To be truthful, I used to have a magic paycheque before I was laid off. Well, it was close anyways; I was saving for retirement, saving for vacation, and I could buy things I wanted as long as I didn't spend too crazily, and spaced out my purchases. No, I couldn't buy a car, and I couldn't afford a house, but I could afford a bus pass and rent and that was close enough.

But it wasn't the perfect job.

I wasn't really happy with that job. After almost five years of working at it, I could probably do my job in my sleep and I was getting awfully bored. There was nothing really new to it, and I couldn't really envision a future with it. I guess it just didn't inspire me. So I did a good job each day, put in a little extra effort, and would go home at night wondering why I'd just wasted a whole day doing something that wasn't making a difference in the world. I just couldn't find meaning in my work.

I'm reading a book now called I Don't Know What I Want, But I Know It's Not This, and it's really helping me. You should read it too if that title calls to you, like it called to me. "Eureka!" I thought, "That's EXACTLY how I feel right now!"

The book is a step-by-step guide to finding gratifying work, and it's written by Julie Jansen. Julie has made five career changes in her life in order to find work that really fulfills and satisfies her personal and professional needs. Now she coaches and consults to individuals and companies, helping them to be successful in their work.

The book helps you to determine what kind of work situation you are in right now. It then moves into finding out where you want to be, by examining your values, attitudes, and change readiness. There are lots of handy-dandy tests to help you figure this out. When I narrowed down my values to my top ten, and compared it with my ex-job, I discovered why I wasn't happy there- my values didn't match my job. So, now that I'm looking for a new job, I have to keep my top ten values in mind to make sure that there is room there for me to be happy.

The book then examines your personality prefences, your interests, and your favourite skills. I found favourite skills to be an interesting idea since I have a lot of skills. The book wants to know what your favourite ones are because you might have a lot of skills, but you might only want to use a few of them- and it's true! I DO have some skills that I'd rather not use! Hehehe...

After all these tests to find out more about yourself, the book talks about how to get there to that elusive gratifying job. I can't tell you about this section and the rest of the book because I haven't read to that part yet. Instead, I took a break to read Eat, Pray, Love, One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. This is also an interesting book, and more of a personal revelation of her struggles to find meaning in her life and to make sense of her personal desire to pursue things different from the ordinary expectations of a woman.

So in the midst of all this reading, I still need to apply for jobs and think about what I really want to do next. There's also laundry, watering the plants, feeding the fish, and other menial chores in between. I've been spending more time with friends, meeting up with out-of-town visitors, and trying to do some good to make up for lost time spent making a magic paycheque instead of being useful to humanity. For once in my life, I feel calm inside. There's still a lot going on, but I feel like I can finally change gears and make the pieces of me line up with the pieces of what's around me.

For the character in Eat, Pray, Love that moment of epiphany and harmony was followed by a gauntlet of unpleasant experiences and suffering. I hope that I won't have to go through the same, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised if I'm thrown a curve ball. Life's funny like that. "Hee hee hee, let's see how we can mess up her life now!"
But I have hope now that I didn't have before. I think good things are happening, and I'm working towards taking better control of my life and my situation. If I can find out more about who I am and what motivates me, then I can find satisfying work that will be meaningful to me. I would like to have a meaningful life, and not necessarily by anyone else's measurement. I'd simply like to feel good about myself and what I've done with my life by the time I die. I don't think that's too much to ask.

What do you think? How important is meaningful work and a meaningful life to you? Or is the magic paycheque enough?

Welcome To The Laid Off Club!

So, as some of you may have figured out from The Laid Off Song, I was laid off last week from my job. I had been there for almost five years, so it was a bit of shocker. I'll have to find a new job now, and the prospect is a bit daunting, but it holds promise for change and something possibly exciting.
In order to facilitate my job search, I've had to work on my art portfolio. My old portfolio was from 2005 so it needed to be updated. This is why I was experimenting with photo gallery widgets on my previous post. Right now, I'm using the slideshow widget from Good Widgets on my portfolio. It looks pretty good, but it's a little bit slow in loading. You can check it out HERE. Do you know of any other good photo gallery tools and widgets? Let me know if you do!

Now my days are just a continuous flow of "Find Job, Apply" and it's not so bad yet because I have only done it for one week. I figure I'll be pretty stressed out about it in a couple more weeks when I start worrying that I'll never find a new job.

For now, I've just been doing a lot of thinking and spending time with friends and family. Events like this in my life tend to push me closer to those that care about me and want to help me. They are my support group. I'd say life support, but I don't feel like I've died just because I've lost my job. I think there are those that identify themselves more with their job, so they are probably taking being laid off with much more difficulty.

It's funny, I feel like I've just been inducted into some kind of private club- the laid off club. People in the laid off club know all about secretive rituals like applying for EI (employment insurance). "Don't worry, " said my fellow laid off club member conspiratorially, "I'll show you how to apply for EI!" EI sounded like a very important and mysteriously unbelievable gift.

"So... while I'm not working, the government will pay me money?"
"Yup! But don't think of it as free, you've been paying premiums for this all along."
"Oh... "

EI sounded like a pretty good deal to me. I didn't have to work and I'd still be paid. I started to wonder what other cool deals I'd been missing out on by being the average, steady worker.
Other laid-off club members greeted me with enthusiasm and shocking encouragement. "You're laid off? Great! You can go travel now!" What about saving money, I thought. Why aren't these people worried about money? But they seemed to think being laid off was the best thing ever. It was a chance to relax a little and do all the things they couldn't do when they were slaving away at their underpaid-overly demanding jobs. It was a treat in the midst of the busiest time of the year - the time of the year when every one else was working at full-tilt to avoid getting laid off. How peculiar, I thought.

So now, here I am re-examining my life, wondering what there is in store for me. Should I continue working in video games? Should I change careers and become a teacher or a nurse? Should I just get an average 9-5 job so I can pay the bills and not worry about a "career"? What should I do? It's amazing how many choices there are and the simple fact that I can choose again.
I think that somewhere out there is the perfect job for me. Do you ever feel like that? That maybe, just maybe, you were made for a purpose. That all your experiences would one day culminate into one glorious profession or purpose that would be the sum of your existence and the meaning of your life. I think that would be really cool.

Making a Career from doing what you Love

I started reading "Success Built to Last , Creating a Life that Matters" by Jerry Porras et al lately and realized that Mytutorlist.com users could benefit from some of the ideas in this book. On interviewing and analyzing many individuals who have experienced self-defined, world-changing success, Porras et al found some common themes. They discovered that how successful you feel at the end of your journey doesn't depend on how rich or powerful you are, it depends on whether you did something that you found meaningful in life. Porras et al encourages the reader to identify what is truly meaningful to the reader, and then to follow their passions with thinking and actions to support that meaning.

I was really encouraged by this. Every day, advertisements and media try to tell us different definitions of what will make us happy. This happens so much that we lose track of what we really care about, what we are really passionate about. Porras et al argue that when you find what you really care about, you will know because you will become obsessed about. And because you're obsessed about it, you lose track of time and you will work harder than anyone else to follow that passion. Perhaps you're in school, and you don't know what to do for your career. The key is find out what you really love and to make that into your career - not because it will make you rich or famous, but because following passions give you drive and committment that you won't find by following a career that you don't love or care about.

I hope that every student out there will realize the vast potential that they have when they find meaning in their life and can take actions to create more meaning. We are all capable of doing more when we do something that we are passionate about.