{"id":216,"date":"2018-02-05T12:48:08","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T20:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pianodog.com\/transient\/?p=216"},"modified":"2020-03-17T18:06:03","modified_gmt":"2020-03-18T01:06:03","slug":"do-what-you-love-nah-do-what-you-gotta-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.pianodog.com\/transient\/do-what-you-love-nah-do-what-you-gotta-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Do what you Love? Nah. Do what you gotta do."},"content":{"rendered":"

Why do I do what I do?\u00a0Having been out of work for almost 2 years, I\u2019m taking a long, hard look at my chosen profession.\u00a0I started in technical communications over twenty years ago, pretty much by accident.\u00a0I needed a job and my brother (who was a technical writer) got me a job at the startup he was working at doing screen shots and images for their engineering specifications.\u00a0That got me into writing and from there into training and instructional design.\u00a0Not the career I originally wanted.\u00a0I recently had a phone interview with a company and they asked me what gets me excited about this career. It was a question I\u2019d never been asked before (I\u2019d been asked how I got started in this field, but never this).\u00a0I had to think about it for a moment because while I knew the answer, I\u2019d never really had to articulate it before.\u00a0Why do I do what I do? After more than 20 years of doing technical writing, training, instructional design, video editing, script writing, and mentoring, I\u2019ve come to realize that what I do is rooted deep in who I am.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I am a teacher.<\/span><\/p>\n

I love seeing people succeed.\u00a0I love showing people how to do what they do better, faster, more efficiently using the tools or product I\u2019m working with.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve thought many times about changing careers, but I always come back to technical communications because it\u2019s at the core of my identity.<\/span><\/p>\n

The old saying goes \u201cdo what you love and the money will follow\u201d.\u00a0But what I\u2019ve found is that I took my first job because I needed the money and over the years I have come to love what I do.\u00a0Throughout my career, I\u2019ve taken jobs because I\u2019ve needed to but then I\u2019ve come to love the people, the place, the work.\u00a0And what I\u2019ve found is that more often than not, the job morphs to match my passions.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m still out of work right now and looking for my next opportunity (If you\u2019ve got an opening, shoot me a message and let\u2019s talk), but in the meantime, I\u2019m still finding opportunities to do what I love.<\/span><\/p>\n

Everybody says it\u2019s important to stay busy and stay current when you\u2019re out of work.\u00a0I volunteer as the communications V.P. for the PTA at my daughter\u2019s school.\u00a0Gives me a chance to stay up on current web technologies as well as try out new communication strategies that I come across.<\/span><\/p>\n

So they say do what you love. I say don’t worry about that. Just do what you gotta do and the love will usually follow. (And the money.)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why do I do what I do?\u00a0Having been out of work for almost 2 years, I\u2019m taking a long, hard look at my chosen profession.\u00a0I started in technical communications over twenty years ago, pretty much by accident.\u00a0I needed a job and my brother (who was a technical writer) got me a job at the startup […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":63,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.pianodog.com\/transient\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/birds1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pianodog.com\/transient\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pianodog.com\/transient\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pianodog.com\/transient\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pianodog.com\/transient\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pianodog.com\/transient\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.pianodog.com\/transient\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":580,"href":"http:\/\/www.pianodog.com\/transient\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions\/580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pianodog.com\/transient\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pianodog.com\/transient\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pianodog.com\/transient\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pianodog.com\/transient\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}