Do What You Love

It’s been busy week at work (between both jobs!) and trying to spend my spare time either sending out resumes and cover letters or writing my 3-part series next week on my story of converting to Judaism.

Right… cover letters and resumes…

So I realized I haven’t actually posted about this. I think I’ve casually mentioned here and there that yes, I’d like to get out of higher education, but haven’t devoted a post solely to this topic.

I’m currently job searching for something to replace my current full-time job. I’ve spent the last 7 years in higher education working in student affairs with a residential life focus and while it’s been fun, it’s time to move on, for a variety of reasons.

One of the biggest reasons is realizing that with my skill set and talents, I’ve been using them in the wrong field. It was through this blog and my experiences for the past two and a half years that brought me to this realization.

Over the past two and a half years, I’ve been writing on a near daily basis. I’ve launched my own social media and marketing campaigns to promote my work and my blog and I’ve realized that yes, I’m finally putting my Communications degree to work after all these years. Between the interviews– in print, web, TV, and radio- and the recent award nods over the last two years, it’s finally dawned on me that perhaps my actual life’s calling is to in fact be a writer and advocate for this community… and getting paid for that would be just lovely.

Allow me to recount the winding history explaining how I got onto my current career path.

Prior to college, I had no idea student affairs in higher education existed as a field; I suspect many of us who come to this field weren’t planning this as a career when talking with our high school guidance counselors. In high school, I was fully convinced I would be an opera star who taught high school music to make ends meet, a la “Mr. Holland’s Opus.”

And yet, after a semester, I switched majors in college. My passion for music, I realized, was just a hobby and that I didn’t have the wherewithal for the demands of a highly competitive music performance and music education program at my college. I’ll never forget my voice teacher expressing her disappointment with me as I told her I was leaving the School of Music. She looked me straight in the eye and told me: “Keiko, you’re throwing away a G-d-given gift.”

(This is important for later in my story.)

I switched majors from Music Ed/Vocal Performance to Communication Studies. To put it bluntly, I had no backup plan, no sense of career path outside of music. Communication was a broad (and easy) enough major. I figured I had 3 and a half years left to figure out what I wanted to do after college. I became a Resident Assistant my sophomore year and through that experience learned about the field of student affairs.

I was hooked. In retrospect, I think I latched onto that career field because I truly didn’t know what else to do with my life. Plus, it often came with free housing if I concentrated on residential life. Ironically enough, I got into student affairs because I don’t think college was a great fit for me.

After 7 years in this field though, it’s time to move on. It’s time to make use of the talents and skills I have in both a field and a position that better supports those skills and talents. Remember what my voice teacher said to me? That stays with a person. I have a huge fear of disappointing others. It drives a particularly (and sometimes unrealistically) high set of personal performance standards when it comes to my work. I think half the reason I’ve stayed in higher ed this long is because (I feel) I would disappoint everyone (and who is this “everyone” really?) by abandoning it.

Truth is, life is too short not to do work that fulfills and sustains you.

Do what you love.

I’ve come to this realization about moving on from student affairs into writing/marketing much in the same way I first did about discovering student affairs as a career path. But this time, I’m not latching on to a field because I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I’m passionate about the infertility community because I see how much work we need: to raise awareness, to advocate for treatment coverage, to demystify and destigmatize the patient and ART-built family experiences.

I’m currently searching for full or part-time work in social media/marketing, and/or writing.

My ideal field: social media/marketing or writing for the infertility community.

My preferred fields: social media/marketing or writing for the women’s health or healthcare fields in general.

My “just get my foot in the door” fields: Tech start-ups, SEO/marketing companies, ad agencies, non-profits.

I have feelers out everywhere and am job searching nearly a dozen different job aggregate sites. If you have leads or networking contacts for telecommute or Boston-region/North Shore MA based, I would be much appreciative if you could send them my way.

I’ve even cleaned up my LinkedIn profile just for the occasion.

I also wanted to publicly announce my new blog. Because, yanno, I have so much free time to write a second blog 😉

My professional website and online writing portfolio can now be found at KeikoZoll.com, affectionately titled Awesomesauce. I’ll also be blogging 1-2 times a week there as well, writing about non-infertility related things. Mostly geeky tech stuff: social media, blog design, and maybe a video game review or two. Please feel free to stop by, check out what I’ve posted thus far, and please do leave me feedback.

I am by no means slowing down with Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed. My infertility is a daily experience and I intend to keep writing about it here, as well as sharing my thoughts on pertinent infertility-related news and headlines. Just feel free to add Awesomesauce to your Reader for the occasional geeky post each week. Do also feel free to pass it around to your networking contacts; my resume and growing writing portfolio can be found there.

You know, I feel remarkably better having gotten this off my chest and committing my intention out there to the whole wide internet world. It feels good to say that I’ve come to a point of self-reflective maturity to recognize that it’s time to move on from a field for which I no longer have passion; I’m excited about the possibilities of finding a job – or multiple jobs, if need be – that suit my skills, my talents, and my true passions.

Now it’s time to do what I love and what I know I’m good at doing.

Now it’s time for the work to begin.

Now it’s time to make that intention a reality.