September 02, 2004

• CIA!
• Streetcleaner. Pornstar. Acrobat. Clown. Factory hand. Drug dealer. Pharmacist. Laundry worker. Caterer. Gynaecologist. This is the best of the web, folks. Let's find Wibbleflex a job.
• If you're a musician and you want a non-office job, what about teaching others to play your instrument?
• i'm not big on self-help books but i really REALLY think "finding your own north star: claiming the life you were meant to live" is a treasure. basic premise: you KNOW what to do, it's inside you, you just need a bit of help accessing that info. highly recommended.
• Teaching is a good living if you like it, but it can become a grind. Do you want to do something music-related?
• Join Cirque du Soleil and send us free tickets!
• Wibbleflex, I have no idea where you live, but you might consider this first. (Yes, their website is incredibly dorky, but don't read too much into that.) It's not cheap, but if you are casting about for input, it's excellent. In a nutshell, it identifies what aptitudes you have, the idea being that the more aptitudes you can build into your work, the more satisfying your work will be. I know about a dozen people who have done this, and they've all been glad they did. Disclosure: I got tested back in college, but have no other affiliation, so I don't mean to be a shill.
• Here's a Google search for music-related careers. When freelance gets to me I often think it would be fun to work in music retail - and record stores are often hiring in the fall in the runup to Christmas.
• Are you looking for something with flexible hours, so you can pursue gigs on nights & weekends? Find a restaurant or retail store. Have a hard time getting out of bed before noon? Work the counter at a gas station, a bowling alley, or a grocery store. Are you interested in the technical side of making your own music? Apply for a job at a recording studio. You can also go to school for this.
• I've got one word for you: Plastics.
• Starbucks has REALLY good benefits... best in the retail industry. Also, I take issue with this whole "quarter life crisis" thing. I don't deny it; I'm almost 25 and I'm feeling unfulfilled. My problem is with "quarter." Do we really expect to live to 100? My grandfather is 87, and he's doing great, him and grandma live on their own, are active blah blah... but, I don't WANT to live to be 100. What's the point?
• The time I spent working as a cashier at the casino as well as 3rd shift in a factory were both invaluable in making me realize what i really did NOT want to do, and to realize how lucky I am to be unmarried and childless so that I have the luxury of being a poor grad student for a few years and not have to worry about paying a morgage or feeding my children. The trap I have seen people fall into too many times is saying they are just going to work somewhere for a few months then buying things on loans or credit cards and having to keep the crappy job to be able to pay for them. If you want to buy something, wait untill you can pay cash for it. Don't make those bills keep you chained to a job you hate.
• Any interest in computer programming? It's easy, pays well, and requires very little education. If you're interested, I'll give you my recipe for success. Beyond that, I recommend keeping the music and job fairly separate -- unless you want to play weddings and teach lessons for a living.
• Do we really expect to live to 100? I guess the line is at 20. If 40 = midlife crisis, then people expect to live to 80, and "quarter-life" is at 20. I don't have a quarter-life crisis; I'm naturally apathetic and unambitious. I do that demeaning desk monkey work, 'cause it pays the bills, and that's about it.
• "Apply for a job at a recording studio. You can also go to school for this." Disregard this advice. I am a recording engineer and there are already enough musos in the biz as it is, most of them suck as engineers. Plus, you'll make no money. Why is MoFi suddenly a help site for people to find a fucking job? Doesn't this seem a little bit of a dodgy post to anyone else? There are whole websites devoted to this, much better than MoFi. Next it will be someone posting about what happened to their socks.
• I swear to God, I'll do it...
• Ha ha ha. No you won't.
• I've been dared. Ooooooooookay...
• Why is MoFi suddenly a help site for people to find a fucking job? Did I miss a bunch of posts recently? This isn't about finding Wibbleflex a job, Nostril, it's about suggesting job/career ideas that s/he might not have thought of alone. And Wibble, if you are interested in recording engineering then go for it. If you're good there will be work and money.
• Retail's a good idea, if you can get guaranteed daytime hours and get weekends off if you need to travel for gigs. Retail banking, maybe? Teller jobs don't go later than 6:30 or 7:00 p.m., and there are still quite a few banks that are closed on Saturdays. Even those that aren't don't require their employees to work every weekend. Word of advice, though: DO NOT work for any of the big guys. Small, independent local banks are always the way to go.
• Wibble, we need more information. Do you have a degree in something? Technical expertise in anything? What jobs look cool to you? As several posters have suggested, even crappy jobs can be marvelously instructive in a "Here is what I don't want to do..." way. Teaching can be a grind or a life-fulfilling mission--depending on you. You could get a taste of the profession by substituting or joining up with Teach for America or a similar outfit. Or sign up with a temp agency to get a sample of different kinds of workplaces.
• One word: Librarian. A good job (in countries that value culture) you can grow old in, but one that doesn't take too much of your time outside of work. (IANALibrarian)
• If you wanna be a recording engineer you need to like advertising. Or poverty.
• I found this site to be a very useful resource. It'll at least tell you what _not_ to get into, based on the experiences of others etc. You can find out such things as what education people have in their chosen field, whether they feel underpayed etc. What I found interesting on this site, for example, is that most designers feel underpayed and overeducated, but freelancers made a lot more on average. It is a Canadian site, but that may or may not be very important.
• Librarian might be worth thinking about. The librarian college I'm at is chock full of ex and current musicians and is pretty gig friendly. However, it does require a master's degree (the job, not the college), which is neither cheap nor particularly fast. And I've heard that it is the only field requiring the aforementioned masters that pays *less* than elementary education.
• This question is prompted PURELY by curiosity, and is in no way intended to be prickish: Why does being a librarian require a master's degree?
• You know, the farther I get into the program, the more I ask myself that very same question...
• that card catalog thingadoodle is a beeyatch, is why.
• In seriousness and overcoming my scholastic cynicism, it may be a field that's a good deal more complicated that it initally appears. It's also somewhat broader than reshelving books and going 'bing' at the checkout. My program covers everything from kind of groovy cognitive approaches to how people look for information to management and administration to databases to customer (patron) service to community analysis to knowledge organization. About half of the faculty are computer science PhDs, maybe a quarter are traditional librarians, and the rest are pretty evenly split between lawyers and philosphy PhDs. To return to the original question, there are positions as librarian's assistants or paraprofessionals with the same relationship to a librarian as a paralegal has to an attorney. There are community college programs for this line of work, though I haven't any experience with them myself. One could work in a public library, academic (university) library, or in the private sector in a corporate or law library. I'm uncertain what the pay is like, but the people that work in libraries tend to be cool people to be around, though I am a bit biased. About the greatest job ad I ever saw was for a librarian's assistant at Battelle. The job did not require an MLS/MLIS (Masters of Library/Library and Information Science) and started at, if I recall correctly, $2,800-3,100US/month for 25 hours a week. I don't recall if benefits were included, but you can imagine the appeal. I'm willfully ignoring my own job prospects right now, so I don't know if that's a common job description/salary range but it pretty much describes my dream job, and I'm pretty similar to the poster except I've got grad school as a day job. Also, one of the drummers I play with works intermittently as a paralegal. That might be worth considering as well.
• "And Wibble, if you are interested in recording engineering then go for it. If you're good there will be work and money." Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! No, no, no. Sadly, no. Heheh. But give it a shot if you want. Heheh.
• Look, fuck retail, fuck Starbucks. Do you really want to kiss yuppie ass all day? Here's an option I have a friend who does this He's a complete drunkard But still manages to make a good living at it. 1. Buy a cheap ass van/pick up/ box truck..anything that will hold lots and lots of crapola. 2. Guess what? You're now in the "hauling" business you clean out attics, garages and basements. 3. Find a drunken helper. (for endless entertainment) 4. Advertise in local papers (and I mean all the smallest crappiest neighborhood papers you can find). Go to every real estate office with a flyer for your services 5. At least 2/3 of your calls will have good stuff you can save after you dump the garbage at your nearest landfill. Sometimes you'll get a call with nothing but great antiques that the family doesn't know the value of. 6. Save the good stuff in a garage or local storage locker. Sort out the antiques and Ebayable items. Post crap to sell on Craigslist. Thye gargae is now your store. 7. Sell the household crap at your local flea market. 8. Save up all the antiques and go to a large antique show to sell em. 9. Steal underpants 10. Profit
• God, you're an asshole Nostril. I have two friends in my city alone making comfortable livings as recording engineers. They love their work, the variety of it (everything from music to dialogue to editing), the technology and the people they work with. One of them also has a remote rig and gets good money recording gigs of all kinds. Give it a rest, man: your experience isn't the be all and end all of working in the biz.
• You don't mind getting a little credentials? Want to work in the real world? Have you thought of doing a trade? Sounds weird, but plumber/contractor/electrician type deal. I know 3 plumbers, a landscape gardner and an electrician who all make as much money as I do, have small businesses that they're built up that give them entirely flexible schedules and none have to wear heels to work (selling point in my opinion but you may differ). Or move to Maui and work in a surf shop (perhaps I'm projecting *my* desired career path). Most of the time it isn't as easy as it sounds, misty la vie en rose pictures, but there are lots of non-call centre, non-post doctoral work requiring work out there to be found.
• oh, reading that, I sound very much like a twat: I meant only that they make very good livings doing what they find to be interesting and varied jobs, unlike me, who divides my time between computer-staring, writing nasty letters, and arguing.
• "God, you're an asshole Nostril. I have two friends.."SLAP You have two friends? I find this difficult to believe.
• Scratch my feet.
• Geez, I might give some serious thought to Argh's idea. Actually sounds pretty good. Can still sleep in, smoke weed, travel, meet people. My God! What's not to love about this?
• Cheers..couple of new ideas there