Finding Myself: Career Choices (Part 1)

I live in a place where roaming around without a job would put one’s life, basically, on the line. And of course, it’s all about the visa and the expenses. I must grab whatever it is that would come my way, like what many other jobseekers do. But what field should I engage in this time? What is it that I really want to do with my life?


I am again on the crossroad – career-wise. I don’t want that the need and the pressure to find work immediately would land me again a job that could pay well enough but would never make me happy. And I’m gonna be sitting in the office again balancing financial statements and double ruling incomes or losses, and creating work policies and procedures, and brainstorming with the management team to find solutions to problems that have long been existent but was never solved.


I am an accountant by profession. I trained people, led a team, implemented policies & stood between the management and the rank and file employees in recession times. I took the round in all the system, managed a staff of 20, trashed old procedures and created new efficient ones.


But the most important thing I have done is that I have trained people, professionally and personally (maybe not all of them on a personal basis but most of them), and engraved in their hearts to never settle being in their positions but to always strive to get a step ahead to grow professionally. And that it is important to do what they really like to do. Something that makes them so grateful to me all these years.


I have trained people who are happy with their jobs now and I am the one left still finding what’s for me. Is this another way of defining ‘irony’? I knew I took the wrong start and I haven’t done something about it. The past years in my life had all been about working and getting the pay. Now, I just wanted to be happy.


There are two things I love doing in my life (apart from the many others ).. that is to do art and to write. For both gives me the freedom to be connected with my inner self. The plus factor is that I always see my end-product as a masterpiece. (Well, at least, in my eyes!)


I am an artist at heart. It is inherent. I am born with it. I have all the creativity inside me that could make me a full-pledged artist. I can do graphic design, I can play with colors, I can sketch, I can draw.. maybe not as good as the professionals but I know that I can always start with what I can do. And while at it, I could take short courses to enhance and update my craft.


I can also write, a lot actually. From stage scripts to taglines, from quotations to poetry.


Writing and artistry do not clash. They both require creativity of the imagination.. as both frees the mind while relinquishing the artist in an artist and the writer in the writer.


If there are people who could think outside the box, I could say that I am someone from the outside of the box. I have a different world. A world where only artists could get in and could fully understand.


Being an artist cannot be learned. An artist cannot be made. It must come from the heart. One must be born an artist . The person must be an art himself/herself.


I only need a break – a chance to prove what I can do. And maybe then, I could already stop saying that am a frustrated artist and finally live in a world I can call my own.