Technology Tribulations: Finding A Stable Job vs Self Employment

Technology Tribulations: Finding a Stable Job vs Self Employment

I am a graduate of the American college system. I've struggled with earning a degree because of my status in society. Part of it affords me a privilege (not right) to be a productive member of this society. Though I don't exactly fit into precepts set forth, the idea is that people can make anything of their life if they work hard to achieve it.


For me I've been in full on rebuild mode. I took it upon myself to tackle a very elusive endeavor that has a lot of closed doors. I labored in idle stasis learning, adapting, and eeking out a kind of productive life to the best of my ability. I spent four long years laboring, learning, spending time studying to be a college graduate. There is ample amount of material I still don't know, yet I won't let that dictate what I can do, or my potential.

There are some precarious challenges, firstly: I have a medical condition, secondly: this bars me from participating in various functions due to my locality, background, and to a lessor extent my status in society. My experiences with workshops in and around employment sector gave me a clarity I acknowledged but I wouldn't accept.

It is brutally ugly the employment field. It is extremely competitive, adhering to a gang related mentality that is unruly, and disgusting to witness. Going through these tribulations, I had to learn early on in my working career that if I can't adapt, I will ultimately perish. Survival of the fittest as Charles Darwin proclaimed.

I would observe numerous times harsh realities of working for a twisted machine, seeing how little my own work ethic was acknowledged or respected. I would watch my own father toil and sacrifice only to be denied his real passion: a kind of creativity. American jobs are built around a kind of political construction, aligning, and following a unspoken precept. I learned early on if I wanted to succeed at something I had to be clever, focused, and have the attitude to back that up.

Once I started seeing those patterns continually recycle, I saw those paths of progress looking more and more like a no-win scenarios. I realized the game won't change. It's a bitter pill to swallow, especially starting out with a dead-end jobs, and not really gaining any real traction to forward expansion as it were. I also realized because of my own medical condition, specific regulations negated me from prospering forth in the grand cosmic scheme. I am as untouchable as a cancer patient is in regards to insurance and the dreadful pre-existing condition after their first batch of chemo therapy.

So this got me to thinking, if my background is as much an albatross to an industry that is as locked in it's rigidity doesn't make me a fine candidate for secure employment. It dawned on me why not go into business for myself? Then it hit me why not? Okay, so yeah, I think I'll try and do this on my own.

It didn't have to end up this way. Yet with other career paths, retention of longevity isn't an option now, each tract I've journeyed forth has taught me critical aspects of being a face, and carrying myself in my own unique way.

I'm not complaining, each step has afforded me the ability to take stock in my journey, though I am not a young man, I'm a seasoned individual that has worth, and promise. Yet I understood right away the blocks that were in the way. I understood the game in that it is a fixated point that is extremely unrelenting, and unabashed in its cruelest judgment.

I've accepted that if I wanted something I had to go out and seek it on my own terms. Though I can adjust to various systems, I enjoy having freedom in choosing my path, and the way in which I get there. I knew after I finished my training, the road forward was going to involve many bumps, scrapes, and bruises.

I jumped at the chance in utilizing my training at a non-profit. Through volunteering I used my training, and skillset to help around the shop as it were. I am humbled and honored for the trust they bestowed to me. I would have liked to have continued my service there, but, the signs of a more advanced change became very clear towards the end.

These are big accomplishments in my second chance in life. Though these were not always avenues I expected, I am grateful at least for having been connected to patient people who understood my proclivities.

Though I have applied at dozens of businesses, I cannot help feel that my own situation as it were is fraught with more questions than answers. Though there is a key way to handle ones character, I push hard, and try the best I can. Applying for work isn't the problem, it is securing interviews which have been elusive. As it was then with insurmountable layoffs, gaining any real traction with today's field is more combative, and caustic.

There are going to be challenges no matter how I look at the overall picture. I've become so frustrated with the grand scope (overall picture) that I worry where I will be in the next few months. It isn't that I've dug a big hole with distortions, addictions, no I am clean, mean, and feel I can still contribute but I feel a sense of treading water.

There will be judgement about my character. There will be judgement about my work history. There will always be judgements based on "what can you do for me now" results, and those expectations of that result.

I feel as though knowing early on I didn't fit the career objective type mold, I'm okay with that. Its a matter of principle now, rather than all the extreme viewpoints held by a skittish and nervous employment sector unsure of itself and where it wants to go.

Part of it is that gaining a long term stability with working long hours, working up the corporate ladder, and the attitudes that come with it. I understand why especially with the tech field is a mash of different skill sets, but at the same time it is fractured by hardline viewpoints, and old stigmas. Trying to remove that and gain some traction has proven very difficult. As it isn't what I know, it is who I know.

Doesn't make me feel all that great knowing that, as I've questioned my career choice, yet there is the weird feeling of watching how accelerated the field around me has continued its march. I often wonder and pontificate a lot about where I will be in five years. Thanks for reading.

B.

Technology Tribulations: News Vs Social Media

Technology Tribulations: News Vs. Social Media

Oh the vestiges of when media had substance, well kind of...but the overall meat of then was that the idea or narrative was told through a prism that contained a sort of process. A process called critical analysis.

With all the different mergers, channel switching, cable start-ups which have become monster Goliath's in their 'supposed brand', one specific nugget bore through: A Current Affair and Hard Copy were the start of the this next wave of infotainment as it were. This was in the early 90's, before Fox News was a twinkle in the starlet eyes of cable television drivel.

Infotainment and current events today are blurred. I have a hard time discerning which is fact and what isn't. A lot of the material currently is visual and verbal diarrhea that continues unabated with passing this narration as fact.

The guilty parties are all there now, not much is left to gleam forth in regards to actual content. It's all about context, public opinion polls passed off as a kind of factual currency of the times. One needn't look very far to see the current narration being spewed forth.

Our elected officials have been complicit as well. They're invisible line of double speak, which alleviates no real concerns I have about forward progress in the scope that is supposed to be informed. I don't feel like I am informed. Most of what is news now is all kinds of bizarre, faux hair do's, and missing the mark of credibility.

Its like a thousands of voices are screaming for your attention at once, and nothing really is being audible to understand. So much of the sphere has this slightly angled dumbed down perplexity that I cannot possibly think or believe that I am the only one seeing this.

Not in the sense of complicated, but the sense that yes the news is dumbed so much that even trying to elicit some kind of ethos or pushing a kind of propaganda. Its a frenzy of sorts, when the next distraction takes on a bigger life than the story itself.

Social media showed a kind of grassroots aspect that drowns this out, but rather than showcase a kind of investigative process, its very knee jerk reactionary. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr, and others have given a kind of ability to give the power back to the public.

Yet there is this very huge disconnect with how perception is shaped with the term 'informed'. While the world is changing from the old guard, many young kids, and 30 somethings aren't apathetic to these causes. But there has to be a level of seeing versus being the town cryer when it comes to how stories evolve, and the way they are broadcasted.

Because in the end the big monster in the room will take little sound bytes, and blow those out of the context away from the intended audience whom was at the gig witnessed. I really don't like the whipping up manufactured fear, or making singular situations become more than the construct it is. Some food for thought while watching the collapse of the old folding into the new.

B.