work is the opportunity to play...

By Selina Barker

I'm fed up with running around nervously in circles, trying to find the answer to 'what career is right for me?' - overwhelmed by the amount of guidance out there on how to change career and find the perfect job. There's so much choice I just end up confused and frozen!

So I decided that I would put all thoughts aside, put the books back on the shelf, stop ploughing through the many websites out there and see what advice and guidance turned up naturally. 'STOP filling up my time worrying and TRUST' was the theme of today.

I didn't need to wait for long, someone I met recently through work called up out of the blue - Katherine - a career changer herself, she has been through the same arduous process that I'm embarking on and offered me a few gems of advice to get started with:

'Start by taking a look at the things you wanted to do and enjoyed doing as a kid.'

I liked that - I've recently been looking at careers and business in terms of play. If I look at work as play then I start to look at it in a far simpler way.

  • What games did I love to play as a kid?
  • What games do i want to play now?
  • What people do i want to play with? Do I want to play alone?
  • Do I want to play with colour and design? with ideas? with numbers? with food? with clay? with balancing energy? with puzzles?
  • Do I want to play outside or inside?
  • Do I want to be the game leader or do I want someone else to be the game leader?
  • Do I want conversation to be involved in the game?
  • Do I want to be sitting still or moving around?

So these are the questions I'm going to enquire into today. Nothing more than that. You can't eat a huge cake all in one go, you'll choke if you try and in the same way I can't come up with the perfect career for me over night, it's going to take a bite at a time.

Katherine also said to me 'Poke your fingers into different pies and find out what you like best' - so, running with the concept that work is the opportunity to play, I'm going to start looking around at the different games people are playing and find out what is involved, joining some for a day here and there, to see if they are games I'd like to play too. Starting with a girl I met by the river the other day who drives a converted ice cream van around town selling chocolate milkshakes and homemade cakes!

No reason why I can't have some fun while I find my way to a new career!

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