The best advice I ever received regarding work + then some fun stuff -- I figured out "audio swap" feature on YouTube

Yes. Pretty fun, that. I am working on audio swaps for all the ferret videos I have up on YouTube. You really can't go wrong with any audio you choose for ferret video, as long as it is sort of upbeat -- nothing too sappy. I picked punk, a little upbeat Bach, Paralyzer, a bit of electronica, etc. (You kind of have to go with the copyright-free choices youtube offers unless you know what you are doing and have the capability to add your own. And then with that, you've gotta worry about copyright. I am all about the view that art should be out there, pretty much. If I were an artist, I would want everyone adding my track to their video, and I think the new model is that you make money with live shows. But, you know, you gotta respect the folks who don't want their track on your ferret video. Sort of! ;)





Anyway, the best advice I have ever received regarding work -- I thought of this because I have been mentor to a library school student who is doing electronic reference for a VR cooperative in my state. She is almost finished with library school, and we've had conversations here and there about work. Here are the two best pieces of advice I have received, and they both came from my father, who worked as an engineer until retirement. He worked hard, and often long hours, but he never complained, mostly because I think he really enjoyed what he was doing, at least the challenge. I don't think he felt any extreme form of loyalty, even though he was of that generation. I think the reason for that is that engineers -- they get hired and when a big contract or whatever is done, they are out the door. He worked for quite a few high-end companies in his day, and he was very motivated and always had his eye on the next step up. He networked, and that was great for him. Some other engineer would leave for a better spot at a better company, and then a few months later the man -- it was pretty much guys in my Dad's companies at that time -- would need the right person for a job and would call up my Dad, and then my father would give his notice, pack up a single small box, say ciao and be moving on to the next company and next challenge. My father was not a camper. At all. The longest I think he was at any one company was 10 years or so, and that I think was mostly because my sister and I were still really young, and my brother and other sister were just early teens/teens. So maybe he felt the need to have stability, but in the marketplace of today I think he would be on fire. Because there at the end, when older engineers -- say 50-60 years old -- start to disappear off the scene, my father was especially adaptable. He was willing to move to wherever the work was. (My mum was still alive, so she stayed in Boulder. He just rented a place.) He picked up and moved to Dallas for a six-month contract. (That one might have been a touch longer, it was years and years ago.) Then to Florida -- I visited him there. He just would rent a place and get a few things and then work like a dog until the contract was up (these contract jobs for engineers pay a TON because you don't have insurance, etc.) Then he would take his single box again and move back and look for the next opportunity. (That's how my Dad saw life: as opportunities.) He really did this quite a bit, not just Texas and Florida, although those stick out for me because when he was in Florida and Texas I was an undergraduate at the University of Missouri, so I took my first real boyfriend to visit him in Florida.





At the time everyone thought, I am not sure really. (Maybe they thought: Poor Mr. Straub.) But in hindsight I think that was pretty cool of my father to be so flexible so close to retirement. And, bottom line, that made him able to find employment when other engineers at the same age were maybe still applying for jobs or whatnot. He was able to retire at a decent age, too.

So ... here is Piece of Advice No. 1 from my father:

You're going to work your whole life, and, for all intents and purposes, you are going to spend most of your life working. Find something really interesting that you really enjoy doing so that it will not seem like work.

Piece of Advice No. 2 from my father (this must have come after an especially long day working):

Everything in time becomes a drag, no matter what it is. So find something really interesting and challenging that you love to do -- something that is different every day. You want to have no two days the same at your job.

And then, I guess this would be No. 3: Be flexible and adaptable and make sure you are always marketable and can jump industries so you will always be employed. (I think the subtext of this one was that he wanted me to not be dependent -- women were way more dependent on staying married in his generation, and I think my father would have NOT stayed married had he been my age today. But he felt a responsibility toward my mum, too. She really wrote free-lance for local papers and some national magazines as an afterthought, although were she young today she would have probably not married at all, not had children, and nurtured a full-blown career instead.)



So ... I think the top two are really extraordinary things that kids should hear a few times. Because unless you are going to do something that makes you super-rich super-fast, you pretty much are going to put in the hours. And I have honestly never had a job where I looked at the clock. The only clock-watching I do is when I look up and go: HOLY SHIT I am not done! Like I run out of time for the things I do. I have never had a boring job, and I've never had a job that wasn't in some way different from day to day -- although when he said "everything in time becomes a drag" he truly meant EVERYTHING in time becomes a drag. Like: No way around this fact, no matter what you do end up choosing. I guess the lottery is the only answer to that one, but I'm 40 and so far nothing has become a drag, and I know a woman in her 80s who was working at the library where I work when I first started and she LOVED it. She never complained. She really would not have left had it not gotten to the point where she was just needing to retire.





Anyway, I have wanted to write down this advice for young folks, and I should tell my nieces and nephews, just in case. My brother works like a dog -- and he makes BANK as an embedded software engineer -- and he does not have the same attitude. I mean I think his work is like brain surgery, so he is definitely not bored or whatnot. But I think he is tired and also he works a lot, just a ton of hours. To me, I'm not one of those folks who needs to leave at 4:59 p.m. I really think the folks who want an eight-hour job -- I just think that is a job, not a career. You work more than eight hours at a career. But I also really want to work to live, not live to work -- that saying about work came from my best friend's uncle. I really like my own life and want time in my personal life, so I would not want to work 70 hours a week, week after week. I think you have to find a balance. You just are better at whatever you do do if you have a life. This is especially true for journalists or librarians or other folks who work with the public. You do want to know what it is like to be a person. You can't spend all your time working. But, again, I knew when I was a kid that I would have to figure out what to do to bring home some bacon and support myself. I never had an illusions about the fact that I would spend most of my life working, and I think what my father taught me is healthy, because I have high expectations for my work life. I want a certain level of challenge all the time. And I never expect to camp out, although I do think you have a growth period at any organization that can last five years or so. So ... I dunno about two years here and two years there. That seems a little quick. The longest job I had was for 10 years, and that was only because the company hired me back twice after the first time. (So three tours of duty totaling 10 years.) My favorite job EVER when I was a police reporter. I never would have gotten tired of car crashes and random shootings and whatnot. But that was also one of my lowest paying jobs. (Started at $10 an hour. This was early 1990s. Left at $10.25 an hour.)

Sometimes folks think one thing about your job when another is really true. (I try never to insult folks by saying stupid shit like this about their jobs, btw.) Like I worked this booth once last summer and this lady said: "Oh. You're a librarian. I think I would like that. Really relaxing work, huh?" Like that lady has no idea at all what librarians do or what libraries are trying to do. The last thing that comes to my mind when I think about my current occupation is relaxing. Relaxing is a beach or whatnot. Planning to stay relevant in the lives of taxpayers, that's relaxing?

Little long-winded here, so I'm stopping. Chew on that. I am going to check on the rest of my audio swaps! Do check out the ones I posted. All very upbeat tracks that go well with the ferret vids!