Career

noun: an occupation, profession, etc., followed as one's lifework - a career in law.
verb: to run or move rapidly along - The cars careered down the road.

When we came back to Sydney, I plugged in to the local job networks. I joined up to seek.com and met with a couple of recruitment agents in office buildings with stunning harbour views. Then I snagged a job in an area I hadn't worked in before but wanted to break into. Result, right? Well, kind of. Since I'd switched line of work I had to start from scratch again, and boy have I felt it. Meanwhile, many of my friends – who have been back a few years after their travels, or never left – are enjoying the benefits of their higher station. Career development seems a little like home-ownership here: it's something you should to commit to early, and for the long-haul.

Anyway, I’ve been working for almost a year now, and I'm considering throwing my hat into the ring again. The ads on seek.com don't offer a lot of hope. They suggest that in order to apply for a job you should already be able to do it standing on your head. Some companies seem to be looking for the person who just left the position.

Of course I would complain, given my work history, which is difficult to mesh into a convincing laboural narrative. But I'd like to think if I were an employer I'd look for someone a less 'perfect', and (as Alan Curbishly recently put it) a little bit 'angry and hungry'. Not angry enough to fail the psych test, but you know... Part of me thinks I should avoid the obvious career path and try a more lateral approach. Maybe reaching the next rung is not that important, or even a bit of a trap – like the cat that starts climbing the tree and has to keep going, up and up.

And to stretch the analogy, I am curious to see what I could find with a year's experience under my belt. It would be hard to get another job that was as far away from my house as this one, or paid less, so I guess that's something in my favour. But it would also be hard to find a bunch of colleagues as cool as my current ones.