Starting a Book Club, Running a Job Hunt, and Living the Dream


As I may have mentioned in an earlier post I've decided to start a book club here in Evergreen as a means to meet new friends. Yesterday I went to meetup.com and posted my club details so that I have a means to attract new members. Now I have my very own page there for the Evergreen Vine and Book Club combining two of my favorite things, books and fine wine. I'm very excited about the club, because I love the idea of sharing a good book with other avid readers. I've never been a member of a book club and I hope that it will introduce me to a whole range of new reading horizons as well as providing the experience of how differently others may experience the same book. I hope we'll also attract some knowledgeable wine lovers so that I can also expand my wine horizons! (At the moment, my wine vocabulary consists of 'mmm that tastes good.') And the most exciting possibility will be meeting new friends in the area! I've already received my first RSVP to the first club meeting on February 2nd. By the meeting date I'd like to have around ten interested members. While I was on meetup.com, I found another local group, called the Evergreen Women and Wine Workshop Group that I've joined and will meet next week.


I start each day by sitting down at my computer and continuing the job hunt. I am getting better at it each day. I am learning not to simply apply to everything, but to focus my search and applications to jobs I'd actually love to do and which would enable me to work 'remotely'. It is discouraging that my efforts have not yet resulted in positive responses but I'm hoping that this is because its still early days and that eventually I will achieve a breakthrough. I am sending out positive thoughts and visualizations of what I want the end result to look like.Which might be the most fun part of this process. Each day I narrow the focus of what I'm looking for, what I want to create in a career, and really as a result, what I want my life to be going forward.

I am learning to treat the job hunt like a treasure hunt, to add a dimension of humor to the endeavor, that finding a job is like hunting for Easter eggs, it's just a matter of finding the one under the hibiscus bush in the far corner of the garden. (that's an allusion to a memory of my grandmother's garden in which I played as a child.) If only this process of creating a career really had the unbridled joy of child's play. Yet always, at the back of my mind is the ticking clock, the flying pages of the calendar, egging me on, making me hope that I will be able to find a job before my time here is up at the end of May. So again the question becomes, how to balance reality and joy, how to make money doing what I love? Or to put it another way, how to make doing what I love, make money?

I finished my 'work' day by getting back to work on my novel in progress. The difference between job hunting and writing? Writing feels like joy. It was absolutely wonderful to immerse myself again in the pages, to find myself thinking about the next scene as I got up to get myself a cup of tea and then hurrying back to my chair to get the ideas down on paper. It was wonderful to feel my fingers fly across the keyboard as I created a bantering dialogue between my protagonist and her mysterious boss, who may or may not be a villain. I believe this is what a career should feel like.

Comments

Good luck with your hunting!

Your wine knowledge sounds about like mine. :) I've even attended some short classes, but couldn't seem to progress.

Elizabeth
Mystery Writing is Murder
Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen
larramiefg said…
A nicely balanced day with your social circle expanding too, good for you!
JCK said…
The book club sounds really wonderful, and a great way to meet people in the area. You are really putting yourself out there, in so many ways. That feeling of the fingers flying across the keyboard can't be beat! I am sending good vibes on the job hunt!

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