After taking some months off and dipping into the savings account, I have started to look for work again. It’s not going to be easy. I have been voluntarily out of work for almost a year. I loved not working. I finally got to bond with my daughter. Something I barely had time for when I was working 50 hours a week. My family as a whole is in a much better place but it’s time for Mommy to go back to work. Besides needing the money, I need to feel like I can contribute again. Doing stuff for my family is great and rewarding but there is something about doing the same thing at a job.
I really enjoyed being a journalist but did not like the journalist lifestyle. There is nothing better than breaking news, but as you know, breaking news happens 24/7 which means you are on call 24/7. I didn’t mind it at first but once I had a child it changed. I don’t want to explain to my daughter that I could not make her softball game because there was a triple homicide in Oakland that I had to stay at work for. Not great dinnertime conversation. When speaking to “up and coming journalists,” I tell them that being in journalism isn’t a job or career, but a lifestyle. You have to be willing to work odd hours, weekends and nights for little pay. Your family will never understand why you miss every holiday to work but it’s the nature of the business. It seems that I hit 35 and my love for the business was being trumped by my love for my family. Once I put my family first over my job, it was over for me in journalism. I am finding I am OK with that decision.
Now what do I do next. The logical place for me to go is PR. I did venture into PR back in the height of the dot-com craze. I did enjoy it and being able to work on a wide variety of clients. I think PR has changed since I was last working in it. When there were massive layoffs in journalism a couple of years back, lots of former journalist went into PR. Some succeeded while many others failed. I think many agencies are reluctant to hire a former journalist since they may have not had much success when they have done it in the past. It’s understandable. Journalists many times feel that PR is the dark side and don’t think very highly of PR people. Then they go into PR thinking they can do it so much better than everyone else and find out it’s a lot harder than it looks. So I am left in the quandary of applying for PR jobs and trying to convince an agency to take another chance on a former journalist.
I am not just applying for PR jobs. Being an assignment editor for so long, I know that I could make one heck of an administrative assistant. It’s almost exactly what I do as an assignment editor, minus the blaring police scanners and breaking news. It will be a big leap for a company but you never know.
The biggest hurdle for me is to convince someone to give a chance in a somewhat entry level position. If you look at my resume, I have over 20 years of experience. I think it scares some potential employers off. I might become bored in an entry level position. That is so not true. I want to start from the bottom and learn and work my way up. I have been doing TV news for so long that I need to learn something else.
So I am now updating my resume and trolling Craigslist, Indeed and LinkedIn hoping the right job will come along. So don’t be alarmed if my resume comes across your desk real soon. Take a chance and see what a former journalist has in her bag of tricks.
SJ Working Mom's Blog 