Marshall J. Ellis

I’d been thinking about age and employment lately, and meaning to write about it. Apparently I was not the only one, since now I’ve seen this post that linked to this article on the same topic.

There were a few precipitating factors leading to this post. One was my most recent interview, with my part time employer, for a management job. The interview went badly, but I am almost certain I would have had to decline the job due to pay versus other factors. For that matter, I am perhaps unusual, contending with both advancing age and child care considerations. But still. The person hired, my new manager, is competent and suitable enough, but tellingly is 23, still lives in her childhood home, has no constraints on the schedule, and is at a place in her life where low pay for me is viable for her.

Another was my niece, 21, being a hotshot at her company, landing a promotion as if there was nothing to it.

Another was a friend, same age, bemoaning two years unemployed, feeling defeated. He held out hope longer than I did, and maintained technical skills better. And ones that had more hope of landing work than Mr. Generalist here.

, besides the economy in general and the 19-odd percent underemployment that’s clearly not subsiding soon, I remember several years ago when an uncle lost a high level job. He wasn’t that much older than me. Despite a tenacious search and some seemingly promising possibilities, essentially he never worked again.

I’m at a bad age to be uncertain about what I want to do! Seeing how hard it can be to find meaningful work if you’re sure and have targeted skills and experience. Not for nothing do I keep thinking my only options will be to piece together this and that, and/or to start/restart my own business and push it hard.

Am I mistaken about the degree to which it’s a problem?

Is it partly inherent to the capacity for energy and ideas fading with age, making you less appealing or able to succeed?

And isn’t it funny that this runs counter to my experience and education about hiring older workers: You get stability and wisdom that might be missing among the young. But perhaps that applies mainly to low level jobs of exactly the sort someone like me can’t live on.

I feel like I’m forgetting something here, but I’m up against a deadline, so off I go.

Procrastination aside, it’s hard to write here because there is so much to say, and it seems wrong to spew out post after post, as many as a few per day. On the other hand, that does help me order my thoughts, which is crucial to rebooting life and career. At the same time, as always for me, it’s hard to write if I am not feeling inspired, or “in the zone.” No number of topics on a mental list can overcome the don’t feel like it mood. Some writer I am! This drives my ex crazy, that I need not to be interrupted, and need to Zone to do certain work. Writing, particularly, she sees as something that’s just moments and seconds of work and words, strung together between interruptions, no inspiration or contiguous thought required. The truth is probably somewhere between.

Earlier today, I wrote a somewhat delayed recommendation for a friend and former colleague. I have written recommendations for people before, and been a reference prospective employers could call. Such is the onus of having been a supervisor or senior team member. This one is not on LinkedIn, where my recommendations have been, so she’d missed out on that. She avoids an online presence, and doesn’t own a computer. This recommendation was for a graduate program. She’s one of the many refugees pushed from the tech field even before the economy crashed entirely. I haven’t talked with her about it, but I presume this is her next career move from settling for work in a book store. Which fits, but was not the level or type of work she had earned her way into previously. Deja vu and me all over again.

That bit of writing, surprisingly long, flowed well, got me thinking, and tickled at my keyboard fingers. It made her sound so impressive, I thought I ought to be able to get any job I wanted, if only I could describe myself so well. It even made me sound good by extension. Certainly it brought me back to some of the day to day considerations of my stint as Technical Development Lead in Visual Basic Support. That, in turn, made me think again about the entire resume concept, what and how it should say, and then about the longer form this place hopes to be, or incorporate. It made me think about key accomplishments and skills, and of my idea to write what I especially liked about each job. Or position, if I wanted to break it down by different roles at a given employer. So that made for posts and posts worth of maybe I ought to write…

Thinking about posts I ought to write, and my very scenario today, being home with residually sick kids, reminded me I wanted to write about money, about what I am seeking, the impact of people and circumstances on what you can or should do, and how far that need impede you. My current experiences with work provide another angle, as do prospective changes to my personal circumstances. All there, black and white, plain as mud, ready to be written.

What do I want, anyway? That has changed over the years. Years and circumstances have asymptotically shrunken any aspirations and dreams I might once have had. What do I need, anyway? In a way, ditto, but in reverse. Monetarily, anyway. It certainly takes less to satisfy me than it once did. In my youth I learned the benefits of hiring older people. Now I see it from the other side, and feel both chagrin and confirmation.

(Case in point. I had to stop writing to get my daughter off the bus, about 90 minutes ago. Haven’t been able to get back to this, have no idea where I left off or what I was leading to next, and probably won’t have more than a few minutes to continue now. Much as I like having de facto custody of the kids, and easy as it is for me to distract myself unaided, sometimes I crave being alone, or in a work environment more of the time.)

That was easy. Without even reading all of that, I realize I meant to jump off of the thought of not owning a computer or having regular internet access. The friend I recommended is intelligent, talented, articulate, all that stuff, but was not a native of computers the way some of us are. In the entire time we worked together, and, more importantly, all the years since, she did not own a working computer or the relevant software to maintain or update skills in the absence of an employer. I always thought that was nuts. Once she was out of work at her last programming job, crashing hard against what might have been a foreshadowing of the later employment abyss, every day was another day away from skilled. Not that it’s always possible to be convincing when all you’ve been doing is self-honing, but at least it’s something.

And yet…

I allowed myself to go fallow even as I remained in business. Money didn’t go toward software, hardware, training, or whatnot. It went toward how else am I going to pay all these newfound bills. Time didn’t go toward learning much new or updated, compared to what I might have. It went toward I’m bored with this, do I even like this anymore, honey you change this diaper and is supper ready yet. Late adopter for a geek, I slipped even later, or never.

Once I was out? Forget it. Had decent computer power and could have learned or improved on tools I had available or could emulate, but I lost my way and my time. The more I slipped, the more confidence I lost. And the uncertainty! That was deadly, when I gave up entirely on self-employment and tried for jobs. I was a generalist. I had no specific passion. People wanted a focus. People wanted passion about one thing or another. Not getting even the lowliest yet still in the realm of tech jobs deflated me entirely. Why bother?

I can blame life for stomping my enthusiasm, yet I ought have been able to find enthusiasm in the face of anything. And if not tech, then for something else, new or old. Closest thing to enthusiasm I had was for writing, and that flagged in the face of resistance, lack of space, no Zone, and an assumption it was a waste compared to seeking Real Work.

Is this really so different from simply having no computer around?

Then again, if you aren’t sure you care about pursuing or learning X, motivation won’t be easy to build. And I am still unsure.

Ultimately, there is one key need: Feeding the family. You know, and all of what is summed up by the phrase. If the famly is secure and I am on my own, it becomes more a matter of supporting myself, minimally. From there it’s gravy, and it’s easy to forget that. The problem is, between me and the ex, we have yet to get to the “from there…” phase.

I’ve lost all track of where I was going with this, but then, it’s titled “Musings” for a reason.

How do you decide what you want to do or will focus on and feign sufficient enthusiasm for to gain employment in it? For me, that has to be part of rebooting.

In my first post here, as I recall, I mentioned the stigma of perceived or real failure in my having “gone out of business” after several years of being self-employed as part of what started as and evolved into only nominally a partnership. Which reminds me that I could write about my preference never to be involved in a partnership again. Wait! I just did.

Anyway, I saw an appropriately timed article about successful people having been failures. Not a new topic or observation, but worth the reminder. I certainly learned a lot from that adventure, and for all that went wrong, for all that I was loyal and tenacious to a self-destructive fault, that business lasted from its club-like inception in 1996 until 2007.

I could write a book about what not to do, based on all we did wrong, even when I knew better. In fact, I’ve long thought about doing so. But it didn’t simply die on the vine as so many do.

A while back I was thinking about the limitations of a resume in conveying the real you to a prospective employer. That gave me the idea to list what I particularly loved about each position. Not sure it could be made to fit into a resume format, however alternative, but thought it might be useful to post it, if only as a tool of self-evaluation. If there’s a consistent pattern, then doesn’t that tell me something about what I should be pursuing? Or about the environment I should be seeking?

Having never forgotten the idea, despite having found it harder – composing mentally – than I’d expected, I see this as the place and forthcoming time for that.

Of more recent vintage, I thought about posting what-ifs; thoughts on the jobs that never happened. For instance, not applying to Microsoft when invited to, or not pursuing the position of blog manager at BNET when the opportunity presented. I’m generally content with both decisions, but what if…

That’s less telling, though, than the “what I liked” posts. And there are some common threads there, just as there are in the finer details of my emplyment. For instance, I’ve somehow managed to be involved in and inexplicably liked doing training at many jobs. Should I orient my search more toward that, then? Or is it just a symptom of my enjoyment of presenting information to people and helping them understand what they might not have otherwise?

Technology-wise, being behind the times… Just attempted to advise someone on replacing their older computer, feeling less competent than I might had I dealt more with hardware in the past three years.

Following the e-mail, I popped onto Newegg to look at desktop computers. Then I had to look up what a Phenom II was, having not heard of the AMD product line that was new in 2008.

I know, I have a solid base, but still.

I’ve already mentioned the possibility of writing as a vocation, or an element of same. The thing is, my most extensive and recent, even modestly “internet famous” experience along those lines is under a pen name. Not that it’s difficult to uncover, but at the same time I started this site, I decided to work on further segregating, rather than further integrating, those identities. How much I’ll stick with that, I don’t know. Whether the degree of “in the wild” the alter ego has been is a problem (or boon – it did get me prospects in the past), I don’t know.

It does exist, and it is tied up with writing.

Otherwise, I have mainly the history of writen technical support to fall back on as experience to tout. Not that it wasn’t great and voluminous experience. Even somewhat pioneering. That and any content I’ve created that can be retrofitted to this identity. Again, mainly technical and business.

And yet… One of my goals here is to be relatively forthright, about my life, status, background, mistakes, things that might have been and what happened, all that. So do I simply come out and say “here is my pen name”? For now I’ll settle for the fact it exists being clear, allowing people to figure it out or ask about it if relevant.

Suppose I get a remunerative job sooner rather than later, helped or not by this site. What is its purpose then? Besides whatever associated rebooting and question how to do so remains. That is, even if I never do technical work again, I’d like to get back up to snuff. To some degree, that takes money, so it’s a self-feeding conundrum, and getting work goes toward solving it. To some degree, it just means focus, planning, time, space and effort. For instance, cost to learn Linux better? Zero, so long as I can come up with a machine to run it. Okay, so potentially a cost, or a tradeoff. But I digress.

This post comes of a thought I had on the way home from my part time job this morning. Not sure I had an answer, even then, but it seemed clearer, as thoughts often do when first wafting into the light of consciousness.

People who have landing pages keep them regardless of employment. Not like it needs to go away. The blog part, well, it can remain a reasonably inoffensive general/technical/business/work oriented blog. No harm there. I have no plans to be controversial here, though I once managed to be that elsewhere without trying. Traumatic, that. So I guess that’s it.

The good thing? That I am so optimistic! The thought wasn’t “what if I don’t succeed,” but rather “what happens once I’ve succeeded.” That’s the outlook to have.