Final article published today

I cheered up considerably this morning on learning that my "Ten of the Best..." article had finally been published in today's newspaper. It actually managed to distract from the fact that I've been rejected for so many accountancy jobs, including the ones I visited for a job interview. I immediately sat up in bed using my iPhone to email all the PR departments of the companies I contacted to use pictures and details of their products for my "Ten of the Best..." article; within an hour they had all kindly emailed me back saying they'd seen it in the paper and thanked me for my work.

So that was the final result of my fortnight's newspaper work experience: wrote 5 articles, had 4 published (the fifth one was subsumed into my editor's much longer - and more interesting - article), edited about 10+ freelancers' articles, and typed up 2 interview transcripts, not to mention the hours of research for some of the articles I wrote or had to edit. Think I did pretty well.

Changing career for anyone isn't exactly a bed of roses, more so in a recession; but hopefully now I can build on what I've done.

(I just wanted to include this picture of a bed of roses to be honest. Sorry!)

Keeping one's spirits up

When my good friend Bec asked me if I wanted to go for a coffee and girly chat on Tuesday night, I jumped at the chance. After all, there's only so much a girl can take of staying at home, watching The Jeremy Kyle Show, applying for jobs on the internet, and getting rejected for all of them.

So we spent a very pleasant evening at Caffé Vergnano 1882, so called as they have been roasting coffee in London since 1882. This award-winning independent café has lived for many decades among the bookstores on Charing Cross Road, although they recently opened a branch on London's South Bank which is where we went (and I had the hot chocolate on the left). To be honest, our "girly chat" wasn't very girly as we both discussed our career plans and job situations, both of which have been affected by the credit crunch. Of course it was great to see Bec again, and it was great to have a reason to leave the flat. I have to say, it did me the world of good.

Nobody ever said that changing careers was easy, and nobody ever said looking for a new job was easy, recession or not. Sometimes it's a real effort to stay optimistic and it can feel as if you'll never get anywhere. This is where a supportive family and/or supportive friends often come in; their support and point of view can be invaluable. In the absence of either supportive friends or family, simply doing an activity that will take you away from, or out of, your current situation can help. If coffee with a friend isn't possible, then perhaps going for a run or reading your favourite book might help.

It's far too easy to feel down about one's situation, and sometimes unyielding optimism is neither natural or realistic. There really is no point forcing a positivity you simply don't - and can't - feel. However, spending too long in the dumps brings the danger of making you less motivated to do anything if you feel the world is unendingly crap and there's nothing you can do about it. When you start feeling like that, it is time to do something different - if only to give you something different to think about.

Often the only way out of any difficult circumstance is to just go through it, unfortunately. As Winston Churchill once said, "When going through hell, ... keep going."

Update on the Jobcentre situation - and the job situation

This is a going to be a very quick post as it's my lovely boyfriend's 28th birthday today, so I will need to head off very soon for the birthday party I've been busy organising all week. Would you believe it, I completely forgot to buy him a card despite trying to organise the big day... how the hell did I manage to forget that???? After all, it's not as if I actually forgot his birthday (well, you'd hope not, seeing as I've spent the week organising it!) Ah well, hopefully all will be forgiven very soon!

The rest of the week has been spent battling a nearby wasps' nest - the little blighters keep mysteriously getting into our bathroom - and sorting out my application at the Jobcentre. I'm pleased to tell you that the interview went smoothly this time, so hopefully things will be sorted out soon.

The other thing that's kept me busy this week is writing an article for one of my favourite blogs, Laura Reviews at http://laurareviews.blogspot.com. Quite aside from my article (about things for a bookworm to do when in London), I do urge you all to go and visit this intelligent, insightful and frankly wonderful blog, dedicated to reviewing the written word in all forms.

I still haven't managed to find an accountancy job, though, and dole money won't be enough. So what I'm considering now is other paid employment, specifically Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), which is what I did in China in 2004. While there aren't so many long-term TEFL opportunities in England, plenty of schools are recruiting for the summer months at the moment. OK, the salary's a fraction of what I got as an accountant working for a global bank in the City (London's version of Wall Street in New York), but it'll be just about enough for the mortgage and bills I think - and I don't mind living cheaply for a while. At the moment it's just more important that I have some sort of income coming in! Many people working in my field (particularly at the Bank I worked at till this February) tend to live very luxurious and expensive lives, but fortunately for me I cut out a lot of those things over the last year or so for the future career change, so I'm more used to it than most!

I've heard from my recruitment consultants that many newly-qualified accountants like me are struggling to find jobs as a result of the credit crunch, so a lot of them have either gone travelling for 6 months, found voluntary work, or are generally doing something completely different to keep them busy until the jobs market picks up. Personally I'm happy for the opportunity to do something different... and dare I confess it, secretly enjoying my time off...

Clouds and silver linings

Realising you're in the wrong job should, ideally, be a liberating experience. In theory, it should be the first step in moving on to work that's better suited to your talents and passions.

In practice, it's likely to send us into a tailspin at first. Finally paying attention to all those niggling doubts, the continuous low-level boredom you could never explain, the lack of enthusiasm for anything relating to your work, the tendency to suppress any negative thoughts and emotions about your career in case they interfere with your job performance... clearly you knew it deep down, but rather than being a liberating experience, it can initially seem like you're on the fast road to misery. You start to regret, most bitterly, the time you wasted following a path that you were never going to enjoy or feel fulfilled in. You regret the times you mistakenly told yourself that it would get better, if only you would just try harder, work harder, or stop expecting so bloody much all the time. Most of all, you simply regret the amount of time that has passed before you realised you had to get out of that job.

However, they say every cloud has a silver lining. In my case, my job was both the cloud and the silver lining. Training to be a chartered accountant, while dull, does teach you things you'd never learn anywhere else. Like ways to minimise paying tax, for example (legally, of course!) and what all those strange and complicated finance and business terms actually mean (they usually mean something quite simple, so hell knows why they use words that make it seem strange and complicated...) You learn how companies maximise profits and drive down costs, and about financially efficient uses of capital and resources. One can even apply some of the principles they've learned to their own situation. Which, of course, is no bad thing.

The other silver lining is that working as an accountant enabled me - as with any job - to slowly build up some savings (once I'd come up with a financial plan in January 2008, as detailed in the previous post). I tried to think of accountancy as a means of financing my future career change.

Perhaps the silver lining is small, but it's a silver lining nonetheless. And who knows - the knowledge and skills gained from the past few years may well come in useful one day. It may not have been "wasted time" after all.

The author James Allen observed back in 1905:

"If circumstances had the power to bless or harm, they would bless and harm all men alike, but the fact that the same circumstances will be alike good and bad to different souls proves that the good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind of him that encounters it."

Despondency and regret over past or current circumstances is easy: I admit I've fallen into that pit in my darker moments. I think all career-changers do at some point. Ultimately, however, it doesn't serve us: those regrets won't solve or change anything. We still have to keep moving forward with life rather than let those regrets hold us back.

As Allen noted in the above, "the good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind of him that encounters it." I will try to bear that in mind next time I start regretting becoming a chartered accountant.