Advice

Relocating For Work: Learn To “Interview” Places To Live

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At some point in your career you’re probably going to have to relocate.  If you’re lucky, it won’t be far, maybe the next town over.  I’m not sure how lucky you’re going to be – we geeks have careers that tend to the urban areas, the cities, the centers.  Chances are a lot of us don’t live where we should or will, and will have to get packing.

Now if you have to relocate, short or long, at some point you’re going to have to decide where to go.  I like to think of this as “Interviewing” a city or town to find out if it’s right for you.  It’s just like a job interview, only you’re seeing if the place you could end up at is worth moving to, and no one is going to ask for job experience no one has.

I reccomend taking this approach wether the move is far or close – because even if a move isn’t far from where you are, moving after a bad choice is still a lot of work.

So, let’s get to it.

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Activities For The Civic Geek: Teaching And Workshops

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Chances are any geek has a pretty valuable skillset others would like to learn from or use – so why not get educational and teach people.

If you’re a geek you’re enthused about something, and quite likely you do something with it.  From fanfic to coding games, from cosplaying to running cons, from historical enthusiasms to your extensive film library you have developed quite a set of skills.

Of course you may also be good at stuff that may not seem particularly geeky that’s still valuable.  Your writing skills that forge both fanfic and video game reviews may also be useful for your technical writing career.  You might be well organized which is why you run your club and game clan.  Maybe you just have skills you share in a geeky setting (such as the way I talk job skills in geekdom).

You and your crew are smart and skilled in things both geeky and not. Start sharing it.

  • Teach geeky skills to people who don’t have them – how many folks would like to be a bit better at computers, use your cosplay knowledge to sew better, or enjoy learning about Japanese cooking (that you learned due to your love of anime).
  • Teach geeky skills to your fellow geeks.  I mean, we all have to start somewhere.
  • Teach skills that your fellow geeks need.  Sure there’s many budding authors and artists, but your work in PR could be what they need to know how to sell themselves.

You also have plenty of venues to do this in:

  • You could take your skills to any community center, school, or what have you.  This is great for all those geek skills others may need.
  • You can hold events at conventions or other geek events.  They’re always looking for panels and features.
  • You can do workshops and get people hands-on.  After all hands-on is one of the best ways to learn.

Best of all when you do these things, alone or as part of a team, you learn how to teach and instruct.  As you do more of it, you get better at it.  This can open up new options in lives and careers, just be useful overall – or be something you eventually do panels and training on for others . . .

  • Steve

 

 

 

Make It So: Say Hi, Shut Up, Have A Creative Jam!

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Colored Pencils Circle Rainbow

Creative people all the help they can get. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re writer or artist of some kind, if in the amateur sense, and know the challenges that face you, from publishing to editing. If you’re not a creative, you almost certainly know an artist or cosplayer or the like and their travail (which they will share gladly). Even if you, mysteriously, know no creative people, you’ve heard of the challenges they face unless you’re living under the proverbial rock (and a rock with no internet).

One of the issues that creators face is a peculiar paradox – they both need alone time to write, but often thrive in the company of their fellows. The stimulation of interacting with fellow writers or artists, for the most part, is inspiring and reinforcing. The time to actually make something is an invaluable window to create uninterrupted. This paradox seems, on the surface, to be best resolved by separating socialization and activity.

However, a local writer’s group has a different way to fulfill the need for both time and connections – and one I think we geeks should run with at cons and even other events.

You can combine both.

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