Schizophrenic thoughts on job-hunting

How does one go about deciding what to do in life? Taking that 5-10% of people out of the equation who already know - who've always known - what they love, let's talk about the rest of us. I think the problem with my generation (are we still called the gen-Xers, or is that passe?) is that we are crippled by our seemingly limitless choices.

This has been a topic of particular interest to me since coming home and finding myself blown away by my options. Does anyone remember a time when installing a phone line simply meant calling "The Phone Company"? I know the propaganda - that deregulation of the system led to competition and (ostensibly) cheaper bills for us. This knowledge was of little comfort after spending 2 days online researching my cell phone choices, then signing my life away and spending $100 on a "free" mobile.

I know it seems pretty ridiculous for me to complain about freedom. It's even more ridiculous to people in Kenya and elsewhere, who live without those choices every day. To them, America is the land of milk and honey. They could do anything if only they could get here. But what I've realized is that sometimes lack of opportunity can be comforting. If, like me, you're a person who feels a tremendous amount of internal pressure to succeed and break that glass ceiling, well - it's frankly a lot easier to do if the ceiling is lower!

This was a hard thing for me to deal with when I first got to Kenya. I came in teaching students with the American mentality of "You can do anything". For my younger classes, this was something they'd never been told before, and I saw no harm in encouraging them to dream big. But there is a harsh reality to living in Kenya. Career choices are limited. Most of them will be lucky to find steady work doing anything.

While the younger kids were still talking about being astronauts, in high school and beyond the students had taken a much more practical tack. Like my grandparents after the Depression, they were concentrating on feeding their family, not their minds. When you grow up without stability, it becomes a much more important concept. When I taught career counseling to the college girls at my organization, I found myself encouraging them just to find a job - any job at all. Because that's all they really wanted. They didn't dream big anymore.

Sorry, I've gone pretty far off track from where I started. All of these thoughts came to me yesterday, because I attended a job fair at Peace Corps headquarters in DC. Standing at the USAID booth, giving my backstory to another set of blank faces, the woman stopped me mid-sentence and said, "What do you want to do?" I tried to assemble an answer, but the truth is - I don't know. I'm interested in a lot of things, and I'm afraid to pick just one. This feels too important to me. I'm no spring chicken anymore, and I think I need to make the right choice right now. It's a lot of pressure.

So that's what I mean by finding comfort in limits. If I only had one or two choices, I think I could make up my mind! As I write this, I suddenly realize that it is completely ridiculous to complain about my situation. Thank God for freedom. And Buddha, and Allah, and the Goddess while we're at it.

One last related note. I got an e-mail from an old Peace Corps friend who's been back in the states a few months longer than me. Here's what he had to say about looking for work: "I simply gave up on the engineering type jobs. I found I was up against fresh graduates who didn’t have a black hole called Peace Corps on their
resume. Sadly, I don’t believe that many people understand the depth of Peace Corps."

That's what I'm up against right now. But at least I have options. :-)