You’re Looking at a Freshly Minted Graduate! (Sort of)

I have neither of these things…hence the crappy Word Art image, haha

Well, I am all graduated.  I think.  My degree hasn’t come in yet, but so far as I know everything is in order and my undergraduate career is over.  Now the job hunt begins!  I’ve already sent out my resume to one potential employer; the position was for general office work, not exactly teaching but it would do in the short run.  I’m also beginning the process of being certified to teach.  Alternative certification in Ohio requires a bachelor’s degree in a given subject, pedagogical training (either 6 credit hours from an accredited institution or an online institute that requires field training; I’ll be doing the former), and successful passage of the Praxis II content exam.

That being said, I’m not entirely sure I want to teach anymore.  I have all this training in biology, and certainly if I didn’t teach it would basically go to waste.  Lab work isn’t exactly something I could do very well as I have tremors in my hands and involuntary muscle contractions (don’t worry, I’m getting them checked out; I doubt it’s much of anything but better safe than sorry), which made lab work during school…interesting.   My lab partners wouldn’t let me touch the experiments for fear that I would screw them up, haha.  I mostly took a managerial role, as it were, making certain the experiments were done properly, etc.

That particular decision might have been made for me, since a quick survey shows no teaching jobs available locally.  At least, no teaching jobs I could do–the listings I’ve seen were for special education interventionists and college professors.  It’s a shame I don’t have a Ph.D–I could have a job in Zane State in no time!

Really, it doesn’t matter what I do in terms of day job, for two reasons.  One: my vocation is not the job I find myself in.  Rather, my vocation is what I bring to the job; it’s a matter of mind set.  The second and more important reason is that I’ve found what I want to do.  I want to write for a living.  Right now, that isn’t feasible.  I only have two books available, and the income from them is nowhere near enough to sustain myself on.  This is a volume game though: both volume of sales and volume of output.  That is to say, you can’t expect to make a living off one book, or even two.  You have to build up a list of books for folks to pick from, and hopefully if they like your content they’ll become repeat customers.  The key is to write and write well–you don’t want to just shove out a bunch of crap, after all.

Speaking of, a bit of shameless self promotion.  I recently released my book, On Dark Paths, on Nook and Smashwords.  It was originally available on Kindle, but I decided to put it on other platforms when folks who didn’t own Kindles told me they wanted to read my book.  I’m in the process of proofing Strange World before I put it on those platforms as well.  I have a lot of new stuff in the works, including a fantasy novel that is nearly completed, and several horror novels and novellas.  Stay tuned!

What projects do you have in the works?  Have you found your “dream job”?