Write what you know.

There is an old saying that goes: "write what you know." And since I always wanted to be a writer, which was one of the reasons I started this blog, I try to follow it when I sit down to write something.

This time I want to put in words things that have been bothering me because they have been bothering me for a long while. One such thing is my lack of a career.

As I mentioned before I always wanted to be a writer so I went to college and got an English degree. This wasn't a Teaching English degree, mind you, just a plain old English Lit one.

Since I am a non-native English speaker this was probably an odd choice of a major, not to mention the fact that it stopped being fun after a while. I think that History or Philosophy might have served me better in the long run. Alas, poor Yorick, (see how I worked that Hamlet quote in there) you don't think of these things when you are young.

So after graduation I attempted to get a career going. But since I lived, and still live, in a small town in North Eastern Pennsylvania and had no idea what I actually wanted to do, I ended up working in retail.

Eventually that got old. So I decided I wanted to get somewhere in life and went back to my Alma Matter to check out a Masters program. The subject of this program was Instructional Design and since I have heard about this program previously, not to mention the fact that a slew of people I knew in college went through it, I enrolled.

As you would expect, I eventually graduated. I had a lot of fun earning my degree and even started this blog after fellow classmate did a presentation on blogging. Also my wife and I started a family in December of my first year in the program.

When I graduated I was filled with hope and excitement because I was finally going to do something with my life and succeed. But, like another saying goes, "when man plans, god laughs."

Just as I was getting ready to graduate, the economy was getting read to take a major nose dive. And what a nose dive it was!

Suddenly companies and banks were failing left and right. And those that weren't failing, were shedding employees in a manner that reminded me of a zeppelin trying to stay in the air.

So it became harder for somebody right out of college to find a job, or so I thought. My former classmates didn't seem to have any technical difficulties finding jobs.

Maybe I just need to be patient, I thought. Maybe things will get better soon. For a while I watched GM trying to get away from the edge of the abyss thinking that if a company that size is in trouble, my inability to find a job isn't really all that big of a deal.

Eventually that got old, too. I got tired of watching everybody else pass me by while I was on the shoulder fixing a flat tire or doing something else equally tedious.

In the almost two years I have been out of school, I have had a couple of contract jobs but the highly desirable full time job keeps alluding me. Maybe it is time to reconsider my career path and go back to grad school for my PhD.

Or maybe it is time to stop looking for a job in my chosen field get a different profession. But what do I do exactly?

This is the one question that I have not been able to answer. But since I am getting older, and do not want to feel like I am failing my family anymore, I am open to suggestions.