Tag Archives: CV

Let The Jotting Begin!

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I’ve spent some days with my niece last week… It was fun! She was born just when I had left for London so I’d never seen her. They say she takes after me in looks and character: self-willed and stubborn… *hehe* She has all the typical Indonesian features and even my curly hair… Having the opportunity to spend some time with her and her little brother of eight months was a welcome break from all the hard work!

Im still busy with the eCommerce website for the African artefacts company. I’ve decided to start allover again with regard to the product images, they were in a bad condition: wrong sizes, all different sizes, wrong format, wrong quality etc. I’ve been cropping, retouching, colour managing and resizing the originals. About half of them and I’m still not done… but at least it looks a lot better than it was: a lot!

I’ve received a letter about the job in China, there might be a complication with regard to getting a work permit but I’m invited to send a CV in English and a few samples of my work. I need to contact the intermediary because he told me this semester was booked already so it would be for the next starting in January. I so hope this isn’t going to fail because of one small unexpected trivial issue *sigh*.

Tomorrow I’m invited for coffee at my neighbour’s and I’m looking forward to this. It’s always nice to meet new people! In the meantime I’ve been doing research after I had an extremely motivational chat with my sis-in-law last week. She said to follow my heart and dreams and just ‘do it’: what is keeping me? Nothing should be keeping me, so out with the Moleskine to jot down notes and make some sketches!

‘Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.’

~Henry Ford

I rest my case… *hehe* (my niece on the left, me on the right)

Busy little thing already… and yes it’s the same table: odd huh? ;)

Look at them curls! And humour too! ;)

Society’s Restrictions

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I’m in deep thinker’s mode again lately trying to figure out what I want and where I want my life to be. To be honest: I have no idea, I’ve felt totally lost for some time already. I was thinking and trying to trace back when I started to have this feeling of uncertainty. I realised it was years ago when I was told that by law I no longer could do the work that I love so much and that I was forced to have a career change due to the results of an accident I had in combination with the perfectionist attitude which caused RSI.

This is the moment things went into too many different directions, I lost focus and I lost part of what was the creative me. I lost it because of the system in the Lowlands because of what politicians decide in The Hague. I was ‘officially approved disabled’ and if I would continue to do my work I would suffer the consequences: no compensation money. So I had to change career and became a System Operator and started an evening job teaching, passing on my knowledge to others, which I enjoyed very much.

The evening job turned into a day job and I moved away from being a Sysop because of this manager feeling threatened by the fact that a woman with a brain and looks too, knew more about technical stuff than he did. In order to satisfy his insecure machismo he felt the urge to pester me until I made a tiny mistake which -as we say in Dutch- led me to the guillotine even though I corrected it straight away he’d found something to complain about to the director who took his side so I quit the job: I have pride and dignity.

Teaching and giving support to people was a great way to stay linked to my former line of work and stay updated. I really enjoyed this work but it didn’t pay the bills and I didn’t get a well earned raise in all the five years nor extra hours and I felt extremely unappreciated and not valued by the board of directors. The reason why I stayed was because of the people I worked with, they made the job so much fun. Wonderful colleagues are priceless and some of them and some of the students are still part of my circle of friends.

Back to where I started.

I realised I never really completely let go of the work-that-I-wasn’t-suppose-to-do and because of that I became ‘unfocused’. I wanted to do what I loved most but on the side… So my CV changed and because of its diversity I’m now in a catch 22. Society needs to think in structures and grids, I no longer fit any of these structures and that’s what I have to face and deal with. I absolutely love design work but when I apply for jobs, they reject me because of the diversity of my CV and their narrow-mindedness and prejudiced views.

So I either need to focus one hundred percent on the freelance jobs or I need to start a ‘new career’ from scratch and if so… in what? I still have a Moleskine with a plan, perhaps it’s time to pick it up again, jot down more notes and make more sketches? I think I should let go of the grids from the past and start a new one and find some silly job just to pay the bills in the meantime until my Moleskine is full and I’m ready to visualise the new grid. Or until I’ll be getting more freelance work in…

Anyone needs a professional website or anyone you know? I’m really good at what I do!