Bright Lights

Writing a new résumé recently (I lost my old one in the big data wipeout of 2005 – damn Windows!) gave me an excellent opportunity to look back at the way my career employment had unfolded over the years. It's provided me with some interesting insights I hadn't considered before.

In the last decade, I've had eight different job roles with five different employers. Out of these five employers, one is a multi-national finance company, two are independent private businesses in retail and fitness, and the rest are community organisations who employ me as a freelance writer. The multi-national offered the most in terms of benefits and numeration and yet it was the job I enjoyed the least, nor lasted longest in. Office politics made working there difficult as well as the inflexibility of the role. The independent businesses meanwhile were the most flexible but provided the least in terms of career opportunity or growth. And the community-based entities, well, they pay the least but the ones I find most enjoyable and rewarding.

The reason for writing a résumé has to do with something I've been kinda pursuing in the last couple of weeks. A few spots have opened up with a local community TV show and at the suggestion of a friend, I applied to screen test as one of the presenters. Along with being interviewed in front of the whole cast and crew, scripting a segment for the show, pitching a story idea and doing some impromptu acting, the résumé was the last necessary requirement and formality to round off the whole audition process.

I guess on top of being a personal trainer, writer and radio broadcaster, I can now add TV presenter to the list of things I do that takes up my time. Yes, I got the job!

It's strange to think that a background in sciences (graduated with a Genetics and Microbiology major) has led to careers in finance, fitness and even, the media industry. I guess sometimes you never really know where the wind – and the bright lights – will take you.