This last spring we travelled to Romania, to visit places and see old friends and relatives. And for the first time in my life I had the chance to play the role of the uncle. Uncle Anton. Well, the reality is that my nephew wouldn’t ever call me uncle Anton, preferring the more casual, while youth infusing version of Anton.
So, asking my nephew how he's doing, he told me that he feels he had enough with his current job and was looking for a new one. He is 26 years old and hates to live in these uncertain times of an endless economic mess that nobody understands why is still called transition, instead of being labelled "disolution." But who asks him? At his age the life race is on and all you must do is run shoulder to shoulder with the other contenders, jumping from job to job till the end of it all, the big bang called retirement (from work, from life...) In the process you're buying the luxury to find yourself, to know a bit who you are and what you want, but only occasionally and always after hours or during the week-ends.
My nephew told me he wanted to change his current job for reasons that are common to ninety nine percent of us, and deserve no print space as they are so well known. Looking for a new job when you are young and inexperienced, sitting on the hot seat of the job seeker in front of a few empowered ignorants who are convinced their knowing of people is overpassed only by their fine understanding of the free economic market, trying to have them buy in, selling the "exquisite package of yourself" without having any clue about all those tricks and tips one has to use during an interview, well… That’s quite a task. And perhaps one doomed to failure.
One quiet afternoon, while listening to him going passionately through his routine stories about “he asked me that, then I said that, then he replied that” an idea popped up in my head: What if I start sharing with him a bit from my own experience going to many, many interviews? What if I open the protected safe of my learnings in a process where so many times I leaped from ecstasy to embarrassment in a matter of seconds? One led to another and in half an hour I was telling him how my work environment is organized, how we do things and what the people who hired me expect from me. And on and on the story goes. While progressing with my "on-fly" yarn I noticed on his face the increasing interest that my nephew displayed. In the end he confessed that what I told him was sooo cool, that nobody ever shared with him the "hiring tricks" I was so cognisant of (albeit not so highly successful in using them myself), and that our chat was an eye-opener for him. From the way he was talking I could feel that my nephew had already promoted me to the private rank of a job market guru.
In situations like that, my sense of fairness kicks in sharply, like the pain of a bee's sting: I didn't really find that what I told him was cool, and I couldn't shrug off the feeling that my nephew was overrating me. I never felt an expert in anything else than my allergies. All I had shared with him was based on my day by day experience accumulated, true, in many years of working out there, in the large confinements of the Canadian worko-sphere, how I like to call it. And apparently what was common sense for me, it was revelation for him.
On a second thought I realized that this is, after all, one of the advantages you get once you get older. You must have a few advantages too, beside the bunch of continuous annoyances coming from deteriorating health, lower physical strength, waning interest in the main stream excitement, and the list can continue in a highly personalized manner, of course. This is the advantage of seeing the simplicity in things and situations that are wrapped in a shred of made-up complexity and overpriced for those who can afford the least: the youth.
From that epiphany to this blog was only one step. Yeah, yeah, sure you’re tempted to use the overused clichés and say it (just say it, I want to hear it one more time!): “One small step for a man, a big step for blah-blah-blah…” This final twist is a sure sign that this blog is not going to be a totally serious and totally dry thing, like all those stiff books and academic articles covering the topics of job market dynamics, interviewing process, change management, structure of workplace, etc. Books and articles written by folks who seem to not have spent a single day in a real workplace. Authors who are fresh from school and try to convert their final year thesis into a successful blockbuster. No, this blog is going to be a collection of funny dissertations about nothing in special, about everything in general. That’s why I named it “a-blog nothing” using a homonym I found appealing, and then I restricted his area of ideological roaming to the "little workplace" which is exactly the space that most of us spend their lives in.
This blog is going to be more like an invitation to free up their frustrations, their revelations, their success stories sent to those who will have nothing better to do with their time than to read it. But regardless of who’s going to read it, comment it, or simply ignore it, this is my gift to my two boys and my two niblings. I do not have a fat financial cat to bestow on you, guys, I do not have fame to capitalize your lives on, I haven't even been a great role model to inspire and energize through his mere presence. All I have are a bunch of life-time experiences from the workplace, that I'm willing to share with you. Hoping that someday, somehow could be of help to someone, who knows... And because there is a slim chance that this could become reality, I need to record them somewhere. On this blog. This “a-blog nothing”…blog.
