Making a career move? Lose a job? Not sure what you want to do next? Talk to others in similar situations and see what emerges!http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/list.php?129Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:28:06 -0800 Phorum 5.2.7 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,117251,117251#msg-117251 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,117251,117251#msg-117251 PHWP_Online Jobs, Careers & WorkWed, 23 Sep 2009 20:12:07 -0700 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,116736,116736#msg-116736 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,116736,116736#msg-116736
I have never been comfortable participating in these routines, and remain amazed at the willingness of some people attending these events to openly relate very personal issues to perhaps hundreds of strangers.

Frankly, I suspect that a good deal of the underpinning of these activities comes directly or indirectly from "pop" psychology and even theories about how to create cults.

I would like to find out others' thinking concerning these kinds of "team building" and "ice breaking" activities -- do others feel uncomfortable when being expected to "play along"? Do you even find such activities to be somewhat disturbing in their possible connection to "cultish" behavior?

Finally, can anyone recommend any sources for reading criticism of such workplace "group therapy" activities which employees are expected to participate in basedon their "team building" value?]]> jeff201865 Jobs, Careers & WorkFri, 14 Aug 2009 14:36:22 -0700 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,116593,116593#msg-116593 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,116593,116593#msg-116593
Having some trouble at work and don't really know where to turn. I have worked for a human services agency for the last 28 years. For 25 years as a case worker managing food stamps, medicaid etc. Out of nowhere My boss tells me that I am not meeting their stats and quotas. That I am not working enough overtime, helping others out enough (as a senior worker I should be doing that) you get the idea. I handle a caseload of approximately 400. I see 5 clients per day which takes about 6 hours out of my seven and a half hour day. I respond to phone calls within 48 hours. However I do not and will not work overtime. I am 51 years old and believe me in the early years I worked the OT and volunteered for all kinds of projects etc but I am weary of that and just want to finish out my career in relative peace. I work for an extreme type A and I have always laughingly referred to myself as the anit A. I believe this is the basis for the abuse.

We were working on a resolution and it has had it's ups and downs but I thought it was going fairly well. At 3:01 on Friday (I leave at 4:00) I get an email saying that she and I have to have a meeting on Monday at 2:00 and from the tone of the email it is a disciplinary meeting. It is URGENT (her caps not mine) that we talk about my case accuracy rate and some other things. Then just signs her name. as an afterthougth she rights "You can bring someone with you if you want". So I write back do I need a union rep? She did not respond. So I got a union rep to go with me. I am scared that she is working diligently at getting me out. I do not know how to deal with this woman - in my mind she personifies evil. I do not say that lightly. She drove my old boss to leave after 20 years by doing much the same thing. Only since my husband is currenlty out of work I do nothave the luxury of walking out.

Any advice?]]> Annette Jobs, Careers & WorkFri, 08 May 2009 16:03:26 -0700 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,115913,115913#msg-115913 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,115913,115913#msg-115913FOR 50 YEARS---JOB HUNTING 1957-2007

The 3000 word statement which follows describes my job application life and the transition from employment and the job-hunting process(1957-2007) to retirement and the pursuit of a leisure life devoted to writing(1999-2009). The years 1999 to 2007 marked the years of transition. The information and details in my resume, a resume I no longer need or use in any direct sense in the job-hunting world after fifty years of use, but which I occasionally post here on the internet or mail to friends, should help anyone wanting to know something about my personal and professional background, my writing and my life. This resume might be useful, in some residual capacity, but not so much to @#$%& my suitability for some advertised or unadvertised employment position. This resume might be useful for some readers to @#$%& the relevance of some statements I make on the internet, statements on a wide variety of topics at a wide variety of internet sites. If I feel there is a need for readers to have some idea of my background, my credentials and my experience; if I feel that it would be useful for them to have a personal context for my remarks at an internet site, I post that resume.

I never apply for jobs for anymore, although I have registered at several internet sites whose role is, among other things, to help people get jobs. Perhaps this process of registration at such sites is engaged in with some sense of nostalgia, out of habit, out of an inability to stop applying for jobs after five decades of persistent and strenuous efforts. These decades of efforts were aimed at obtaining jobs, better jobs, jobs more suited to my talents, jobs that paid better, jobs that freed me from impossible situations that I had become involved with in some work-scene I was ensconced in--along the road of life. I stopped applying for full-time jobs, as I say, in September 2007 and part-time ones in December 2003. I also disengaged myself from most volunteer or casual work four years ago in 2005 so that I could occupy myself as: an independent scholar, a writer, a poet, indeed, what some might call a man of leisure in the Greek tradition.

At the age of 64, then, on the eve of the Australian Old Age Pension, six months in fact away from that formal condition of old age, I have become self-employed as a writer-poet, an independent scholar. I have gradually come to this role in the years after I left full-time employment in 1999, ten years ago. Not being occupied with earning a living and giving myself to 60 hours a week on average in a job as was the case from 1982 to 1999; and not being occupied with giving many other hours to community activity, as I had been for so many years as was the case from at least 1988 to 1999, marked a turning point in my life. I became able to devote my time to a much more extensive involvement in writing and reading material of my own choice.

Writing is for most of its votaries a solitary, hopefully stimulating, but not always pleasurable leisure-time, part-time or full-time pursuit. In my case in these first years(60-65) of late adulthood(60-80), writing and its companion activity research and reading has become full-time about 60 hours a week. This activity is for me and for the most part an enriching and enjoyable pursuit. I have replaced my former paid employment and extensive activity with people in community with a form of work which is also a form of leisure, namely, as I say: writing and reading—independent scholarship.

Inevitably the style of one's writing and what one reads is a reflection of the person, their experience and, often, their philosophy. On occasion, I set out a summary of my writing, my employment experience, my resume, in an attachment to this brief essay, this introductory statement, this commentary on the job application process which occupied my life for five decades: 1957-2007. If as that famous, although not always highly regarded, psychologist Carl Jung writes: we are what we do, then some of what I was and am can be found in that attachment, that resume and its several appendices. That document may seem over-the-top as they say these days since it now occupies some 30 pages and many more pages if the appendices are also included.

Half a century of various forms of employment as well as community, leisure and volunteer activity in the professional and not-so-professional world, all this time in many places produced a great pile of stuff. It also produced what used to be called by several different names: one’s curriculum vitae, one’s CV, one’s bio-data sheet or one’s resume. This document is now, at least as I see it, more of a lifeline, a life-narrative, a memoir, an autobiography-of-sorts. As I say, I make the list of this stuff available to readers of this account, this essay, when appropriate, when requested and, occasionally, when not appropriate. I update those many pages to include recent writing projects I have completed or am in the process of completing during these first years of my retirement from full-time, part-time and most volunteer activity.

My resume has always been the piece of writing, the statement, the document, the entry ticket which has opened up the possibilities of another adventure, another bit of gadding about, another slice of a quasi-pioneering, peripatetic existence, a moving from town to town, from one state or province to another, from one country to another, one piece of God's, or gods', earth to another piece of it. And so it was that I was able to come to work in another organization, gain entry to another portion of my life and enjoy or not enjoy a new world.

The process, I often thought, was not unlike a modern form of a traditional rite-de-passage. To some extent I came to take on what often seemed like another personality, another me in the long road to discover if, indeed, there was a Real Me underneath all this coming and going. I'm sure this process will continue, will also be the case in all its many forms in these years of my late adulthood(60-80) and old age(80++) should, for some reason, movement to yet another place or, indeed, from place to place be necessary to continue for some reason I can not, as yet, anticipate. This continued movement, though, seems highly unlikely as I go through these early years(60-65) of late adulthood and head into the last stages of my life, from sunset and early evening to night’s first hours and then, finally, the last hours of night, the final syllables of my recorded time. This process, this rite de passage expressed in the form of yet another job in another place seems, for the moment, to have come to an end. Time, of course, will tell.

The last five years(60-65) are as I indicated above the first ones of late adulthood, a period developmental psychologists call the years from 60 to 80. In this first decade of my retirement(1999 to 2009), I have been able to write to a much greater extent than I had ever been able to do in those years of my early(1965-1984) and middle(1984-1999) adulthood when job, family and the demands of various community projects kept my nose to the grindstone as they say colloquially in many parts of the world. With the final unloading of much of the volunteer work which I took on when I first retired, in the years from 1999 to 2005; with the gradual cessation of virtually the entire apparatus and process of job-application by 2007; with my last child having left home in 2005; with a more settled home environment than I’ve ever had by 2007 and with a new medication for the bipolar disorder that afflicted my life since my teens, also by 2007, the remaining years of my late adulthood beckon bright with promise. My resume reflects the shift in role, in my lifespan activity-base and lists the many writing projects I’ve been able to complete in this first decade of independent scholarship and full-time writing.

The process of frequent moves and frequent jobs which was my pattern for fifty years, 1949 to 1999, is not everyone's style, modus operandi or modus vivendi. Many millions of people live and die in the same town, city or state and their life's adventure takes place within that physical region, the confines of a relatively small place, a domain, a bailiwick as politicians often call their electorate. Such people and other types as well often have very few jobs in their lifetime. Physical movement is not essential to psychological and spiritual growth, nor is a long list of jobs, although a great degree of inner change, extensive inner shifting, is inevitable from a person’s teens through to their late adulthood even if they sat all their lives on the head of a pin, one of the theologico-philosophical metaphors associated with angels and often used in medieval times.

This process of extensive change is even more true in the recent decades of our modern age at this climacteric of history in which change is about the only thing one can take as a constant--or so we are often led to believe because it is so often said in the electronic media. For many millions of people during the half century 1957 to 2007, my years of being jobbed and applying for jobs, the world was their oyster, not so much in the manner of a tourist, although there was plenty of that, but rather in terms of working lives which came to be seen increasingly in a global context.

This was true for me during those years when I was looking for amusement, education and experience, some stimulating vocation and avocation, some employment security and comfort, my adventurous years in a new form of travelling-pioneering, globe-trotting, pathfinding of sorts, as part of history’s long story, my applying-for-job days, some five decades from the 1950s to the first decade of the new millennium. My resume altered many times, of course, during those fifty years. It is now, for the most part and as I indicated above, not used in these years of my retirement and especially since 2007, except as an information and bio-data vehicle for interested readers, 99.9% of whom are on the internet at its plethora of sites.

This document, as I say above, a document that used to be called a curriculum vitae or a CV, until the 1970s, at least in the region where I lived and dwelled and had my being, is a useful backdrop for those examining my writing, especially my poetry. Some poets and writers, artists and creative people in many fields, though, regard their CV, resume, bio-data, lifeline, life-story, life-narrative, personal background as irrelevant, simply not necessary for people to know, in order for them to appreciate their artistic work. These people take the philosophical, indeed, somewhat religious position, that they are not what they do or, to put it a little differently and a little more succinctly, "they are not their jobs."

I frequently use this resume at various internet locations on the World Wide Web when I want to provide some introductory background on myself. I could list many new uses after decades of a use which had a multifactorial motivational base: to help me get a job, to get a new job, to help me make more money, to enrich my experience and to add something refreshing to my life as it was becoming increasingly stale for so many reasons in the day-to-day grind, to help me get away from supervisors and from situations I could not handle or were a cause of great stress, to help me flee from settings where my health was preventing me from continuing successfully in my job, to help me engage in new forms of adventure, pioneering, amusement, indeed, to help me survive life’s tests in the myriad forms that afflict the embattled spirit, et cetera, et cetera, inter alia, inter alia, inter alter, inter alter.

The use of the resume always saved me from having to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. One could photocopy it and mail it out with the covering letter to anyone and everyone. The photocopier became a common feature of the commercial, business and government world in the 1960s just as I began to send out the first of the literally thousands of job applications that I would over the next forty years: 1967-2007. One didn’t have to write the application out each time; one did not have to “say it again Sam” in resume after resume to the point of utter tedium. The photocopier itself evolved as did the gestetner, one of the photocopier’s predecessors.

There were many ways one could copy one's basic data. For a time, my mother used to type applications for me. I became entrenched in the job market in the 1960s. This entrenchment was so very much like trench-warfare back in that Great War of 1914 to 1918--when millions died, were simply mowed down on the European continent in a process whose meaning we have yet to fully plumb. But, however little or much we have come to understand the meaning and significance of WW1, we--my generation--have come to experience a new warfare. As Henry Miller, one of the first to get away with using the "F" word in his trilogy: Sexus, Nexus and Plexus, expressed back in 1941 the new warfare of my generation: "a war far more terrible than the destruction" of the first two wars, the first two phases, with fires that "will rage until the very foundations of this present world crumble." It is not my intention to document any of these three phases of the destructive calamity that visited humankind in the century I have just left, for this documentation has been done in intimate detail elsewhere, both visually, orally and in print. I do not document but I frequently refer to these three phases. I have different purposes here than mere historical documentation. My job application process was clearly, at least as I look back over half a century of the process, part of that third war.

Applying for jobs as extensively as I did in the days before the email and the internet came on board in the early 1990s, became an activity, for me, that sometimes resembling a dry-wretch. Four to five thousand job applications from 1957 to 2007 is a lot of applications! At least since the mid-1990s, a few clicks of one’s personal electronic-computer system and some aspect of life’s game could go on or could come to a quick end over a set of wires under the ground, the electronic world of cyberspace. During that half-century of job-hunting years I applied, as I say, for some four to five thousand jobs, an average of two a week for each of all those years! This is a guesstimation, of course, as accurate a guesstimation as I can calculate for this fifty year period. The great bulk, 99.9% of those thousands of letters involved in this vast, detailed and, from time to time, exhausting and frustrating process, I did not keep. I did keep a small handful of them, perhaps half a dozen of all those letters, in a file in my Letters: Section VII, Sub-Section X, a part of my autobiographical work which is now entitled Pioneering Over Four Epochs.

This autobiographical work Pioneering Over Four Epochs goes for 2600 pages in five volumes and, due to its length, will not likely be read while I occupy space on this mortal coil. Much of my autobiography, portions of it, are now found, though, on the internet at a multitude of sites where in nano-micro-seconds anyone can find portions of my writing in addition to my autobiography or my resume. I am known in a multitude of microcosms, microworlds, miniworlds, where neither name nor fame can reach me, and where all the problems that go with any degree of celebrity status in our fame-hungry world will pass me by into cyberspace, into an electronic ether.

Given the thousands of hours over so many years devoted to the job-hunting process; given the importance of this key to my venture across two continents, two marriages, with at least two personalities being the bipolar person that I am; given that this new style of pioneering, voyaging-via-employment, venture in our time has been at the core of my life with so much that has radiated around this core; given the amount of paper produced, the amount of energy expended and the amount of money earned and spent in this great exercise of survival; given the amount of writing done in the context of those various jobs, some of this employment-related correspondence seemed to warrant a corner in the written story of my life.

It seemed appropriate, at least it was my desire as I recently entered the years when I no longer applied for jobs, to write this short statement(“not short enough,” I can hear the say) fitting all those thousands of unkept resumes and job-applications into a larger context as well as all those letters, emails and internet posts written in connection with trying to make connections with others, into some larger framework of action and meaning. For those who would like to read more on this theme, I invite them to go to the internet site: Baha’i Library Online>Secondary Source Material>Personal Letters>The Letters of RonPrice: 1957-2007. If such readers prefer, they can simple google: Ron Price Letters and more of this story will become available with only a few clicks.

Updated on: 3/09
3000 Words for:
SelfhelpMagazine
Support Community]]> RonPrice Jobs, Careers & WorkTue, 03 Mar 2009 04:15:50 -0800 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,115493,115493#msg-115493 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,115493,115493#msg-115493
I currently work as a landscape architect but would like to make the switch to work as a therapist/psychotherapist in a clinical setting. It's something that I'v'e wanted to do now for almost 8 years, but because of fear of the unknown, I've avoided making the change. I now feel ready and am very excited about taking the next step. I'm just not sure what the next step should be? I am a little confused on what type of graduate path I need to take to get to my goal. Questions that I have:

Should I be getting a graduate degree in social work? I have heard that getting your LCSW allows for more flexibility and lateral moves in the field.

There are a couple schools in my area. One offers a graduate program in psychology and the other offers a grad program in social work.

I’m interested in going back to school to get my masters. Ultimately, I'd like to work in a clinical setting as a psychotherapist/therapist working with individuals, couples, and families. I'm not sure exactly what my focus would be (substance abuse, marrital issues, etc.). But I do know that i want to work as a therapist in a clinical setting.
I’m interested in getting a masters of social work or counseling.

Is a masters in social work the correct direction to go in if those are my goals? Or should I be looking for a masters in counseling? Or psychology? Which masters should i be looking for to attain my goal?

It seems that there are a lot of crossovers between what each title means and what your degree can allow you to do. I'd like to get a degree that will allow me to have the most flexibility and it seems like a masters in social work would do just that. but i want to make sure i'm correct in that assumption.

- Do I need my LCSW to work as a clinical therapist?

-What core classes should I be taking to get ready to attend grad school?

Any advice or ideas you have would be most appreciated. Thanks!]]> integrity136 Jobs, Careers & WorkWed, 28 Jan 2009 05:13:31 -0800 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,115468,115468#msg-115468 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,115468,115468#msg-115468
If this were the "Review" forum, I'd give it a two thumbs up. (tu) (tu)

While we're on the subject of the efforts Dr. Maheu and the SHM'ers (hehe) so graciously put forth here, I just want to say that I find the newsletters and articles contained in them VERY informative and helpful. I know they must take a good deal of effort to put together and very much appreciate them. It's worth hitting those buttons to receive them.

Thanks Dr. Maheu and SHM'ers !! (:D]]> Dini Jobs, Careers & WorkSun, 25 Jan 2009 16:41:02 -0800 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,115426,115426#msg-115426 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,115426,115426#msg-115426i want to do home based part time internet business but i don't know that how i can do it.........???? I have my own Computer and internet broadband connection but i don't have more information so please suggest me....................dear are know about home based business.....????

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godgift
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Drug Intervention Connecticut-Drug Intervention Connecticut]]> godgift Jobs, Careers & WorkSun, 25 Jan 2009 16:27:19 -0800 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,115320,115320#msg-115320 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,115320,115320#msg-115320
In the study of political science, I felt a Socialist Society was perfect for me. Maybe my job would be chosen for me. I'd have health care like Obama proposes today. Most of all, I'd be making love to my woman, and watch sports on weekends. All I really wanted to do. The war changed nothing in that regard. I spoke with a friend of mine about an ice cream truck. Selling sea shells by the sea shore, but just being happy with no responsibility ever again. Security and dinero meant nothing. I wanted to live life in the open air, look at women, play ball.

A horrible forecast was that society demanded I work. Work or a job was never an end all for me. What do you call a man like me? I do not lament my attitude to this day. I made a pledge that I would never work in a factory or assembly line. Even if it meant pitching a tent with ponchos on the side of the road and finding a tin cup. Gotta live this life dude, I can't waste a day of it in a dark room.

freedom man]]> Gregg Jobs, Careers & WorkWed, 14 Jan 2009 16:25:38 -0800 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,115048,115048#msg-115048 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,115048,115048#msg-115048interviewing with the gal from human resources the conversation came up about
serguries. I told her about my breast augmentation and explained that I thought
it would be helpful when talking with other woman and patients considering it or any
other surgery as well.

Well, the human resource gal told everyone I had a boob job, including the receptionist
who proceeded to tell the entire physical therapy department who whispered it to the
next person at our Christmas party a few days ago!

Not only did they wisper it, they did it right in front of me and I could still hear them!

The human resource gal was sitting across from me at the Christmas Party and she whispered
it in the womans ear right next to her.

The next thing I knew they were all staring at my chest!!!! I was mortified! -_- The only reason I mentioned it
in the interview to her in private was because I figured she would know then that I would be a good canadate for that position
because I had already experienced surgery!

Tonght we had another x-mas party and another woman was whispering in a guys ear telling him I had a bob job and not to tell any one!
I could hear everything that was said. And then they stared at my chest. I dress very professional and you can not tell I had a boob job at all.
They are pretty small 34 c and I never wear anything tight, and always wear blazzers and suites.

I need some advice quick because I am just so upset and fumming mad!!!! X(]]> Miss Mary Jobs, Careers & WorkFri, 13 Feb 2009 21:31:47 -0800 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,114985,114985#msg-114985 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,114985,114985#msg-114985
She thinks we are "friends" because we have worked together so long and I think we are acquaitences who happen to work together at best. SHe is having our office Christmas party at her home this year and I am not going. I seldom go to the office Christmas parties but she is taking my declining her party as a personal affront and it is spilling over into our jobs. Any ideas how to stop this from snowballing?]]> Annette Jobs, Careers & WorkSat, 06 Dec 2008 14:05:15 -0800 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,110881,110881#msg-110881 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,110881,110881#msg-110881
Anyone else started a new career at 50? I'll be 50 in a couple of weeks. Thought I would stay 10 more years and retire from my state government job but my tolerance level has dropped and I no longer have it in me to keep up the hope that things will get better. In years past those of us with experience were appreciated but now the "powers that be" seem to be set on driving us all out. If I do leave there will be 1 person with more than 10 years - all the rest are new within 5 years, maybe I kid myself though maybe it really is time to move on? We'll see wish me luck!]]> Annette Jobs, Careers & WorkSun, 07 Dec 2008 18:17:38 -0800 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,106070,106070#msg-106070 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,106070,106070#msg-106070Was this your first day on the new job? If so, how did it go? !!!!]]> lizzie61 Jobs, Careers & WorkSun, 07 Dec 2008 18:09:06 -0800 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,98281,98281#msg-98281 http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/phorum/read.php?129,98281,98281#msg-98281 Harry Jobs, Careers & WorkWed, 15 Apr 2009 15:26:29 -0700