And I don’t mean being bought out by the company for pennies in the effort to downsize. Writing that previous post had me thinking a lot about how I approached my career. I’m relatively young, three years out of my undergraduate degree and 3/4 through my graduate degree. As far as my career is concerned, I’ve done 4 different jobs in the span of 3 years – something that many career planning advisers would frown upon. It creates the sense of transience that doesn’t spell too good about me as a worker. But let’s break that down in detail.

Right out of college, some trading firm hired me to manage their corporate communications and client liaisons. I was blinded by the compensation offer but two months into the job, I found out that the company culture was too stifling. And the boss’ temper was quite short to other employees (for some reason she never tried to take me on).

So I quit and found work with an IT firm where I spent almost two years. That’s where I quickly rose ranks getting a promotion every six months. But I really wanted to give time to work on my graduate degree and the 60-hour work week took its toll on my health. They still hire me as a consultant once in a while.

Then just a couple of weeks out of my old job, I found Bloggy Network where I’m happily blogging for more than a year now. That let me inch towards finishing my graduate degree (something that an 7am-7pm, Monday to Saturday job won’t give you). I even got invited by my professors to teach and and with my boss’ consent, I also taught a few classes in the university.

Career-wise, I might not be able to say that I’m no corporate bigshot. In fact, that’s one of the criticisms people give me when I say I pretty much love what I do right now – that blogging isn’t really a career. And that how could I have traded my lucrative desk job for working at home, writing. That’s where I create the argument that it’s writing that’s a career, blogging is a medium. And given the flexibility I get blogging, who wouldn’t want to trade a 60-hour workweek with a 40-hour workweek with flexible hours. Oh man, they’re missing a lot. What other job would let you stay for hours at a coffee shop sipping blends, blogging?

Well, yeah, I think it’s fair to say that my work doesn’t carry with it some fancy title nor does it have the fancy-schmancy benefits one can expect working for some swanky multi-national firm. But, most of the times, it’s those intangibles that count. The flexibility of hours. The almost non-existent office politics (you still have to acknowledge the boss, though :p).

As far as blogging is concerned, I’ve made it clear that I do intend to stick to it for as long as I can and that could be for a very long time. I could do some other endeavors like put up my own business eventually but hey, I enjoy writing. And why not earn from doing something that like doing, right?