Silver Linings, or, The Perks of Being Fired - Introduction
Here, in what I hope will be a limited exercise, I shall attempt a daily post of the silver linings of being a shiftless layabout, aka, unemployed.
About 3 weeks ago, or was it four? I was "let go" from my relatively new job at Shelf Awareness. As Sales Associate my job was to reach out to the smaller publishers and non-traditional accounts to get them to buy ads. Unsurprisingly it's the smaller publishers and companies that haven't worked with Shelf Awareness before that don't have large budgets to spend on advertising. I was viewing my work with them to be more like relationship building. Earning trust and respect in a slow burn up to getting them to become regular, if necessarily smaller, advertising customers. I was also put in charge of growing the new consumer version of our newsletter by signing up bookstores to send it out to their customers in exchange for their complete email lists. On that front I was successful more or less from the start growing our reach by 600%. On the ad sales front, not so much. At least not in the 4.5 months that I was selling ads.
At the end of June I was let go from my job and a company that I truly love and believe in. The work that Shelf Awareness does to keep books, bookselling, and publishing alive and relevant is incredible and, as a lover of books and a former bookseller, I appreciate their work more than words can say. Being forced to depart their employ after so short a time stung. In fact, it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.
But now, in a silver-linings frame of mind, I am enjoying a glorious summer vacation. True i'm scouring the vast interwebs for job postings and shining up my resume and cover letters but I'm also able to sleep in (till the luxurious hour of 8 am some days!), run, get projects done, and generally relax into slow, warm rhythm of summertime. This is not a permanent place for me. I grow too restless with "nothing" to do and there are bills to be paid and medical insurance to be had. And that's all saying nothing about the desire to have a career that fulfills both my drive for success and pays in a way that I think behooves my skill, talent, and charm.
Tomorrow, the first of the Silver Linings series!
About 3 weeks ago, or was it four? I was "let go" from my relatively new job at Shelf Awareness. As Sales Associate my job was to reach out to the smaller publishers and non-traditional accounts to get them to buy ads. Unsurprisingly it's the smaller publishers and companies that haven't worked with Shelf Awareness before that don't have large budgets to spend on advertising. I was viewing my work with them to be more like relationship building. Earning trust and respect in a slow burn up to getting them to become regular, if necessarily smaller, advertising customers. I was also put in charge of growing the new consumer version of our newsletter by signing up bookstores to send it out to their customers in exchange for their complete email lists. On that front I was successful more or less from the start growing our reach by 600%. On the ad sales front, not so much. At least not in the 4.5 months that I was selling ads.
At the end of June I was let go from my job and a company that I truly love and believe in. The work that Shelf Awareness does to keep books, bookselling, and publishing alive and relevant is incredible and, as a lover of books and a former bookseller, I appreciate their work more than words can say. Being forced to depart their employ after so short a time stung. In fact, it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.
But now, in a silver-linings frame of mind, I am enjoying a glorious summer vacation. True i'm scouring the vast interwebs for job postings and shining up my resume and cover letters but I'm also able to sleep in (till the luxurious hour of 8 am some days!), run, get projects done, and generally relax into slow, warm rhythm of summertime. This is not a permanent place for me. I grow too restless with "nothing" to do and there are bills to be paid and medical insurance to be had. And that's all saying nothing about the desire to have a career that fulfills both my drive for success and pays in a way that I think behooves my skill, talent, and charm.
Tomorrow, the first of the Silver Linings series!