Still Unemployed: 5 (More) Career Paths I Tried in 2024

One of my goals for 2024 was to find a "meaningful new job". I had been underachieving comfortably for a few years (2 years freelancing, plus the previous 2 years where I was coasting by at MoneySmart during the 100% WFH days) and the time seemed ripe for change. 

In any case, I frequently thought about this quote from Man’s Search for Meaning and felt personally admonished:

Yet, I was clueless as to what my Next Big Thing was. So I tried a few for size:

1. Social Services

I had been curious about the social service sector for years, so when I got an internship at Beyond I couldn't wait to plunge in. Well, after my long soak in the warm waters of underemployment, it was like jumping into an ice bath. So many new things at once!! A boss, an office and colleagues, the industry, the work itself, the people I was working with. Every single one was a radical departure from anything I'd ever known. It was frankly overwhelming.

The struggle to adapt made me wonder how best to go about life. Do I start with the vocation and try to learn all the skills needed? Or do I start from my natural strengths ("gifts", in Beyond-speak) and see where they can be applied?

As much as I wanted to do something new, my old career as a writer kept coming back to haunt me. What I did best (and enjoyed most) during my internship was talking to the residents of Henderson Heights and documenting their life stories.

Read more: Portrait of a Low-Income Neighbourhood

2. Book Editing

I completed the internship, but remained clueless as to what I should do with my life. Just at that point, the former director of Beyond, Gerard Ee, offered me a freelance gig. He's been writing a weekly email newsletter since 2005 (yup, before Substack and some of you were born) and wanted help putting it together in book form. 

And that is how I found myself in a group chat with him, human rights advocate and editor Braema Mathi, and Ethos Books founder Fong Hoe Fang. I was proud to be Braema's bitch, helping her curate newsletters, do little write-ups, and cross-reference facts. It was curiously satisfying to see 3 major areas of interest (social services, books, content/publishing) converge in one project.

3. Nonprofit PR & Communications

On top of the book, my (now-)mentor Gerard continued to rope me into various projects in his orbit, ranging from helping to write a prospectus for a charity trust, to pitching in for an up-and-coming workers' co-operative. A year ago, I would have laughed had anyone broached the idea of me doing branding and PR, disciplines I had put down as pure fluff. Yet here I am, doing just that. Life is crazy.

4. Professional Petsitting

With no actual plausible career path in sight (interesting projects notwithstanding!) I decided to try and go pro with Pets Hideout. I got a few long-term boarders this year, and the "basic income" allowed me to experiment with different services, platforms, and marketing strategies. 

Anyway, the enterprise didn't pan out because of regulations, but my real reward was working with Candy from SUTD. I first met the diminutive dance-loving researcher for an experiential study to transform vulnerable gig workers into resilient portfolio careerists. I'll be honest, it sounded like quite a lot of bull at first. So I was pleasantly surprised when Candy skipped the surface stuff and went straight for the jugular: challenging my self-imposed limits ("I'm too lazy to be successful", "I'm a social media idiot", etc.) 

5. Research & Writing

I spent some time this year trying to re-style myself as a "serious" researcher and non-fiction writer, like my leftie idols George Orwell and Barbara Ehrenreich. Part of it was genuine interest in the stories of the working class and the precariat, fanned by my foray in research and advocacy in Beyond. But most of it was vanity: I was embarrassed about my crypto-heavy freelance writing oeuvre and wanted to write cooler stories.

I went about setting up a public blog and writing up posts about the topsy-turvy world of bookstore workers and the pleasures and pains of being a pro-dominatrix. Then I realised I needed more subjects. So I applied for a couple of writing residencies/grants and got rejected. Haha. Never mind. 

So, 5 areas of activities, none of which seemed to have resulted in anything like a "real job" or a stable viable career. But I am not bothered by the technically abysmal hit rate. I think throughout 2024 I have gotten used to things not going as planned. My first failure (an unexpectedly tough social services internship) was ego-shattering and took a long time to get over, but recovery times shortened with every subsequent disappointment. I don't take these things personally anymore.

That said, I am not numb to pain, either. In the past, I would either have hidden behind defensiveness ("Their loss!") or delusionally tried to transmute pain into rational "learnings". Now I let myself feel the sting, seeing it as a sign that I’m engaged in life.

A few other bits of 2024 news...

Excluding short JB trips, I travelled 5 times, all around the region: Yogyakarta and Bali, Penang, Hoi An, KL, Bangkok. KL was a solo trip, the first such trip that I had gone on since meeting Jon. (He, too, went on a solo trip.) I forgot how much I love travelling alone.

I made myself read The Penguin History of the World and War and Peace this year. Around 3,000 pages of eyesight-destroying fine print later, I regret to say that I was not much enriched by either. Way too much war for my taste. I much preferred Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers, a romp through time with the brilliant classical economists, some of whom were very bisexual (that's Keynes).

(Subscribe for my upcoming Books of 2024 post.)

Oh and it’s also been a year of makeovers. Jon and I got perms, piercings, and learnt to put on makeup, and I sang karaoke and spoke in public for the first time. I didn’t expect turning 38 years old to be this fun.