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I basically get paid to cook, eat and write (and take gorgeous
pictures like this one). If I could get sleeping & reading in
there too, there would be nothing left to achieve in my life. |
A couple of weeks ago, Bath City College got in touch to
ask if I might be up for giving a lecture as part of their Digital Futures
event for the Bath Digital Festival. The Digital Futures day is a chance for
students aged between 15 and 19 to find out more about careers in the world of
technology – everything from creating the actual tech to using it for stuff
like blogging and social media – and frankly, my answer was an immediate yes. I
spend my days writing blog content for the websites of independent food
companies, with a special focus on developing delicious recipes to show off
their products (although I do also write about all sorts of stuff from their
ingredients to their backstory). I love my job – properly love it. When everyone
got back to work after Christmas and Twitter was full of hashtags about the
crippling awfulness of January, I felt like the only person who knew the secret
of turning grey, leaden workdays into pure gold. I reckon that more people
should feel like this about their jobs, so I was only too happy to pop into
Bath City College and try and convince some kids to run away and join the
self-employed circus.
For the morning session, I gave two rounds of my talk
Blogging: How To Create Your Own Job to GCSE-aged students from various
secondary schools around the city, talking about how the job market is
undergoing a period of huge expansion and upheaval, making lots of different
careers available and making traditional careers available in a whole new way.
Then for the afternoon session, I chatted to older students who are currently
studying at the College, with the same rough outline but a focus on how they
can use blogging and social media to take their hard-earned skills in a new
direction, and work for themselves rather than somebody else. For this talk in
particular there was a great response, and I ended up talking to some really
enthusiastic teenagers afterwards about the possibilities that are out there.
When you’re in education, the constant assumption is that you’re working
towards being employed by somebody else afterwards – but these days, with
freelance working and self-employment on the rise, that doesn’t have to be the
case, and sometimes all you need is for somebody to tell you that another way
is possible.
Speaking of which, I often get lovely comments on the
fact that I’ve been self-employed and running my own business since the age of
24, but in my second afternoon session I met someone who made me feel like a
total slacker – a guy who runs his own successful business at the age of just
18. We were both part of a panel for a talk called Jobs You’ve Never Heard Of
(yup, definitely applies to mine), and I was pretty fascinated by Solomon’s
work for his company Ferox as a hacker – i.e., one of the
good guys that hacks into businesses to find out how the bad guys might do it,
so that the aforementioned businesses can then close those loopholes. I was pretty
inspired by his vision and enthusiasm, and I reckon I wasn’t the only one.
In short, it was an awesome day, and I’m really glad I
took part. If you’re reading this because you’re intrigued by my job or simply
by the idea of working for yourself, whether you’re a student or not, then
please do feel free to get in touch – I’d love to chat and provide any advice I
can.
