My Dream Job Minus the Hammock

(Photo of Hammock under Palm Trees, Tropical/Pacific courtesy of Picasa user Mudassir)

A post requesting our readers to be patient if the stories aren’t coming up as quickly as we would like:

Thank you to everyone who took our Sheepshead Bites business card when I met you near the Super Stop & Shop. Thank you for stopping by our site. I hope your Thanksgiving was memorable, though for different reasons than mine was.

You see, I had a little accident with a certain hot handle (straight out of the broiler) and a certain M.I.A. potholder (oh, how I wish I had briefed up on Thanksgiving day safety tips) that prevented me not just from writing for Sheepshead Bites, but also for typing cover letters, resumes, and e-mails, for my endless job search.

Read more about my dream job after the jump.

My injuries are healing as we speak and I can now type (though, somewhat gingerly), but am still in the midst of seriously finding a way to pay the bills while having time to write for Sheepshead Bites.

While it hasn’t been as lucrative for me, Crain’s New York reports that “Sheepshead Bay is a top choice for service businesses looking for a booming environment.” Those of you who took the Sheepshead Bites business card, might have noticed the other one for The A-Sister – a service business providing assistant and concierge services (special focus on Sheepshead Bay).

Yes, that’s me. I’m a service business and, believe me, business is not booming. Hence, the traditional job search and the anxiety ensues, as it has for many unemployed people in similar situations around the country.

While covering stories in Sheepshead Bay is my Dream Job (well, minus the hammock swaying in the tropical breeze), it is — as one of our readers, Daniel, rightly pointed out in a comment to a recent post — an unpaid one.

Jared Sandberg expressed for me about why I love this very unpaid Dream Job writing for Sheepshead Bites. In his Wall Street Journal’s Cubicle Culture article of April 15, 2008, he talked about why “…A Dream Job Is One That Isn’t A Nightmare”:

But maybe people simply like what they do and aren’t, as some management would have you believe, asking for too much–just the elimination of a small but disproportionately powerful amount of office inanity…The matters that routinely rank high on a satisfaction scale don’t relate to money but “work as a means for demonstrating some sort of responsibility and achievement…Pay–even when it’s important, it’s not for what you can buy, it’s a validation of your work and approval,” says Barry Straw.

So, while I keep pounding the pavement and the keyboard in search of a less-than-dream-job, our newest readers might like to take this time to become familiar with Sheepshead Bites – maybe, even read the articles you haven’t gotten to, yet. Each one was written with that sense of responsibility and achievement – not in a hammock or under the tropic sun – but nevertheless in our own little piece of the world – Sheepshead Bay.