Salvage

Ouch. This has not been the best week blogging-wise for me, between the problems with Wednesday's post and dropping the ball entirely yesterday. Hence the post tonight to try to salvage the week. Conveniently enough, salvage is the theme of the post.

I really liked this post from Mark Stelzner of Inflexion Advisors earlier this week (there's a link on the blogroll too). Titled "A Means to An End," it talks about how any job you have, even one that seems menial or unimportant, is part of getting to where you eventually want to go.

It's especially applicable to the intended audience of this blog. If you've spent an extended amount of time as a contractor or freelancer, you've probably had gigs or contracts you didn't care for at all. Maybe they didn't play to your strengths enough. Maybe the work environment was toxic (in the metaphorical sense and hopefully not the literal sense). Maybe it was something else entirely. There could be any number of reasons why it wasn't something you enjoyed and you looked forward to it ending, even if it meant no paycheck.

And that's okay. You don't have to love every job you do and want to have it forever. Perhaps what you take away from this type of position is knowing what you don't want to do or who you don't want to work with, and how to avoid a similar situation in the future. I'm a firm believer in always being able to salvage something out of any situation. Maybe the lining isn't made of silver and it's actually made of scrap metal, but you can always get something for it.