Zechariah 1:13 So the LORD spoke kind and comforting words. (NIV)
One of the reasons that my position at the photography studio didn't work out for me was this: after three years, I was feeling creatively stifled. My primary job was photographing children at schools, and doing weddings. The rest of the time I spent in the darkroom. Depending on the season, I would sometimes be there weeks on end.
The owner had hired a team-building consultant, and after a battery of personality and interest tests, along with a few hours of interviews, they found out who I really was deep down. Some of the information even surprised me – but it was true.
I really enjoyed the consultant, and we became friends.
I thought to myself, if I don’t fit in here, where do I fit? Being unemployed gave me time to pray, and research various career choices. I had always picked jobs that seemed interesting before. After the initial excitement wore off, I eventually I became frustrated and bored – I needed help.
I called Ken and asked him if he could do a complete analysis - a Life Design to help me chose my next career.
We spent 8 hours designing my life.
The next morning we went over the results. I had already had the temperament tests before, so I was aware of my unique blend of creative and analytic personalities that fought for the forward position in my interactions with the world. He also identified something else. It was a creative need that was coupled with the enjoyment of machines. Wow! Music and guitars, carpentry and tools, and photography and cameras - that was a revelation.
In the next part of the process he laid out the career and vocational options. We went down the list, and none of it seemed to grab. In fact, some of the options I had already done, and the rest didn’t interest me.
Ken agreed to work on it some more, and call me. As a pastor, he asked if we could just pray. At the end of a short prayer, he said. “I had an impression.” He asked me if I had done anything with computers.
“Yeah,” I took COBAL in 1972. It took 4 months to write a program to which would calculate a 5% income tax! And in college I took some Visual Basic and it didn’t do much for me.”
He carefully replied, “I think that you need to look into getting a program called Photoshop. I believe it only runs on a Macintosh computer.”
I left New York thinking about this Photoshop. When I arrived home five hours later, I called my mother as I usually did about once a week. Before I could tell her about the Life Design results, she said, “I was wondering if you could use a computer to help you in your next job?”
I told her about the career counseling, and about Photoshop.
“Well, you just let me know if that will help, and we will get one for you.” She assured me.
I spent the next few days finishing a grant application for computer training. My career goals were to learn computer graphics, and Photoshop was one of those programs!
My mother bought me a Macintosh with Photoshop and off to school I went.
It was the most fun I had in a class since I took guitar lessons in college. The instructor and I hit it off, and for four hours each day I sat overlooking Hyannis Harbor, computing, and amazed at how well this move worked out. It was so exciting for me, that I would rush home and do my homework. I bought the Mac Bible, and along with my books from school, consumed thousands of pages of software How To books.
The rest of the story coming soon....
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