A visit to a career counsellor

July 9, 2025

Last year I started a blog series called The quest for a work thing.

I was doing that writing during the winter and spring while we were still living in Montreal.

Then we moved to Nova Scotia and a few things happened.

First, I immersed myself in living here and enjoying the summer. And oh, did I enjoy last summer! (This summer is also shaping up to be fabulous.) This shifted my focus from the underlying “what’s my paid work trajectory?” question that was driving that series.

Also, I started making videos and using video as a way to tell my story and talk about ideas. And this shifted my energy away from writing, more generally.

Then, it was the fall and I returned to the work of my Master’s degree and I had to buckle down to finish that. Every time the nagging question about my career path would surface I’d remind myself, I’m finishing this degree to help me answer that question.

So I’d put the question in a box (I had to repeat this process many times), knowing that I’d examine the question more thoroughly when the time was right.

This spring I finished my Master’s degree.

In early June we went to Montreal for my convocation. On that 2 week trip we also attended Brie's Bachelor's Degree convocation from McGill and Ciel’s Bachelor's Degree convocation from Concordia. It was a trip of significant milestones and commemorations.

Having successfully wrapped up this particular life project of getting a Master’s of Arts degree the question of career came roaring back to the surface demanding my attention.

It’s like it was telling me, “I’ve waited long enough, let’s talk”.

So here we are, back to this series.

However, because video production is my leading creative edge - the thing I’m learning, practicing and working to grow as another way of wholehearted memoirist story telling and communicating - I’m continuing the series in that format on YouTube.

I’ll post the videos here as they’re published but you can also subscribe to my YouTube channel to stay in the loop that way.

What’s kinda funny to me is that I’m actually making these videos based on stuff I’ve written. But instead of editing that writing to publish here, I’m video recording my engagement with my own writing, and then editing it for video production.

What do I mean by that, exactly?

To back up a wee bit, I went to career counselling when I was in Montreal. It’s offered by the university so hey, let’s use all the tools at my disposal!

In preparation for my career counselling I wrote a document. (Of course I did.)

I wanted to go into that session as prepared as possible to make the most of it.

I shared these slides to my IG stories because the fact is I have more definitive ideas for the garden than I do for work/career

At 49 years of age, I have diverse work and vocational experience. I’m also very clear on my orienting values (my North Stars), the framework of my life, and how paid work needs to fit into that framework.

I wanted to have all that self-knowledge and understanding at my fingers tips, easy to express and communicate, not something I would have to unearth during the counselling session. So I wrote it all up ahead of time.

I guess some people might go to counselling for that unearthing, but I already know that stuff about myself.

Montreal fun with the fam

What I wanted from career counselling, as I wrote in that document, was help identifying jobs and paid working roles/positions that would line up with my values, experience, education, skills, and life framework.

In this video (and the next) I’m talking through that document. So that’s what I mean when I say “I’m video recording my engagement with my own writing, and then editing it for video production”.

When I started this series over a year ago here’s what I wrote about how writing helps me and why I wanted to write this series.

In the past, I have used writing projects and blog series to find my way through cultural upheaval, to help me navigate periods of personal and familial transition and change, and to help me explore and articulate desires and dreams.
Writing is a tool for me to do the wayfinding on my journey.

And so I’m going to do it again. I will write my way through this with the hopes of discovery or knowledge at the end.

Back to the present. I’m still using writing to find my way. But now I’m using video to “publish” that writing.

This first video about career and work (and the next one that I’m currently editing) is based off of the career counselling document. And then I’m going to make a video about the journaling I did, post-counselling.

Spoiler alert: I do not know where this all leads. As of now there is no identified job/title/position at the end of this writing rainbow. But I am getting sense for the trajectory I’m on, which is more understanding than I’ve had in the months leading to this point. So yeah!

Keep reading and watching to see where it goes.

If you’re reading this in email you’ll have to click through to the blog to watch it. Or head straight to YouTube.