<font size=2>Most of you know I have been home from work for 4-5 months now with bills piling up. And with all the anxiety associated around my workplace I doubt if I will be able to go back to work there and remain healthy.
I have been trying to think of alternatives for a long time now. Right now even searching for another job is out of the question because I am having so much difficulty leaving my house and also working on getting my "sleep pattern" back under control I don't feel capable of maintaining regular hours for a job.
I have always wanted to do something of my own working from home and it does strike me that this may be the time to try that opportunity. Over the last few weeks I have been losing confidence in my skills so I am very unsure of how successful I could be at it.
One of my problems is that although I have a LOT of really good skills, virtually all of them were developed "on the fly" at various jobs and as a result I don't have the depth of knowledge in any one field to feel comfortable "presenting myself" as qualified in a particular field.
My T has recommended that I brainstorm with some of my skills and maybe think of a way to put them to use. I would appreciate any real-world advice or support that anyone can provide in addition to suggestions.
Most of my years developing my skills have been working in "electronic prepress" for print shops and service bureaus. This is where my deepest knowledge lies. I have a lot of knowledge in the mechanics of both offset printing and screen printing, and i am very good at setting up computer files for film output, including color separations, trapping, coaxing difficult line screen and dot patterns from "difficult" imagesetters, etc. I am really expert at the software used for this, as used from the point of view of an "outputter".
I work fluently on both Mac and PC, and much of my troubleshooting skill also goes to maintaining the computers and equipment, installing software, setting up the operating system properly, etc.
I think my biggest skill is my ability to learn and understand something and then be able to excellently troubleshoot and solve problems.
Here are some of my skills:
<ul>[*]Use of
graphics software (but I am not good at creating art other than logos, flyers, etc.)
[*]
Page Layout (I have a good eye for typesetting and layout and have worked on flyers, newsletters, and a few books.)
This is something I really enjoy, and one thing I've been thinking about is doing the design and layout for corporate newsletters. I don't know how practical this is since many businesses may do this in house.
[*]
Troubleshooting film output problems which also incorporates my knowledge of the print industry as to what will and will not be easy to achieve on the presses. I have limited knowledge of PostScript code, enough to find simple errors and fix them directly in the code for some types of output problems. I also have great skill in working around the limitations and bugs in the software to achieve the desired output.
[*]
Building computers, especially for specific applications (like graphic design. Although I don't have any experience in high end gaming computer systems.)
[*]
Setting up systems (OS, software, etc.) for optimum and consistant use. Includes Windows up to XP, Mac up to OS9 and OSX)[*]
Modifying, upgrading and maintaining computers (both Mac and PC)
[*]
Networking a small LAN (here my experience is very limited. I don't have a full set of networking knowledge, just enough to get the office PCs working together and sharing between Macs and PCs).[*]
Basic internet connectivity, but I don't know enough about security, firewalls, etc to be comfortable setting up systems in a corporate environment (as my job the firewall was already in place, I was able to maintain it and troubleshoot but would not feel comfortable setting up such a system from scratch)
[*]
HTML--this is an obvious one, I can set up a nice website, I know basic HTML coding, but primarily use GoLive for setup and illutrator and Photoshop for graphics.
However I know nothing (or very little) about scripting, database driven websites, ecommerce websites and the security needed to implement. This i think greatly limits my abilities here. These are all things I am very interested in learning, however.
[*]
Database programming--only started on this one recently, designing a simple but very useful "production tracking" database for the office. Working in Microsoft Access and Visual Basic. My programming skills are very rudimentary, but do build on old experience with languages (Pascal, Fortran) from college. I am starting to read up on SQL and would really like to build up my experience there and integrate it with my knowledge of HTML to be able to build database driven websites. This is not something I would be able to "sell" for some time of course.
[*]
Writing-I believe I have some good writing skills when I set my mind to it. This is also an advantage in newsletter editing and setting up website content, etc. I also have dreams of becoming a professional writer someday.
biggest problem here is the difficulty I have had concentrating as a result of the depression, and I have been very unsuccessful in my writing attempts recently
[*]
Bookkeeping--I was "promoted" to bookkeeper in my last job, a company with several million dollars in sales each year. I became familiar with Quickbooks in that regard, and the company accountant seemed to think I was doing a very good job. Since my "learning" was in the context of this one company, I have no idea how successful I would be walking into another situation with the skills I have. This is something not very high on my list of "dream jobs" though.
[*]
Best Skill writing long-winded posts on message boards that are way to long for anyone to read all the way through.
[/list]
My biggest weakness is fear and shyness dealing with people that I don't know. This is a huge stopping point for most "home business" ideas. For many years I have had trouble answering the telephone, even with caller ID, it is something I describe as a sort of "agoraphobia" related to telephones. I am very comfortable dealing with emails. Many potential customers would want at least the ability for telephone contact. I have always been hoping to work with a partner to "cover" my weaknesses, but at this point I don't know if that is feasable. The other problem is a lack of self confidence. While I have a lot of confidence in applying my skills, I have little confidence in "selling" those skills, if that makes sense. And my confidence has been decreasing over the past few weeks.
I guess that is plenty to get started on. Any advice? Can I become a millionare overnight with some obvious combination of these skills that I have not yet thought of?
Thanks for all of your support.</font>
-- The world is what we make of it --
-- Dave
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