For those of you who are following the online soap news, yes, I know
that All My Children shot for two weeks last month and started its new
shooting cycle yesterday. But for me--and, hey, this is my blog--today
was Day 1. First day to work with All My Children actors, directors, and
producers. First day to discover a story and a show feel that might be
different from what I was used to. A friend asked me yesterday if it was
hard to be in a place where there was a new experience almost every
day. I said then, and having had a major new experience today, I
still say now that the new experiences only make me better and stronger and
smarter.
When I was looking for work, there was a lot of talk from me (and most
of the bazillion people with whom I had coffee) about transferable
skills. Did being a casting person make you marketable as an HR
professional? Did being a producer in soaps make you marketable as a
reality story producer? And did being a studio multicamera AD make you
marketable in any number of positions dealing with handling data and
organizing people? (Clearly the people hiring for facilities managers
and asset managers didn't think so). In the end, it was largely my
editing skills that people understood, so transferable became a lot
narrower than I'd wanted to think.
Today, on my first booth day at All My Children, I discovered that while
there might not be easily recognizable ways to transfer my skills to
the world at large, there were absolutely recognizable ways to use my
skills telling different stories with different people. Sometimes, I
think, the key to that Holy Grail of transferability is the willingness
to lose yourself in the similarities and lose your fear of the
differences. It doesn't mean I can be an air traffic controller just
because I do traffic controlling every day. But it does mean that I can
tell multiple stories with pictures and work to coordinate a whole lot
of people with different needs.
Today's new experience is over. But the way I see it, it was just another step. A small but significant step in a lifetime of transferable skills.
No comments:
Post a Comment