The other day, suggested this careers meme, in which Career Cruising determines your ideal jobs. This could not have come at a better time, seeing as how asked me just yesterday when I plan to return to work, and what I think I might do when I get there. If I stay home until the Wee One is in JK — which I would like to do — then I will have been out of the workforce for 10 years. Going back to programming is going to be tough; my skills will be really out of date. Plus, the older two will still need after school care, and the Wee One will need almost full-time daycare, so my job would have to pay fairly handsomely for us to actually make money after paying for all that kiddy care.
Anyway, here’s the site’s recommended top 10 jobs for me:
Naturopath
Professor
Speech Language Pathologist
Music Teacher
Foreign Language Instructor
ESL Teacher
Website Designer
Acupuncturist
Nurse Practitioner
Actor
Corporate Trainer
Editor
Desktop Publisher
Cartoonist/Illustrator
Computer Trainer
Animator
Director of Photography
Anthropologist
Multimedia Developer
Director
Public Health Nurse
Midwife
Ob-Gyn
Casting Director
Comedian
Public Relations Specialist
Nurse
Art Director
Print Journalist
Critic
Activist
Market Research Analyst
Musician
Political Aide
Neurologist
Computer Animator
Writer
Health Records Professional
Composer
Translator
My list is just about equally divided between the fields of medicine, computers, teaching, and Famous Hollywood Persona. I think all of these are a good fit for me, but most of them require extensive retraining, or being 22 years old. What I really need is a job that requires little to no training, requires me to work only from 9am to 2pm each day, and pays $100K a year.
Doesn’t everybody!
TurtleHead 
I see you got Desktop Publisher in your top twenty also. What is Desktop Publishing, anyway?
You know, I’m not too sure myself. I think it is someone who puts together things like newsletters and business cards for people…using a computer…maybe?
Would teaching require much more schooling other than maybe a year? I mean, you’d have to teach computers or math or physics (unless you wanted to teach younger grades), but maybe that’d be okay.
I think my strategy is to make a short list of careers that I think I would like, and then do some research to see how much schooling/training is involved for each. Then we can see what we can afford — both in terms of tuition, and in terms of my time. Also, training here in Ottawa would be a must, so some things are out just because there are no schools for them here (like, say, naturopath).
Teacher will definitely be on the list because I think I could stand for it, there are schools here in Ottawa, and it’s only a year. It probably wouldn’t be my first choice, but it’s great hours and flexibility. We’ll see if anything else makes the cut!
Well, if it’s any consolation, I think you’d be a great teacher!