Celebrating Your Career Dreams

Our work life takes up a large portion of our time. It has been stated we work 80,000-100,000 in our lifetime. I always tell students how do they wish to spend that kind of time? No matter what kind of work we are doing, to live life more than ok we need to make our work life as positive we can. That is too much time to go through despairing or gritting our teeth in anger.

One creative idea about how we canview our work in a positive light, can be found each November with National Career Development Month. Each November the National Career Development Association sponsors a career Poetry & Poster Contest. The contest is an opportunity for Counselors to encourage creativity and inspire career development with a positive tone through mediums of Poetry and Artistic Posters. Age ranges are from Kindergarten to Older Adult. There are three categories:

• Poetry of which can be in any acceptable Poetic form; (e.g. cinquain, free verse, diamante, haiku, limerick, metered, rhyming, blank verse).
• Poster Traditional (C1 Category) using any of the traditional drawing styles --pencil, poster paints, magic marker, acrylics, or oil.
• Poster Mixed Media (C2 Category) utilizing photos, clipart, graphic art software, collage, or mixed media.

The theme this year is “Celebrating My Career Dreams”. I think it is important that National Career month is in November the same month we celebrate Thanksgiving. Especially at this time as the economy is difficult no matter what our work is, whether it is perceived as a job or a calling we should be thankful and celebrate that we have work. Many of those enduring unemployment would like to be in our shoes with steady employment. We should be thankful for the work we have. Now that doesn’t mean we can’t vent about having bad days at work. Those bad days will come and go and make sure you have a shoulder to lean on furing those times at work.

Here is the Link to the NCDA page about the contest and other resources for National Career Development Month: http://associationdatabase.com/aws/NCDA/pt/sp/ncdmonthHere is also a link to last year’s winners so you can view some of the artwork and poetry for inspiration:
http://associationdatabase.com/aws/NCDA/pt/sd/news_article/28941/_PARENT/layout_details/falseIf you are a teacher you may want to speak with your school Counselors about being involved with the contest. If you are an older adult and would like to try out a poster or a poem about your career dreams you can contact me at livingmorethanok@gmail.com as I am the National Contest Chairperson. I can find the state coordinator for you. Even if you don’t want to try out for the contest take some free time and draw out a picture of celebrating the work you do. Think about the lives you touch in the work you do. Also think of new dreams in your career journey.

Reflection:
Write down 5 things you are thankful for about your work.
Take some quiet time to draw out a picture about celebrating your work and career or write out a poem. Think about entering the contest. Who knows you may be a state winner or national winner.