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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3069 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for April 19, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I'm in a weird spot. Out of college, I applied for a lab analysis job, but was reassigned to an environmental compliance job before my first day. Now 11 years later I'm laid off with all my career experience in environmental regulations, despite being right-wing and generally opposed to environmentalism. It's weird trying to navigate that job market without being a true believer.

I think my best career trajectory at this point is to set myself up to step into a policy position after a future conservative purge of the EPA. Wish me luck!

Think you could apply your expertise plus political thinking for a think tank with a focus on regulatory policy like CATO?

No, my expertise is in the hands-on work of actual emissions sampling, not high-level environmental policy.

Ah got it

It's weird trying to navigate that job market without being a true believer.

There's no market for "how can I do X without getting dinged by regulators" type consultants?

Yes, but the other issue I'm running into is that no one wants to train. They're only looking for people who have done that exact same job for 5 years already. And my job was so niche, the exact same position just doesn't exist anywhere else.

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