Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Opportunity Knocks

A friend called me up and invited me to her office. Over lunch she laid out the reasons for the invitation: she asked me if I could develop a project proposal for the content for an information portal. She had a general idea of what she wants, and a few specific guidelines about what this portal must contain, but the rest would be up to me. She gave me carte blanche to develop a proposal on how I would picture the best possible information portal, within the requisites that she outlined, and she asked me to develop a job description for the person responsible for the content management of the portal. Her organization has a strong interest in supporting a project of this nature, and what they need is for someone to bring them a concrete proposal.

I had pretty much ruled out the possibility of going back to work in the information field. At one point you had to be a computer expert to work in library and information systems, but now the technology has evolved so much that it has become obvious that the computer technicians and the content managers do completely different jobs. So I find myself back in the game, and I've been handed the opportunity to make a wish for whatever project I envision, and then the powers that be will wave their magic wands and make this wish come true.

Ha! I wish it would be so easy. I know what the content needs to be, I have an idea where some of it is, and I know that only a small portion is ready to go on a portal. This is going to entail a huge amount of work over an extended period of time.

This is huge and scary. Part of me wants to turn and run in the opposite direction. I don't want a fulltime office job. I love writing and translation. I love the job I'm already doing. I love working at home. I don't want to give up the freedom to spend the morning in bed reading, or go to the gym, or take a month of vacation (while still working via the Internet). I've become complacent. But this is the kind of opportunity that meets all of my requisites: challenging, meets a need, likely to be stable and decently remunerated, and it makes a significant contribution to society.

Invent something, invent yourself, go beyond yourself and create something significant.

The opportunity has been laid out before me on a silver platter.

Do I dare?

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