The Business Writing Life - First Job

When I first started in business writing, I was a mere pup of 22, fresh out of college. That was 21 years ago, and I had the distinct pleasure of writing documentation for statistical process control software. w00t! Not really. hARd! I found the art and science of technical writing very taxing, especially when writing about a product that was so fundamentally mathematically intricate. I felt like A Beautiful Mind with no garage.

The interesting part of this first job was that we had a completely unrelated yet simultaneous business in educational publishing for the Rochester City School District and NYS Department of Education, as well as a kids' magazine division (another division of me and my business partner) that published YOUth Magazine on Long Island.

So what that job lacked was Focus, and I was grateful. If I'd have focused on the SPC software exclusively, I might be either mad or living on Slashdot. Fortunately, each day at work was as different from the one before--I might be photographing and writing a story on the Magnet Program at a city school one day, and disecting user instructions involving teensy tiny measurements the next. From teen fads to widgets. Sometimes in the same day. The only difference was the nature of the copy, the volume of content needed. And the best part of all--I lived 3 miles from my job. Little did I know then, one day I would be living 0 miles from my job. And I'm still trying to figure out which is better...

Second Job--Kodak. To Be Continued...

[It's career review week here on allied: Post about your first "real" job and I'll link to the good, the bad, and the ugly here... Notice, Real means I didn't include my K-Mart Door Greeter Job. You don't have to either. ;-) ]