That's why I drink beer instead I know, everything is a chemical ( http://jameskennedymonash.wordpress.com/ )
I'm an auto damage insurance adjuster. I drive around all day looking at wrecked cars, which is kind of fun and allows me plenty of time to think about stories and characters while I'm driving from place to place. I also deal with an endless variety of people (potential characters). I'm self-taught in auto mechanics, race cars occasionally, ride motorcycle, have an interest in trains and railroads and a multi-time dog rescue dad. I incorporate a lot of the preceding into my stories (the characters always drive interesting cars or ride bikes, have dogs, etc). Having a lot of mechanical and professional driving experience makes me a poor person to watch certain movies with or market books to.
Haha, something similar applies to me. I always end up rolling on the floor when I watch a movie where computers are involved
Yeah, for me it's watching the daytime UK TV show Doctors, and watching the receptionist breenge into the doctor's consulting room whenever she feels like it ...and the doctor doesn't growl at her. Or sack her ass.
What an interesting thread! I really enjoyed reading all the replies, so many interesting career paths and talented people, I hope all of you succeed in your endeavours I started singing in a choir, then bands, when I was a teenager, I also did a lot of amateur theatre and directed and wrote screenplays for three plays. I was going to be a film director but when I emigrated at 17 that put a stop to that idea. Still the understanding of dramaturgy has helped me with my writing from the get go. I also learned Russian to a junior interpreter level in grammar school, and then went on to be a certified interpreter for the ex-Yu languages because I'm fully bi-lingual (I no longer speak Russian, though, but I understand it). All this helped me get through Uni but also deepened my ability to communicate concepts effectively. Also, it got me aware of refugee issues, I know many immigrant stories, and it enriched my knowledge of court processes. I have a medical degree and I worked in lots of different areas, A&E, general medicine, respiratory, neurology, vascular surgery, geriatrics, palliative care, paediatrics, obs & gynae, adult acute psychiatry, psychogeriatrics, chronic and rehabilitation psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, substance misuse and general practice. I specialised as a psychiatrist, and my special interests within it were forensic psychiatry and liaison psychiatry (hence all the medical jobs). I was half way through general practice training (as a part of my liaison psych endeavours, since I had most of the requirements under my belt for GP training scheme and only needed to do a year in a GP surgery) when I had to go off sick/sabbatical, thinking all I need is a year or two of rest, since I worked so bloody hard for almost 15 years straight. I opened a cosmetic medicine clinic, for botox, fillers, laser, mole removal etc, but due to my health had to retire from clinical work four years ago. But I continue to do all the admin from home (I'm a managing director and a secretary). In all this, after I went off clinical work, I felt so useless, I had to have a project to work on, so I spent three or four years learning photography, and have a nice website with well-visited tutorials on various subjects, internet galleries and I even sell some prints and designs made from my photos (mainly macro). I started to write in 2006 and over time, that has become my main career, photography is a hobby, medicine a former profession, administrative/managerial from home my 'day job'. All together, my career and life paths have given me an incredible insight into the human condition, personalities, mental illness, science and medicine, language, photography, management, accounting, beauty industry... I would feel like I wasted so much time for nothing, if it wasn't for writing and the fact all this wasn't in vain, because I'll never run out of characters, or stories to tell.
@jazzabel : you have an interesting bio and a lot of life-experience to get inspiration from. The "adult acute psychiatry" must have been a weird experience (if I understand right what it is).
I think all jobs have some movies to laugh at. The same happens when you read an article in a general purpose newspaper about a specialized area in which you happen to be experienced.
Thanks Vandor Adult Acute is your inpatient hospital psychiatry (and outpatient clinics) for everything and anything psychiatric that requires admission, voluntary and involuntary, for people between the ages of 17 and 65, excluding learning disabilities and local prison (although you get to cover those out of hours as well). It focuses on acute relapses and urgent treatment, and chronic care happens in the community, and chronic rehabilitation centres. It isn't weird at all beyond first month or two in med school. Psych wards are full of incredible people, both staff and patients, there's a sense of camaraderie, a definite vibe, a special world I feel privileged to have gotten to know. Also, being able to see the transformation in people following treatment, it's one of the most inspiring areas of medicine, hands down. The weirdness though, comes in forensic psych, institutions for the criminally insane. Not only is it fascinating, it doesn't get much weirder than that...
I've been a lawyer for 20 years now, although the last few I've been at home with my kids. I occasionally do some law work, but not a whole lot right now. I've worked in all kinds of law practices and seen all kinds of cases. There is some fantastic fodder for stories there. First of all, people are nuts. It's amazing what some folks do -- there were quite a few cases where I couldn't believe people actually said or did what they did, and if they were in a story, people might not believe it because it was so far fetched. Even when doing work as mundane as document reviews, for example, through emails of major corporations, people had some really interesting personal things going on. Once I was reviewing emails from the CEO of a fairly large bank. He used to routinely purchase lingerie that was over $1,000. I don't know if it had gold threads sewn into the fabric or what, but what a discovery -- I never even knew such expensive lingerie existed. And when I did mortgage foreclosures -- ooh, there were some doozies. Imagine your spouse not telling you that not only has he/she stopped paying the mortgage, but that both of you have been sued and you find out when the house has been sold at auction. And some of the defenses to foreclosures could make some great fiction -- US currency is not valid for repayment of a debt, the husband has been having sex with a man, the people were tricked into taking out a mortgage, the grandson set up his meth lab in the basement, the guy was not personally served with notice of the lawsuit because on the morning of service, he was out drinking at a bar, and it must have been his wife's boyfriend and not him who was served, -- all kinds of stuff.
@jazzabel : I thought something similar, but I included criminal cases. I now understand that the real mess comes in forensyc psychology, something I would not have the nerves to do.
My coworker told me that he once had to deal with a crazy person who wanted to sue the weatherman for getting the weather wrong.
I think research says IT can be one of the most stressful jobs around. Here, this just about sums up what the average IT guy has to put up with: And this, although probably most accurately describes helpdesk, but I'm sure it describes general IT work well too lol: Husband's an IT manager and I hear IT talk all the time to the point where I feel a certain level of kinship with other IT guys looool. Anyway, I do not envy his job and am often impressed with just how he can put up with the multitude of idiots around him! Anyway, as for myself, I'm a freelance English tutor but I'm wondering whether to quit the school I work for so I can have more time for writing and maybe finally make some polymer clay jewellery to sell. By myself this would be just about enough to support myself if I lived on bread and butter, but thankfully I have the aforementioned IT husband, which's the one who actually pays the bills As for inspiration - it keeps my mind active and breaks the monotony of being at home, so in this sense it does help. But in terms of actually sparking off story ideas etc, no, doesn't really affect me much.
@thirdwind : don't laugh. There is a big lake in my country and if the weather forecast prognosticate bad weather the number of visitors drops dramatically. Last year when the weather was really nice the towns around the lake threatened a TV channel that broadcasted a bad forecast earlier and made them change their forecast service provider. Their forecasts are still very unreliable but now they receive them from an official "institutional" source so no one dares to question them again.
My current job title is Research Scientist, though there's not much research going on at the moment. I'm currently developing software that deals with microscale physics. It hasn't affected my writing at all because the only writing I do at work is emails and the occasional report.