career
Careers in the industry; from corporate to middle management, food service, media, political figures, and beyond. All workplace careers.
Food Production Life
December 2019 I was hired at the central kitchen for a grocery chain to package premade deli and meal items. The week before Christmas was hell, I was new, without a clue. I had worked a deli before so I knew basics but nothing to prepare me for this level of bullshit. It was horribly busy but after a few days I had learned a lot. It wasn't so bad aside from the 12+ hour days and insane amount of work crammed into those hours. The yelling during clean up time was not great either, and if you gave any kind of back sass they came down on you even harder. Imagine thousands upon thousands of containers of all sizes and all different products each being assembled, sealed, and labeled by hand as much of the plant is not automated. If we were lucky we would be out of containers. I was new and very scared but I survived that first week, not knowing things would get worse.
By Kira Lydia G.5 years ago in Journal
The Threads of Women’s Lives
As a child, author Linda Harris Sittig sometimes wore homemade clothing. Her friends in her northern New Jersey neighborhood also wore cotton dresses, corduroy pants, and pajamas sewn by their mothers. Although those other moms might have been excellent seamstresses, none could compete with Mrs. Harris’s tales of her grandfather’s Philadelphia fabric mill. They didn’t know which Irish towns wove the best linen. None rivaled the care she took to assure her daughter wore quality fabric.
By Diane Helentjaris5 years ago in Journal
Mentoring and An Artist’s Life
Dusk had fallen in Leesburg. Virginia. Night air, neither too hot nor too cold, wafted through the propped door of the Clay and Metal Loft. Bill van Gilder was kicking off his weekend pottery workshop with a warm-up Power Point. Lifetime learners sipped wine and nibbled cheese, listening raptly. Now, van Gilder can Power Point and social media as well as any Millennial, even though he started making pots long before the internet.
By Diane Helentjaris5 years ago in Journal
How to Organize Your Article Writing
Halloween was coming and I knew a ghost story. Bringing the tale of the priest, the farmer, and the traveler to the readers might seem simple — after all, the exorcism occurred over two hundred years ago. But, writing a compelling article required more than skill with words. There were historians to find and entice into an interview, a sunny village and a caretaker to photograph, a museum director to get on the phone, and old records to mine for information. As usually happens, once all the information became available, the story wasn’t as simple as I had thought. Unimaginable conflicts brewed even in the present day. Only after I pulled the parts together and really thought about things could I write a decent article and get it to my editor in time for a pre-Halloween publication.
By Diane Helentjaris5 years ago in Journal
How to Get Started Writing Articles
If you yearn for readers, get busy writing articles. Over 224 million people read more than 7000 American magazines each year. Despite the headshakers predicting their demise, U.S. newspapers command a circulation of over 28 million people. Newsletters, blogs, and online sites devour additional non-fiction work. Approaches to beginning your article writing effort vary, but here are tips to consider:
By Diane Helentjaris5 years ago in Journal
Writing About Real People
Two of my kin show up in the files of the House Un-American Activities Committee. And not in a good way. Another relative claims folk heroine status for running her Old West brothel with audacity, rapacity and charity. These characters glitter irresistibly as potential stars in my writing. Hunched over computers, day in and day out, we writers pack memoires, novels, biographies and tales with real humans. Whether de-identified or presented whole cloth, their reality adds spice and the undeniable ring of authenticity.
By Diane Helentjaris5 years ago in Journal
Obliterating Writer’s Block
As a pediatric intern, the term “writer’s block” was missing from my lexicon… The brick San Francisco hospital where I served my apprenticeship huddled in a swale. Down the street the old synagogue Jim Jones had rented as “Peoples’ Temple” before heading off to Guyana bellied up to the sidewalk. A few months after starting my internship in 1978, Jones would orchestrate the Jonestown Massacre. Distraught grandparents soon appeared at our clinic, seeking dental records for their lost kin. Nine days after the Jonestown mass suicide and murders, on November 27, San Francisco’s mayor, George Moscone, and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated. Amid the chaos, medical care at the hospital soldiered on, following centuries-old patterns of care. Like our professional forebears, good medicine mandated written recounting of our patients’ medical history, descriptions of their condition, and plans for treatment. These handwritten records were the backbone of coordinating patients’ care, shared with professionals from nurses to respiratory therapists to social workers. My fellow physicians and I wrote them immediately and without fail.
By Diane Helentjaris5 years ago in Journal
Get the Most Out of Your Job Interview
Job interviews shine as critical pivot points in our lives, opening and closing doors to new opportunities. Although the process often feels like a passive one, there’s plenty of room for life-changing action by the applicant. With attention, you can accrue better benefits, raise your starting salary, and duck signing up for a miserable job. Here’s a few of the actions I’ve learned as a hiring manager and an applicant:
By Diane Helentjaris5 years ago in Journal
How to Do Your Writing Research from Home
Who needs to know if women wore panties in Colonial America? You might if you’re a writer. Facts. Facts lend credibility. Facts answer reader’s questions. Facts might be the only reason your article is read from beginning to end. And if you parrot information every fifteen-year-old student knows, your writing will be superfluous. Before you heave a sigh and wonder how you’re going to pay for a trip to Williamsburg to study early American clothing, relax. Researching from your home office or even your mother’s kitchen table can be as good and often better than physically traipsing around the planet.
By Diane Helentjaris5 years ago in Journal
Finding Joy in all the Chaos
Life...what comes to mind when that word is said. A baby in the womb, kids laughing and playing. The list goes on. But growing up how many times were you told life isn't a bunch of sunshine and rainbows'. Or when you wanted something really bad, and after being told no you say in your whiniest voice "that's not fair" and your parents reply with the statement "that's life".. Well, they weren't wrong. That is life. Let me tell you a little bit about mine...I love art and everything that makes me use my brain to create and it's all because my mother was a very creative woman. Now I didn't always love creating. See when I was six my mother introduced me to knitting and boy let me tell you it was rough! The stitches would fall off the needle then get all twisted. I would knit in the wrong place, I had a hard time holding the needles. On top of all that I wasn’t working the pattern right. My mom ended up pulling it all out; I started over about a million times! Finally, the project was complete. I had made a multi-colored scarf. My mother made a purse to match. But me being the age that I was; I gave up on knitting and my mother continued to create without me. By the time I was in third grade my mom donated to charity for my elementary school. She knitted 100 scarfs all by herself! Way to go mom right! When I was ten my mother came and asked if I’d like to learn how to crochet. She told me it was easier than knitting so I decided to give it a shot. Turns out it was very easy. At that time I preferred to crochet because it was faster than knitting. My first crochet project was called a ruffle scarf. Its main color was white and the contrast was tan. I made it right; in the end I had no mistakes (my mother made sure of it).
By Mayah Luckey5 years ago in Journal
