A New Beginning

I am embarking  on a new beginning. I have begun to search for a full-time job as a graphic artist. I worked full-time as a graphic artist a few years ago. My husband had a good position as a Senior Copywriter at JCPenney catalog and I was a layout artist in JCPenney's retail area, both of us worked at the home office in Plano. We realized that my job was pretty much paying for daycare for our two kids. We decided that it would be better for me to stay home with the kids and take on free-lance work.

Stacy was a toddler and Jeff was in elementary school. It was great, especially on cold, rainy mornings, we didn't have to haul the kids to the daycare center at 6:30 in the morning. Also, we were finding out that Jeffrey had learning disabilities and later discovered that Stacy had learning disabilities as well. With me being home, I could go to meetings during the day, called ARD meetings, to discuss their modifications with the teachers and counselors. This was not something I could do while working a full-time job.

I worked part-time at stores such as MJDesigns, Michael's and Hobby Lobby to help with expenses. I could work nights and weekends when my husband was home and be home during the day for the kids. It was nice, I liked doing this. It came in handy to be home when we got ready to move to McKinney because I needed the time for packing boxes and helping the family fix up the house in Arlington.

After we moved to McKinney, I worked at the Hobby Lobby in Allen for a while. Then an opportunity came up to volunteer at the Heard Natural Science Museum and Wildlife Sanctuary. It was because of a question about a Black Swallowtail caterpillar that I e-mailed their curator about. She asked if we wanted to volunteer there. My daughter, Stacy, had very much wanted to volunteer at a place like this. We volunteered for a year or two, feeding the animals in the live room (turtles, snakes, skinks, etc.). Then the Heard got in an exhibit of mammals that were put in cages they had outside that previously held raptor birds. I had gotten a job with the Heard Museum as a teaching assistant for their pre-school class as well as helping with summer camp classes and some home-school science classes for kids aged 8-10. I was also working at the front desk in the gift shop from time to time. The kids and I ended-up with jobs to feed and care for the animals in the outdoor exhibit.

A few years later, I got a part-time job at a local Kroger store to help with expenses. I liked it there, the people I worked with were really nice and I got a 10% discount on Kroger brand items. I still work there.

JCPenney was going through serious changes and after 23 years, on 11/11/11, they ended my husband's position as Senior Copy Chief. After about three months of hard work, looking for a job and applying for jobs, Steve found a good job. It doesn't pay as much as the job at JCPenney but the people there are very nice and he really likes it.

We knew that I would have to find a full-time job. Then our daughter got her Associate's at Collin College and got accepted at UNT in Denton. It's too expensive to live in the dorms, so she needed a car to commute to Denton from McKinney and back. So we got her a car. With the car payments and insurance, we need something more than my two part-time jobs. So, I am beginning to look for a full-time job. This is my new beginning.

Graphic arts is what I know how to do, I am a good illustrator and designer. This is the type of job I am seeking. I was trained in Adobe Photoshop and Quark Express on a Mac at JCPenney. We have had Adobe Photoshop Elements and have used it frequently in re-touching photos.  In order to update my skills, we got Adobe CS5 which includes Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign and through an account on Lynda.com, I have been learning this plus Microsoft Excel and Word.

There are a few challenges in this current job search. First of all, potential employers might prefer someone my kids' age, however I don't think of myself as old. Others however might want to know what kind of spear worked best for catching a Woolly Mammoth or if my graphic arts experience included drawing petroglyphs on cave walls. Honestly, I don't feel old and many people tell me that I do not look my age. Further more, there are more baby boomers and they are going to figure into a large part of an advertiser's target market and who better to work this angle than a baby boomer,

There is also a demand for people to know how to build and change web pages. I've done some HTML. I built several websites in the late 90's using a template provided by Netscape, which no longer exists. There are templates and programs these days that are so much easier and efficient than those old programs. There is something known as Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, which I've heard is like HTML on steroids. Through Lynda.com, I've learned a little about them, that one feeds off another, that feeds off another and so forth and that they take considerable programming skills. I have heard that most companies have templates and programs for building or adjusting web pages so the pages don't have to be done using pure code. The thing is, I am more than willing to learn how to manipulate a web page using current technology. I want to learn this. I want to be up to date. It is necessary in today's constantly changing computer technology.

There is another challenge, which involves the gap in my career as a graphic artist. There have been a few years since I've worked as a graphic artist. Graphic arts does not involve feeding mongooses, gray fox, raccoon or deer, there's not a lot of demand for that, but it requires taking responsibility and being dependable. The animals need to be fed, whether it's Christmas or any other holiday. If there is an ice storm it's freezing cold outside and everybody stays home from work, we still have to feed the animals. They're like people, they need to eat and have water every single day. Their health and well being needs to be checked. Each animal has different dietary requirements that have to be met with every meal we prepare for them. The inventory of food for them has to be gone over to make sure there will be enough of the food they require every day. I can handle responsibility and am reliable.

I have also continued doing my artwork through the years, which involves drawing pet portraits, doing scratch boards, painting with oils and acrylics, painting T-shirts as well as various craft projects. I was involved with the Art Club of McKinney for a while and won several ribbons for my work in a few of their yearly art shows. I have also done cartoons for a dog breeder's monthly newsletter and caricatures of people at a JCPenney United Way fund raiser. I have also done cards, such as retirement cards with caricatures of the people on the card.

At the present, I work two part-time jobs. One is with the Heard Natural Science Museum and Wildlife Sanctuary and the other is with the Kroger store on the weekends. Both have physical demands, at the Heard, I must haul a wagon of food up and down the hill and bring the food into the cages of the animals in all sorts of weather, from 102 degrees to 23 degrees, rain or shine. At Kroger, I am a courtesy clerk which involves standing all day, walking around the store and getting shopping carts off of the parking lots, rain or shine, in all kinds of weather. I can handle that better than some people who are half my age.

I am more than ready to embark on a new career as a Graphic Artist. I am willing to work very hard, learn and grasp any skills an employer wishes me to learn and do whatever it takes to do a wonderful job.