Writer & Business Reporter
Karen’s first few hours in Lima, Peru through photos: This is all the clothing I packed. Somehow I managed to colour-coordinate everything to grey, turquoise, light green and cream. It was a total accident. Also, taking photos of all this stuff helps me keep track of what I brought in case anything gets stolen. I … Continue reading I arrived!
Have you ever wanted to say goodbye to your job, jump on a place and just go somewhere? Maybe you’ve already heard about this video that’s been bouncing around the internet about an Australian travel company showing this ridiculously good-looking actor travelling around the world. Or maybe you’ve been wondering why I’ve been talking about leaps of faith and master plans on Twitter lately.
Whether it’s all of the above or none of them at all, here’s a update one what’s going on in my life right now.
I understand what it’s like to be 24 and in a job that seems enviable to a lot of others but that’d you’d like to quit on a daily basis. I’m sure lots of us have had daydreams of leaving jobs we hated with a great screw-you flourish.
The truth is, there are very few people I know who genuinely love their jobs, even the ones who have their idea of a “dream job”. Even the great jobs have slog-filled moments, minor annoyances and some sort of office politics. There is no job purely made up of sunshine and rainbows. This is the mystical unicorn of employment fantasies.
For a few years now, my byline has been Karen K. Ho.
I included the initial for a simple reason: it helps distinguish me from the hundreds of other people in the world with the same name in a Google search. I often get questions about what the initial stands for. Most of the time, I either don’t tell people or I try to be smart and say the k is for “kick-ass”.
The truth is, the initial is just the part of my legal name I’m the most embarrassed to say out loud.
Coming out to my mom was a strange experience.
How do you measure who is and who isn’t a journalist?
What about someone like me? Do I get the right to call myself a journalist?
Sure, I went to journalism school. I did three internships.Co-founded a new press club in Toronto. Live-blogged a few journalism conferences this year and have a decent Rolodex of friends in the industry. Even listed on a bunch of ‘journalist’ lists on Twitter.
But then I got a communications job.
As far as viral videos go, this has to be the loveliest, most unexpected one I’ve come across in a long time. I mean, it’s about poetry. It’s about the joys of being by yourself. And it is quintessentially Canadian.
For as long as I have been reading news on the internet, I have been reading nytimes.com. Since my family didn’t subscribe to the dead tree version, this allowed me to read huge portions of one of the best newspapers in the world.
So yesterday it was a bit of a surprise when I woke up to this one line email on Facebook.
“Did I just see you on a New York Times iPad video?”
And just like that, I was part of my favourite newspaper.
Going to an industry conference can be overwhelming. There’s hundreds if not thousands of people congregated in a small amount of space for a short period of time, all trying to learn and grow in their fields.
Traveling to one can be expensive to do, especially if you a new or young professional. But the investment can pay off tremendously in ways not possible through regular networking in your local area.
It’s pretty much the end of Day 3 here at the Canadian University Press’ National Conference in Edmonton, Alberta and right now I feel like my heart’s about to explode out of my chest.
A few days ago, I had completely bought into the idea a career in journalism was pretty hopeless.
[But] being here in Edmonton has changed everything.
Karen K. Ho 