Every day is career day in blogworld

Daydreaming about alternate career paths? No matter how exotic a dream job might be, someone likely writes a blog exploring its day-to-day realities.

Oregon-based Vocation Vacations charges would-be career switchers to spend time shadowing professionals in occupations ranging from actor and alpaca rancher to wine sommelier and yoga guru. The company’s blog showcases some of the available mentors, but for in-depth vocation information free of charge, check out this sampling of sites:

Astronaut

Damaris B. Sarria, a Boeing systems engineer tasked to the shuttle program at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, recounts her race to space in How I Am Becoming an Astronaut.

Normal day: While serving on a mission management team in Houston that was assessing shuttle damage, Sarria wrote, “later today the Debris Assessment Team will be revealing the final tests results. … Currently, we’re 80-90 percent ok with returning in the as-is condition. So, we’re still pressing on with testing of the repair …”

Surprising insight: NASA astronauts only have to be 5-foot-2. Guess if they need something on a high shelf, they can float up to grab it.

Fashion model

One-time “America’s Top Model” contestant Elyse Sewell actually became one of Hong Kong’s top models. She blogs about her experiences at Elyse Sewell’s Journal.

Normal day: “Today I had yet another job in which the client wanted a catalog full of photos of girls jumping off the ground. All this damn leaping in cheap stilettos on concrete floors is starting to take a toll on my varicose cankles and delicate patellar tendons.”

Surprising insight: Washington state traffic can make even a supermodel look bad, as evidenced by the recent photo of a mascara-smeared Sewell taken after she spent four harrowing hours trekking from Snoqualmie to Everett to Seattle.

Farmer

Joel Combs of Pine Knot, Ky., recounts “the stories of a guy with three kids, a red tractor and 170 acres” at his Life of a Farm Blog.

Normal day: “It has been several days since a drop of rain. This is the first year I can remember being able to get a substantial amount of the hay done so early. The hay has cost me, though. I dropped the wheel of the old IH square baler into a hole causing the needles to come up into the bale chamber and bend one. I had high hopes of getting a bunch of square bales, but just my luck. Seems if the weather cooperates the equipment doesn’t.” Surprising insight: Farmers run into building-permit hassles just like city folk.

Screenwriter

“Scary Movie 3” co-writer Craig Mazin details the life of a film scribe and director at The Artful Writer.

Normal day: In describing why he refuses to take a pretentious “film by” credit on his latest project, Mazin writes, “I’m taking a directing credit and a writing credit. But the film is by all of us. Me, the (director of photography), the editor, the grips, the costume designers, hair, makeup, craft services, everyone. I’d be nowhere without the crew.”

Surprising insight: Even so-called “baby writers” with little screenwriting experience can expect to make at least $100,000 if they manage to snare a studio assignment, while A-list talent typically knocks down a million bucks or more. So a Hollywood writers strike can put some very lucrative careers on hold.

Jack of all trades

Young Sean Akin is spending a year working 52 jobs across North America and blogging about them at OneWeekJob.com.

Normal day: There’s no such thing for Akin, who recently transitioned from aquarium guide to trade show salesman to exterminator.

Surprising insight: “I have been told … that if a choice had to be made between eliminating the medical industry or the pest-control industry, that it would be better … to eliminate the medical industry due to the amount of diseases that are a result of pests.”

In these days of downsizing, we might all do well to develop such career flexibility.