If it wasn’t already clear, I don’t really believe in the traditional conception of careers and professions. I don’t think that humans were made to do just one thing, for a long time, over and over. Isn’t that what our conception of a career is? You enter an industry, you join a firm and what you hope for is to advance in that industry, slowly accruing more experience, respect, financial rewards and stability. This was the ideal of the Post-War era. It is what led to the amazing growth of the middle-class in America, allowing us to prosper as no other nation or society has ever prospered before.
That ideal is now breaking down. The reasons are as varied as: The loss of traditional manufacturing jobs and outsourcing, the growth of a knowledge and service economy, the financial engineering of large corporations that prioritizes cost-cutting among other factors. But I think the unwritten reason for the breakdown of the traditional professional career ideal is that we have evolved. We’ve evolved to the point where we know that what makes people happy is not to do one thing, but to do many things.
One of the reasons I left my career in the financial world was because I couldn’t imagine my life where 2/3 of my time was spent behind a coterie of blinking computer screens. No matter what the financial rewards would have been, I knew it wouldn’t be enough for me, and that before long I’d be regretting my career choice. But what I also noticed was not that I was just in the wrong profession, but that any profession that required most of my time, would not be ideal.
Now imagine how lost I felt in a country that prizes financial success above everything.
I guess I’ve got this feeling that the 21st Century is opening so many new doors to people, that, well, we won’t need to focus all our energies on just one specific profession. Now of course, the criticism of this is that when you don’t have just one thing, you end up making less money. For now, I think that is true. But I also think that is preferable. Especially coming off the crisis of confidence that our current system just spasmed through, frankly, I am happy to make less money doing the things I want to do. Because although my bank account won’t reflect it, I’ll be a happy and healthier person for it and money won’t be the only determinant with which I judge, and allow others to judge, my life.
Not gonna be easy, but in interest of continuing to provide a peek into my own life, lets review some of the “hats” that I wear.
1. I run a boutique consulting firm. I spend about half of my time on this part of my life. About 20 hours a week. If the need arises, I can always scale up those hours for the right kind of compensation or if a client comes along that really suits what I want to do. Those 20 hours include weekly client meetings, strategizing, monitoring campaigns, business development and responding to RFP’s.
2. I write! Book, film, music and art reviews, usually for publication on my own blog, although I love guest posting on other blogs (and getting myself in front of audiences different than my own) and just recently I’ve begun writing articles for a pretty cool magazine. Most of the time this writing is unpaid, though I have been compensated in the past, and will be in the future as I continue to do this kind of thing. You see, I write because I love to and because I need to. Not because I expect to get paid for it. Or because I need to. I think the best writing comes when it is done not out of financial necessity, but out of creative and spiritual necessity. And writing is the best thing I can to sharpen my skills for my consulting business.
3. Collaborator, Eater, Friend, Dilettante
I work on fun projects, I eat at lots of good restaurants. I spend a lot of time with my friends, and I get to indulge all my interests. If I want to take a morning off and go to a movie, I do it. If I feel like biking around New York City on a beautiful summer day, I do it. This, I am convinced, is the right way to run life. And yet I am always fighting off the feeling that somehow I am being naive. That I won’t grow up, that because I like to do lots of things, that I won’t have one thing that will provide balance or stability throughout my life, that I won’t ever earn enough money to support myself, a family, a retirement. Honestly? I’ll figure all that stuff out as it comes. I don’t believe in coldly calculating my way through life. Call me reckless if you will, the truth is I’ve been called a lot worse.
I think I realized long ago that, just as I could not follow my path in the financial sector, I could not expect to pursue a career in journalism or creative writing full bore. No, that wouldn’t do at all. Not only is it impossible to make a living this way, it just doesn’t suit me. Perhaps there will come a time when it will, when I will want to wake up and just do one thing and only one thing and I’ll want to do that one thing so well that I will expend as much energy as I have at achieving success however it should be defined at that time.
But that time is certainly not now, and with all the opportunities open to me, and to all of us, I just can’t operate with a single goal in mind. There may come a time when I want to go full-bore on a project. For instance, startups interest me greatly and the thought of building something that can effect culture, that can change people’s lives interests me greatly. For that reason, the entrepreneurs I meet are really my heroes. The guys and gals behind firms like Twitter and Foursquare, basically the entire company at Google, and hundreds of more firms and operations that I simply respect.
But the time is not quite right for me to do that kind of thing. And for now, I am happy to wear a lot of hats. I’ve got the space in my closet anyhow.
Image courtesy of Theodore Scott on Flickr
