How many freaks do you pass over each day?

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What propels a career?

I've been asking myself that over the last day, week, month, year and I have yet to come up with an intelligent answer. What I do know is that career is not synonymous with job. At least not for me, and not for lots of people I know. Tracking the progression in many people's career trajectory hardly ever goes in a straight diagonal (if I were David Armano, I might have a sweet graph for you right about here) but in a sort of jagged, mountainous line.

When I try to explain to people what I do, it confuses them, and sometimes me. And I feel like kind of a freak. Because there is no neat, tidy title for what my current job is. And now that the new media elite have ruled that words like "stategist", "expert" and "guru" are a big no-no, I find myself with little to describe my day to day activities.

However, I never find myself short of clients, projects or people requesting my opinion. You know what all this says to me? Actions speak louder than words. It doesn't really matter what you call yourself (although it does make business cards clearer and personal branding simpler) but what you DO.

I feel that we are in the middle of a bit of a renaissance. As a cultural movement, it encompassed a revival of learning based ....These are all things I see happening as new media and shared experiences bring the four corners of the world a little closer together every day.

Why I am a freak: My parents: Between the three of them, my parents have been: a lawyer, a telecom manager, a flutist, a singer/songwriter, a pilot, a special ed teacher, a playwright, an editor, an event coordinator. Although I don't recall paying attention to their careers at the time, when I look back, they always followed their dreams.

My children: I had two of my three kids before I graduated college. Being at home with them when they were small was extremely important to me, so I sought out work that I could do from home or in a few hours a week. Now, even though I work at least 50 hours a week, I can still be around and my 7 year-old helps me with logos. He's a whiz with Illustrator, which I think is AWESOME!

My passions: It started as writing, then morphed into design, which led to PR, which prepped me for marketing, which I parlayed into recruiting, which introed me to social media, which fed back into all the other skills. Because of my personal love for travel, fashion, style, design, technology, I manage to seek out folks in those areas and turn them into clients.

My pragmatism: I spent a good deal of time studying my strengths and weaknesses and realized that there are some things I am just not good at. And some things I downright SUCK at. Taking a 7 year hiatus from the corporate ladder after college forced me to find out how to do things cheaper, better, faster, smarter. And if I can't do them better, I hire them out.

So what to do with this broadening pool of interests of mine? Can I dabble in each? Sharing my knowledge as it transfers from one industry to the next? Can I use marketing as a sort of gondola to navigate through whatever professional waters I please?

The branding folks would say no. The Subject Matter Experts would say no. The venture capitalists would say no. But the freaks? They'd say "Rock On!"

3 Comments

Comment by Julia Stone on January 14, 2009 at 7:41pm: It is so true. I did not take the haitus you did, but it took me a while to fall into the right career. I have been in banking, toilet paper sales, system's administration, accounting, recruiting, consulting sales, project management and I love recruiting. I managed projects large and small and can't believe that at one point I was actually paid to watch other guys play video games and write about it. I mean it is cool enough that they get paid to play games, but I got paid to manage them. Awesome!

And if I had a dollar for everytime someone called me a freak, I would have 10 dollars now and I wear it almost as proudly as when somebody refers to me as a geek.

Love your attitude. I guess we are riding the wave of the future. We adapt and thrive as best we can until we find a place that we can truly shine.

Comment by Dan Nuroo on January 14, 2009 at 8:31pm: FREAK is in the eye of the beholder? :)

Or is the right cliche... one person's freak is another person's treasure!

For those who can and do and have the passion to follow their dreams/loves, it is inspirational to a whole lot of other people just going through the motions... Congratulations Freak! :)

How many freaks do you pass over each day?

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