I am vertical once more...

The end result is that it's essentially impossible to become successful or well off doing a job that is described and measured by someone else.

~ Seth Godin qtd. in gapingvoid.com

Whoa… “successful”…now forgive me for how long it will take to write out my thoughts on this (I’m getting over the flu) but this statement seems revolutionary. I always knew my discipline/career of choice required some serious, imaginative work to describe the job I wanted and then hunt down those who would pay me for that “job” (I am very familiar with the concept of the “authentic voice” – Mr. Macleod). That is unless I wanted to teach and/or sign on with an institution and pursue some post-doc research question(s). However, sadly, not everyone has the skill to educate nor the desire (sadder still is the fact that many still enter into that arena and teach regardless) and not everyone has the drive to establish a preserve for chimpanzees (I love you Jane Goodall). Anyway, I suppose it is admitting to my self-centeredness to say that I had not thought of other careers in these terms – imagine the roles you could play, market them, or die (ie, less dramatically, get a 9-5er and work within those parameters).

The potential career-wide (if not globally) is interesting if not astounding. Imagine if you will career counselor Mr.X asking little Jimmy what he wants to be when he grows up and instead of listing some occupations he has a vague familiarity and appreciation of Jimmy instead suggests, “well, Mr. X I think I’ll figure out what propensities I have, what skill sets I want to garner, the fields and geographic space I want to work within and then dovetail all of it with an appropriate educational/mentoring facility that will enable me to achieve my goals. The key, Mr. X, is a successful marriage between what I know, what I will learn, and where I want to be in the future.”


ps just read over Jay's brilliant post nuggets and find my head nodding emphatically at two points in particular: 1) start with what you know and 2) you are what you want to be. Scary truths there...