The New Normal

Photo by Christopher Machicoane-Hurtaud on Unsplash

At first, I hated the dreaded question “So what do you do?”. I never had a good answer, apart from telling of the last job I did, but contending with the voice that told me “Yeah, but you don’t do that anymore. That isn’t you.”. The inner voice took the power from my words, and I realised that my sheepish answer was getting me nowhere. I was afraid to say that I didn’t have a career, because that sounded flaky, like I hadn’t made up my mind about what future I wanted. Everyone else seemed to be in happy stable careers, so I was the outsider. Not a nice feeling.

I followed dead-end after dead-end trying to place myself in a career-centric world that, I ultimately realised, mostly didn’t care. It was easier for me to feel uncertain about what I did than it was to face up to the fact that I didn’t have a career. Not in the traditional sense.

And that was ok.

My goal wasn’t to be right, it was to move forward.

I had been telling myself a story about being in a successful career, instead of pursuing the work that mattered to me. Having a specific “career” wouldn’t change the way I felt, but creating projects that the world needed would.

We can approach our work from one of 2 places — either we create a job title and go from there, or we decide how we want the world to look with our work in it, and go from there.

I’ve been career-free for well over a decade, and while it can be uncertain at times, I know that it’s from such places that possibility can grow.

Super thankful to David Nebinski for having me as a guest on his wonderful Portfolio Career podcast. It's for people like us, people whose work isn’t about the work itself, but the change we all seek to make.