In an age of crowdsourcing, freelancing, contracting and multi-tasking, it’s easy to feel like you’re juggling multiple careers. I often feel this way, and wonder how it affects me. From a personal standpoint, the hard thing about narrowing down my own path has been my interest in so many diverging industries. As a kid I wanted to be a vet and a doctor and a filmmaker and a writer. Today, I want to be twice that many things. Unlike a more pragmatic person, I want to dabble. And explore. And enter new arenas.
On the plus side, each day can be a new adventure. A life of too much repetition sounds pretty unfortunate, and perhaps an innate fear of this has kept me agile. On the down side, uncertainty, apprehension and anxiety are always lurking. Charting your own course is a risk. It’s like the safety net has been removed.
But is perhaps the ‘danger’ part of the draw? Is the decision to not make a final decision? Can you master a number of career choices without losing yourself? I guess I’m figuring that out.
In the interim, I call myself a designer. The term is accurate, though the term is also broad, which helps. In the last several years I’ve worn a variety of hats, and grown to like a whole lot about different areas of design. Working with printers? Interesting (and a little frustrating). Being an online contributor/editor? Fast-paced, fun, and goofy. Logo designer? Impactful, thought-provoking, exciting. Videographer? A feeling of importance, also a feeling of anxiety, making sure your equipment is all working properly. All together, it makes for a multi-faceted schedule, and has made me feel well-rounded. The flipside to that is my reluctance to call myself an expert in one particular field.
That said, who am I? A generalist? A man of many stripes? We’re going to have to find out together.