"What do you do?" a career shift conundrum

Yes, you can be in two places at once. I'm here, and today I'm also on Project Eve. Let's meet up over there, too! Leave one of your selves here.

How I got in

"Dear Scrollwork: Congratulations! After evaluating over 700 applicants, you have been chosen as a guest blogger for Project Eve. Your story will be featured as part of a series that showcases different aspects of the "Eve experience." Our objective with this series is to provide inspiration and help end the isolation that women feel when they are making a career change. We have received your story and believe that it is ready to be published.

Best regards,

Meridith and Kim
Co-Founders, Project Eve"

How I picked what I gabbed about (succinctly)

My guest post is an extension of my reinvention theme here at Scrollwork.  Clarity comes with naming an experience, my late 1990s feminist grad studies taught me. (Yes, I'm a product of the previous century, egad.) 


The trouble with naming something is that narrowing it down is necessary. Nobody likes being reduced to one thing. It's limiting. At least that's my view on life. Maybe yours is different. Did you always know, from the day you climbed out of your crib, what you wanted to be when you grew up? And what's with that question, anyway?

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" A grown person, of course. As to what that grown/still growing person might want to do, heck, a million and one things! Things, in my case, only remotely related to my bachelor of arts in Literature. Cue the term multipotentialite.

It's not on dictionary.com.


Whatever you do, ignore wikipedia's definition of multipotentiality as "a significant problem for those who experience it, leading to overscheduling, high stress levels, and impulsive or conformist choices in gifted children, and to feelings of social alienation, purposelessness, apathy and depression in the brightest of adults." Wiki cites Leonardo da Vinci as an example.

I don't fit the bill for "the brightest of adults," which has likely saved me major moolah on anti-depressants. Also I resent that multipotentiality is viewed as a problem. It's a blessing! I embrace it. Purposelessness? Au contraire. Passions.


Your turn


Tell me what you had wanted to be and what you ended up doing. Tell me what you would do now if you had your druthers. Tell me if you closely identify with what you do as essentially your identity, or if what you do after hours/now that you're retired is what really defines you.


I like being presented with choices, don't you? So you can choose to comment here, or you can mosey on to Project Eve, where they will ask you to register and wait for approval in your inbox before you can comment. They won't ask you to donate blood or disclose your deepest, darkest secrets, I assure you.


My quick getaway


I'll be around to respond to your comments here or yonder until Monday/April 23. Don't let that stop you if you're reading this after that day. I'll be back! The hubs and I will be taking a two-week cruise to the four main isles of Hawaii to celebrate our 25 years plus six months together. The delay was 'cause on our actual anniversary, as some of you may recall, we were just grateful that the drainage tube from my emergency appendectomy had been taken out and we could go (limp, in my case) to dinner.


Will I blog about our vacation? Only if I find something quirky to remark on. Chances are I will.