The story behind a career

We tend to describe careers as a succession of jobs, when maybe the most interesting story is what we carry from one experience into the next.

Our resumes and LinkedIn profiles reinforce that. They show where we worked, from which date to which date, the titles we held, and how we progressed. We organize our careers into a timeline and, by doing that, make something that is anything but linear look remarkably neat. Over time, I've come to think about my own career through a different lens.

When I look back, of course I see the roles and organizations. But I also see what each experience gave me and what I carried forward. Skills I developed in one place that became invaluable somewhere completely different. Things I learned from successes, and probably even more from failures. Times I stretched myself, took a chance, stepped into something unfamiliar, or discovered I was capable of more than I knew.

I see the people I've had the opportunity to help grow, and just as importantly, the people who helped me grow. The leaders, mentors, coaches, colleagues, and friends who saw something in me, challenged me, opened a door, shared what they knew, or simply supported me at a moment when it mattered. I see relationships that began through work and, in some cases, have lasted decades. And I see all the parts of my life that would never appear on a resume.

My career hasn't happened separately from the rest of my life. It never does. We don't leave one version of ourselves at home and take another one to work. The things we experience, people we love, causes we care about, losses we experience, things that bring us joy, and the things that change us all become part of who we are and, ultimately, part of what we bring to our work. That has definitely been true for me.

When I look at my own multi-path life, I can see how much one path has influenced another. My career has given me skills and experiences that I've carried into entrepreneurship, charitable work, advocacy, coaching, podcasting, and other parts of my life. And those experiences, in turn, have changed what I bring back into my career. They aren't separate boxes. They have built on and shaped each another.

Maybe that's why I've become less interested in the question, "What do you do?" It tells us something about a person, but not nearly as much as we sometimes think it does.

I'm much more interested in what we've learned, what we've built, who we've helped along the way, who has helped us, what we've discovered about ourselves, what we've had the courage to try, what we've carried forward, and what we've learned to leave behind.

And when we think about what's next, maybe there's value in looking at it through that lens too. Not simply, "What role do I want next?" but: What do I want to build? What experiences do I want to have? What kind of people and culture do I want around me? Where do I still want to stretch myself? What parts of myself do I want to bring more fully into my life and work?

Because after all these years, I don't think a career is really the list of jobs we've had. It's part of the story of who we've become along the way.

Here's to the journey,

Tamara

Creating Space Update

My decluttering project has had a bit of a wobble over the past few weeks as life has been particularly busy, but I’m still making progress. A few more corners have been tidied, a few more things have left the house, and I’m continuing to look at what I own a little differently.

And maybe there’s a connection to what I’ve been thinking about this week. Just as we carry skills, experiences, relationships, and lessons with us through our lives and careers, we also accumulate a lot of other things along the way. Some are worth carrying forward, and some aren't.

Creating space is increasingly becoming less about getting rid of things and more about being intentional about what I want to carry with me, and what I'm ready to leave behind.