On Authenticity and Following Your Bliss

Make the decision. Stay true to yourself. Don't be afraid to engage.

If you follow me on Twitter, you might know I recently got a promotion over at Dayjob, Inc. I mention this not to be a braggadocio, but because reflecting on the path that led me to this position made me realize a number of lessons I learned in my dayjob experience  are equally applicable in the world of writing, which we'll touch on at the end of this post.

With that in mind, I figured it'd be worth exploring these journeys publicly should this perspective be of use to you as you navigate your own winding path in the world of writing.

It Starts with a Decision

Back when I was starting college—and even before then, frankly—if you had told me I'd wind up in international regulatory affairs, my immediate reaction would have probably been, "Well, yeah. That's what happens when you study business: you get to do business things."

This, however, aside from being a weird thing to say, is actually not representative of the path that would get me where I am now.

Past-me would be shocked to hear this, especially since it felt predestined that I'd apply, be admitted to, and graduate from my university's business school after having started myself down that road in high school and my first year of college.

Then, of course, while meandering my way through my freshman year, something about the path I was on started to irk me: the brush was gnarled and overgrown, its fruits were sour on the tongue, and the people I encountered along the way seemed more likely to commit highway robbery than they did to lend a hand to a neighbor whose wagon had a broken axle.

One foot in front of the other were the words that dogged me onward. Everyone has to deal with things they don't like along the way. Onward! This is part of a bigger process.

And it was part of a bigger process—just not in the way I expected.

There reached a point in my figurative travels where I had to decide whether to keep on keeping on, or forfeit the progress I'd made to begin anew on the road less traveled. But what lied down that road? What would the road itself look like? What if it, too, bore fruit that rotted on the tongue? What if fending off highway robbery had less to do with the road one traveled, and more to do with traveling at all?

In short: I had a decision to make, but first I needed something to guide my choice.

Stay True

I knew I had a penchant for foreign language, but I always saw the advantages of mastering one as secondary to getting one of those high-powered, kick 'em in the teeth degrees. After all, what good is speaking another language if you don't bring a technical skill to the table? Right?

Wrong, though it took me longer than I'd like to admit to stumble into that answer.

Spanish seemed a natural fit since I already had a few years of experience tucked away in my travel sack, but could I really get away with studying just that? I didn't know, but I knew I had to start somewhere, so I dove in hard with Spanish.

Focusing intensely on it eventually led me to an introductory linguistics course, and it only took one class at that level for me to fall in love with it as a field of study. I'd never had that feeling from my business-school prep work, and as a result, I decided to declare linguistics as my primary major and pursue an honors distinction in that field. I was pumped!

Ah, but then the inevitable flurry of questioners and nay-sayers reached out like so many thorny vines, taking swipes at me as I walked a path where the sun was otherwise shining.

"You're studying what?" they'd say. "How do you plan on getting a job with that? What can you really do with a degree in linguistics?"

These questions came at me all of the time from well-meaning people in my life, and most of them at least managed to get the linguistics part right (Sorry-not-sorry to everyone who confused linguistics with logistics. They're two very different things.).

Thankfully, the department of linguistics actually provided handouts to its majors in order to answer these and other pesky questions, so that was certainly of some help. Perhaps more critically, though, I was enjoying my field of study and staying true to myself. I loved going to class, writing papers, and designing and carrying out experiments. Once I graduated, the jobs would surely come.

Well, they didn't.

What was wrong with me? Was fluency in Spanish, Portuguese, and German not enough for the job market? Should I have stuck with the business path all along? Had I made a huge mistake?

No. I just wasn't being patient enough. I also hadn't spent enough time meeting the right people, the ones who would eventually recognize someone doesn't need one of those kick 'em in the teeth degrees to merit being given a chance.

Networking, Engagement, Platform

I cringe at the word networking. I revile it. Truly. It's not that I don't like to meet and engage with people, it's that, to me, there's something inherently artificial about a roomful of people glad-handing one another in an attempt to work toward "synergistic personnel solutions" and "direct-engagement human-resources development." Gross.

The good news (in my case, anyway) is that networking, as it turns out, isn't so narrowly defined as the image I always had in mind. Through the use of various job sites, I put together a prospective employment profile that didn't undersell my linguistic assets, but  embraced them instead.

Still, actively pursuing positions for which I felt I'd be a great fit bore no fruit. For longer than I like to remember, I had a hard time even securing phone interviews.

Then, out of the blue, I received a message from a company I'd never heard of in an industry I knew nothing about... wondering if I'd be interested in becoming an international sales coordinator, of all things.

I was thrilled to know someone saw something of value in my resume, but I was more than apprehensive about returning their correspondence—that is, until I saw why they had reached out to me specifically.

See, they desperately needed someone who spoke Portuguese to help them with their accounts in Brazil, and that I also spoke Spanish was a plus for them as well. So, after a Skype interview with their Brazilian sales manager and some reassuring talks with management, I agreed to take the job.

And then the wheels fell off my metaphorical cart.

I was in over my head—way over my head—where the actual industry side of things was concerned. Fortunately, I had a manager with whom I'd invested deeply in cultivating a positive relationship. Beyond him, too, I made sure to ask questions of subject-matter experts within the company to slowly construct a more cohesive vision for what my own role was supposed to be.

Fast forward a year later, and one of those experts (who had since moved on from the company) emails me out of the blue, asking if I'm looking for a new job. I wasn't, per se, but I asked her to forward on the information anyway.

And am I ever glad I did. Not only did the position she recommended have a significantly shorter commute and better compensation for a nearly identical role, she'd recently interviewed for the job herself, but had ultimately decided to turn it down because it was too long of a commute from where she lived. That is to say, I had an in! With her recommendation to that new company on top of the experience I'd finally accumulated in the previous year, all it took was a single thirty minute interview to secure the new job.

Then it was a matter of lather, rinse, repeat.

I made friendly with my new supervisor and the rest of the team, and also befriended colleagues in the regulatory department, firstly because I depended on them to do my job, and secondly because the work seemed genuinely interesting to me.

Fast forward two years later, and one of those regulatory colleagues has decided to take a job someplace else. On her way out, she recommended me for her position, going so far as to tell my supervisor she should also push me to apply for the role. I wasn't sure about taking that step at first, but after encouragement from both of them, I decided to apply.

And, after a winding month-plus interview process with enough twists and turns to make you swear it was fiction, here we are. I'll be starting that position in two weeks, and I couldn't be happier about it.

Cool, but what does this have to do with writing?

It has everything to do with writing.

Let's take a look at the three major takeaways from my journey above.