It’s Your Thing

Today’s guest blogger is Colleen Wainwright from communicatrix. Colleen is continuing our Desiderata series.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

There is a thing that is you at your core.

It may or may not be what is printed on your business card or painted on the shingle outside your shop, but it is the engine that drives those things. It is your Truth, your purpose; it is what you were born to do, even if it seems boring or frustrating or even unfashionable at times. (And it will, believe me, if it is truly The Thing.)

I am a writer–that’s my Thing. Not that I didn’t resist it most of the way–not glamorous enough, not sexy enough, too humble/lowly/isolating/introverted for the likes of me. I treated it shabbily so often it shames me now, relegating it to menial tasks like letter writing and journal entries.

But your Thing is your Thing, no matter how ill you treat it, and mine was no exception, informing everything I did over the course of a crazy, checkered career.

It was my Thing when I prostituted it in advertising for 10 years, putting words together for fame and profit.

It was my Thing while I took an eight-year detour into acting, helping me understand story arc and character development.

It’s my Thing right now, imbuing the design work I do for clients with order and clarity.

As a medium-elder of 46 years, I have a little more humility and respect for the Thing than I used to. I also know that while there is no one-size-fits-all instruction manual for the care and feeding of your Thing, there are some general guidelines:

• Don’t take it for granted. Nurture it, care for it, strengthen it. Feed it things to help it grow and evolve: books, classes, help from masters farther down the path. Give it your valuable time, and lavish attention upon it.
• Do it when it’s so easy, it seems like you’re getting away with something. Do it when it’s so boring/hard/nowheresville that you wonder why anyone would want to do it. Find new ways of expressing it. But express it somehow, in some way, every day. (You all know how to get to Carnegie Hall, right?)
• Don’t mistake it for your job or even your career; that’s what you do for this employer now, or for this time, now. Your thing is bigger than a VP title or consultancy or possibly even your so-called calling. Your Thing is your gift, and it will be yours even if you are a painter who loses your sight, a football player forced into retirement, an executive downsized, a mother whose children leave the nest, a buggy whip manufacturer thrust into a Jetsons world.

Find your Thing, if you haven’t already. Learn it inside and out, love it upside and down. Treat it with respect. Hew to it like a motherf**ker.

Take care of it, and the rest will take care of itself.

Image by sabellachan via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.