I haven’t posted on here in awhile, I know. The past two weeks have been packed. I’m currently at one of those life viewpoints where you take a look around you, you survey the land, and you realize very little looks the same as it did the last time you visited, and you wonder what on earth happened, how, and when?
I’m too exhausted to get into all of it right now, but in the past two weeks I have traveled to Canada with two of my best friends; lost and traveled home to bury my grandfather’s wife, who was the closest thing I had to a grandmother as an adult; prepared and presented the first big demo presentation for CrowdMap, one of the tech projects I’ve been working for; wound up on CNN talking about Bristol Palin; attended and wrote about the privacy identity innovation conference, but not before instigating an international discussion on whether men should have to get rich; was approached with, interviewed for and accepted a new job; and hosted my father in Seattle for a week.
So, yeah, the second one. I was approached about a part-time job as a social media consultant with a social media firm based in San Fran (no, I’m not moving). They wanted someone quick, and so I actually went through the entire interview process while on vacation, and, by the time I returned, there was an offer in my inbox. That was very cool. I love the twists and turns my career takes. I mean, sometimes I hate them, and I’m envious of my friends who have clear career paths, clear goals, a metric of success. Meanwhile, I chose a “career path” that we, as a society, are still very much defining.
When blogging first picked up speed, everyone assumed the next step for successful bloggers would be for to write a book or to go get a “real” journalism job with a “real” media outlet. I wasn’t especially keen on either idea — and neither, it turns out, were most bloggers. We’ve moved in giant waves to a career title that I swear to God didn’t exist two years ago: “social media strategist.” It’s a fun way to take what I know about the social web, what I know about business, and what I know about technology and work with companies to use the social web to advance their business goals. I’m also very, very excited about the team I’ll be working with. I’m hopeful that we’ll get along well and I’ll learn a lot from them. Life looks very different now than it did two weeks ago.
