Who Are You. Really.
In a lot of my classes throughout highschool, my teachers would always stress the importance of the difference between a career, and an occupation. Or the difference between what position you have, and what you do. The job you hold is only ever really a channel to do what you really want. I don’t think people become accountants, become advertisers, become sports professional, they just use those jobs to channel who they really are. The accounts love logic, flow, and analyzing. Marketers are communicators, or creators. Sports professionals love adrenaline, adventure, and pushing and building on what they can do.
I’ve thought about it the most, you know, what I want to do with my life. And of course I’ve thought about it a lot. I’m in business, but most of my entire life would argue that I belong in arts. Why business? There’s always been something inside of me driving me towards business, and I can’t really explain it, it’s just there. In Grade 7, the program I was enrolled in (International Business & Technology – IBT) pushed the concepts of entrepreneurial ventures and business know-how on us from an early start. By the time I had started university I had already gone through 6 years of a business-focused program. Some people were just taking their first business courses ever. Nothing in my life has ever led me to question that direction either, it’s just something that I love to do, and I only recently figured it out I think.
I want to go into marketing, or advertising, or event-promotions, etc. Although they vary slightly, in the end of it all, I just wanted to be the guy who created something amazing. Something that impacts people, or something that people talk about. I want to make something as successful as the Old Spice commercials, or as unique as the Sunchip solar-powered billboards. Much like people in other disciplines, I know there are boundaries to be pushed, and that’s what I’m interested in.
Although I must say, I’ve never been one for business-folk. Everything seems so fake, so scripted, so prim and proper. You know? Dress like this, talk like this to these people, at these times, after making an appointment here, and once your meeting is finished there. It’s restricting, but it’s how business operates, and that’s fine with me. I wonder constantly why I don’t go into something less restricting for me, but I know that it’s not where I want to be in the end. I just know it.
I’m a creator. That’s what I’ve discovered. I think there are fundamental differences in people, their entire life skewed differently than everyone else’s because of who they are. It’s a weird concept, really high when I thought of it, but I think it applies. Things I like to do are write blogs, make music, create businesses, create ideas, create marketing campaigns, draw, re-decorate. Everything that I do, always leads back to the concept of creating something new. That’s what I do, I create something new. I’m a creator.
Maybe I’ll change my style, or my haircut, all because I want to create something new. I change the furniture in my room around constantly, because I want to create something new. I have a sketchbook all for jotting down new marketing or advertising ideas I get, or how I would improve them, because I love to create. And now I know, that’s why I want to go into advertising, I want to create something new, develop it completely, set it loose, then move on to something new. I always want to be doing something new while I work, I could never sit down every day and do that exact same thing.
But in the end, all this rambling boils down to finding the hidden concept within everything you like to do, that really tells you who you are now. There’s something, some extension of a habit, or a trait, that’s who you are, hidden under everything that you love to do. You don’t the activity, you don’t love the job, but because it’s the best channel to express your trait/personality, then it’s the best thing you have.
