On Being Fortunate

“With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you’re too smart to go down any not-so-good street.”

Oh, the Places You’ll Go! — Dr. Seuss

I just left a steady, full-time-with-benefits job to become a self-employed consultant. People ask me if I’m scared, but I tell them I’m not. Either I’m delusional or else have foolproof plans to succeed.

The decision to leave came in a moment of lucidity, but only after months of contemplation. I’m not spontaneous or impulsive. My only risks are measured risks. Looking back on my life, that’s worked pretty well for me.

Some might say I’m lucky. But I consider myself fortunate. The difference is slight. A friend in grad school who had attended Harvard always said he was “fortunate” when people would ooh and aah about his education credentials. He had worked his way through school and got into the Ivy League on his own merits, and excelled when he got there. He certainly wasn’t “lucky” to have gotten in to Harvard. Being lucky has to do with chance. Being fortunate is about setting yourself up for things to go your way. Fortune favors the brave.

I feel fortunate too. I’ve set myself up for success, for luck to come my way. I am not rich. I have rent. I have two school-aged children. I have no financial safety net. But I’ve laid the groundwork to succeed in this new endeavor — or at least to have skills to go back to full-time employment if it doesn’t work out.

Circumstances

I grew up in a blue-collar household in a suburb of Detroit in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Not a hotbed of innovation or growth. I did well in school, knowing I wanted to get out. For my sister and me, college was not an option but a foregone conclusion. Our parents knew it was the key to a better life. They lamented my decision to be a political science major (“What will you do with that kind of degree?”), but when I then decided to go on to graduate school for international affairs, they felt better. Surely, a master’s degree meant a high-paying, secure job for their eldest daughter. Turns out that studying U.S.-Soviet relations in the early 1990s was not the smartest thing. But it was my passion. And off I went into the world.

I eventually landed at a small trade association as the communications director. Soon enough, we needed a “Web site.” I eagerly followed a new passion, soaked up information, and learned fast. While I was writing HTML in Notepad and FTPing files on a 28.8k modem, I mostly focused on the content and strategy — what did people visiting our website need to know?

I’d found a new career, though in 1999 the term “content strategy” was not known to me. My next job was as a web editor for a larger association. A web team of one within the IT department, I worked to make the site more usable and useful. Becoming a stay-at-home mom led to freelance project work. That led to becoming the Content & Usability Director at a small digital agency where I could extend myself and thus created a content strategy practice. Right place at the right time, with the right person as a boss. Lucky? Partly. Fortunate? Yes. I had prepared myself for the opportunity.

Preparation

Since first deciding to make the web my career, I had joined networking groups like DC Web Women to learn from people who were ahead of the curve. I applied these lessons to my work and shared my knowledge with others. It was in this sharing that I gained the confidence to go full-steam ahead with content strategy work. My first conference presentation (at the 2011 IA Summit) was well-received. (Though looking back, going to a national stage first was crazy; good thing I didn’t know any better!) Kristina Halvorson found my slides and used her voice to amplify my message. Not only did she share, but she called me and told me to own my ideas and be confident. I can’t thank her enough for that and many other things over the years. (THANK YOU, KRISTINA!) Would the author of Content Strategy for the Web have given me the time of day, let alone a platform if I’d just sat back and done what I did day in and day out? No. She gave me the push I needed to fly out of my comfortable nest.

Discomfort

But here’s the thing. I am never comfortable in my nest for too long. I left the digital agency to manage web strategy and operations at a large association. Going in-house allowed me to practice what I’d preached to clients and user experience professionals: use content strategy to drive organizational change. (See Becoming a Change Agent)

After two and a half years, I outgrew that nest too. Now I’m doing my own thing. I’ve built a reputation as a practical practitioner of content strategy. Along the way I’ve made friends and allies who have provided support and motivation for this endeavor. Even my mom didn’t freak out when I told her what I was doing. (Or maybe she did; it wasn’t a video call.)

With learnings from both in-house and consultancy experience, I flew away with no nest to go to. I’ve got to build a new one myself rather than finding one to borrow for awhile.

My personal life has also gotten complicated, and I don’t do complicated well. My decision is driven mostly by the desire to simplify my life. Working for myself sounds thrilling. It’s not going to be a walk in the park. But I get to set my boundaries: what I say yes to; which hours I work; which clients are not worth it. I am (mostly) in control of how I spend my time. I plan to get balance back into my life — the balance that works for me.

My 9 year old is a bit uncertain about how this “flexible schedule” will work. He thrives on schedules and hates ambiguity. But I think once he has a few weeks of me getting to have lunch with him or putting work away early to go to the pool, a few months of happy mom instead of crabby, tired mom, he’ll be okay with it. There will be nights or weekends when I’m trying to meet a deadline, or trips out of town to speak or meet with clients. Other times I’ll chaperone an all-day fourth-grade field trip or go sledding on a snow day. All part of the balance.

I have no idea where this path leads, but I’m only looking ahead, knowing I’ve prepared for this journey. I have a vision of what I want and the impatience to not sit around waiting for something to happen.

You can’t get what you don’t reach for.

Oh, the places I’ll go!