Fringe Master
In a world where you can be anything, we quite often try to be everything.
As I noted last week, when initially chasing a career, a path, or a business that doesn’t include graduate school or a predetermined specialization mapped out for us, it becomes a life of starting up, of falling down, of creating a job title, of selling your soft skills, of convincing someone you can do something even when you don’t know if you can.
It’s a drop of water that slides, slithers and sneaks its way into any gap it can until it reaches the grotto of identity below.
However, before we can create impact, we manufacture it in our heads by becoming a “but I” person.
Right now I am a regional manager at an IT company but I also have a blog, I knit, I’m signing up to be a yoga instructor and I’m starting an impactor, incubator, workshop or whatever else.
We feel that by being undefined we can turn on a dime and cater to whatever seed might need water the most. But our bucket doesn’t have enough water for our perpetual periphery dance.
You can’t be so undefined as to be unable to convey meaning to people. Because he who chases two jackrabbits, catches none.
Broad is why people like you, specific is why people pay you.
When we mix up that fact, we run the risk of becoming Fringe Masters.
