A life better lived by Katie Ledger

January 14th, 2010

When I started my career, I remember standing in the offices of Bartle Bogle Hegarty. As a young creative looking for a job I had my portfolio with me – a creative director was looking through my work. Definitely an eclectic mixture of typography, photography, silkscreen printing and other stuff.

I thought, näively this would demonstrated the breadth of my creative capability. How wrong I was. The CD looked at and said

So what are you then? Are you a typographer, graphic designer, art director, poet or an artist?

So I said

Well that depends on what the brief is.

WRONG ANSWER.

See, I could only be good at one thing. Now I have no problem with specialisms, but I have a problem with organisations and people that think that for whatever reason you can only be good at one thing. And that is not the way people are made from their DNA up.

Claire Wolfe, describes what we call Job Culture thus,

The Job Culture isn’t just jobs, work, and business institutions. It’s a comprehensive way of life in which millions of people place institutional paid employment at the center of their world. The daily act of surrendering individual sovereignty – an act we have been conditioned to accept and to call a part of “capitalism” and “free enterprise” when it is not – is the key reason why the present Job Culture is a disaster for freedom

And C. Wright Mills observed even in 1956 that working Americans found themselves trapped in corridors and offices, unable to envision, let alone take charge of, the entirety of their work or their lives.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/agnu/2327818851/

Strong stuff. But I reckon quite a few people feel even more like that today. For example, why was David Brent in The Office adopted by us so readily, as a universal stereotype? Kevin Carson quotes from Ralph Borsordi in This Ugly Civilization who describes a day in the life of Thomas B. Hazard in the 1780′s,

Making bridle bits, worked a garden, dug a woodchuck out of a hole, made stone wall for cousin, planted corn, cleaned cellar, made hoe handle of bass wood, sold a kettle, brought Sister Tanner in a fish boat, made hay, went for coal, made nails at night, went huckleberrying, raked oats, plowed turnip lot, went to monthly meeting and carried Sister Tanner behind me, bought a goose, went to see town, put on new shoes, made a shingle nail tool, helped George mend a spindle for the mill, went to harbor mouth gunning, killed a Rover, hooped tubs, caught a weasel, made nails, made a shovel, went swimming,staid at home, made rudder irons, went eeling.

Which brings me to Katie Ledger and Barrie Hopson and their book AND WHAT DO YOU DO? 10 steps to creating a portfolio career

For many people they are confronted with a world in which they have been trained to do one thing, there are university graduates looking for their first job, and there are those that have been through the job for life experience, then spat out the other side, they have a non-life because they don’t have a job, and do not possess the skills to find and or create a new one. Or so they think.

The job centre is a depressing place to be. The scrap heap of life for many. And that’s a real shame.

But in fact it does not have to be that way, its more of a question of how you see and embrace the world. Katie urges us to live a portfolio life and if you go back and re-read all the activities that Thomas B. Hazard undertook in a day, translate that into some of the things you could be doing in 2010 – I reckon that sounds more rewarding than a doing a mind numbing job all day.

So a portfolio career, has its challenges, but as Katie points out, today every job is temporary. This is a how to book, and if you are a student, a frustrated person in an office with a yearning to do something more interesting to relive the dull ache that you get every time you commute to work or if you think you are on the scrap heap of life, with no way out – this book is for you.

And perhaps by following the practical guidance given you too can have a life better lived.

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