I always hate it when people ask me what I do for a living. I hate it even more when my wife asks me what she should tell people when they ask her what I do for a living. People who know me best ask what I’m working on, which is always easier to answer. I’ve realized that the harder I work in the field of new media, the harder it is to put any sort of title on what I actually am and what I actually do. I find myself telling my wife to give different responses depending on my current project work-load. This has led to some severe employment split personality issues and a very confused spouse.
The field of new media is an odd one when it comes to titles. I think its the only field where individual pieces of a project incur the necessity of specific categories of talent that historically are different people and not multi-talented individuals. If this ideal made its way into other fields we would lose mechanics and gain oil change technicians; forget hair dressers and welcome hair comb specialists and blow dryer operators. I think its more important than ever that we stop being copy-writers, modelers, and designers and we start trying to stretch ourselves into the scary realm of “oh, I’m horrible at doing…”.
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