How is your career? A path, or a journey?

I am leaving behind my 15th year in my career. The first three years of this were filled with the work I did in parallel with the school during the university period, and then with full-time jobs in different sectors.

Throughout my career, I have always done other 'side hustles' besides my full-time jobs. I gave consultancy to the companies and brands, facilitated workshops, contributed to the magazines as a writer and editor. In addition, I have been teaching at the university as a part-time lecturer for the last five years. I also undertake various voluntary roles, as well as managing the content and programming for couple of communities, events, and programs.

In the years when I started my career, I spent a lot of time assuming more than my duty, being hungry for learning, researching what my different colleagues, teams, institutions are doing, and questioning the works that were done a lot. That's because I was new in the business life and because I'm more than curious. I started my master's degree early in my career, and after years I went back to school to write my thesis that I didn't complete. While all this was going on, I contributed to different academic publications with my articles, and became a public speaker, moderator and facilitator at different local and international conferences. I acquired new competencies by taking various trainings and certificates one after another, and then I started using these competencies in my professional life. I almost forgot, in the middle of all this, seven years ago, I also started my own creative enterprise: a digital publication focused on the cultural sector in Turkey. Is this a mess? No, as I've said before, 'I don't have a single interest. I am a proud generalist, someone with broad knowledge across many topics and expertise in a few.'

So while all this is going on, didn't I ask questions like 'Where is my career going?', Where am I being thrown?', 'Am I going back now?'. Of course I did. In the early years of my career, I focused on digital marketing in the culture, but then, I suddenly found myself as an executive assistant in the media industry. Afterwards, in the middle of my career, I realized that my actual career is just started from scratch in a different sense. Because, my career journey is how Kathryn Montbriand define, like a zig-zaggy map marked by hops and jumps.

I see the generalist approach more important, in a learning journey than a career journey. Because throughout my life, I have been interested in many things in different fields due to my curiosity and hunger for learning. Some I went deep into, some I left at a level to understand the basics. That's what I like, that's what I need.

The following question caught my attention in a post by ?zgenur Korlu recently: With every fascinating job ad I came across, I found myself asking, "If I take this job, will I still have time for my personal projects?" I have exactly the same feelings about the 'work'. In fact, ?zgenur's use of the word 'journey' instead of 'path' for career, is a conscious choice, where she indicates exactly this.

A generalist's career is not a path with a definite end, but a wicked journey, with full of adventures, covered with stops, companions and sometimes stones.

No job alone is enough to cover my entire life and interests, satisfy my curiosity and hunger for learning, and suffice and nourish me for years to come. As I mentioned in my previous article 'Let's Forget 'Work-Life Balance', Long Live One Balance', there are many things that I see as 'work'. They change, increase, decrease over time. Some are transforming. Some are disappearing. There are many criteria I consider when deciding what is 'work'. Financial return, individual satisfaction, learning/curiosity contribution, networking... Sometimes they come as a whole, sometimes one of them stands out.

So how do you decide what is 'work'? How would you classify your work? How do you know you want (or don't want) to do a job? Share it, and let's discuss.