An awareness
In 2019 I contacted a life career coach in my search to an explanation for my supposedly socially labeled “lack of ambition”, “burn out” at that moment. It was there that I made acquintance with the term ‘creative generalist’.
Emilie Wapnick’s TED talk about this topic “Multipotentialite” put a number of things into perspective. In tears I heard what I had been struggling with all along …. I realized that I shouldn’t feel guilty I had failed (in my eyes) in that one job I had studied for and was supposed to do for the rest of my life (my conviction).
Since that realization, it has been a queeste and a way of accepting that ‘label’. I’m still searching for the right form, but already signed ‘my’ manifesto of creative generalist. I know that being a creative generalist is only one aspect of my personality. It’s a term that focuses on my many interests and the fact that I need a lot of variation. I like project-based assignments, with results short term. Nothing more, but nothing less either.
Project-based chameleon is a term, a tool. I name the skills I like and what they can mean for others.
A mission
My mission is to do the things I enjoy and to be meaningful to others, at the same time honoring the manifest of ‘project-based chameleon’.
SIENRISE?
SIEN-RI-SE
A combination of the phonetically written first part of my first name and the combination of the first letters of the Latin “rire” for laughter and “senses” for feeling.
Sienrise is a platform to give a place to my desire for variety in work. As a project-based chameleon, a term that I have appropriated for myself for someone who cannot be pinned down to one interest or one job from a creative generalist point of view, I benefit from short-term projects because otherwise I would get bored to the subject too quickly, not necessarily because it is boring, but more from a longing for new.
Sienrise = exchanging skills, knowledge, time and attention
Something I like to do, something you need. An exchange 🙂
“You don’t have to be great to start but you have to start to be great “
A manifest
My ‘manifesto’ of being a project-based chameleon, a creative generalist:
- I don’t have to choose between one pole or the other. Being a barrel full of contradictions is okay.
- My true self can take different forms. I cannot be pinned to one interest or one job. So I no longer have to search for that one ‘true self’. So I also stop looking for it.
- Even if a specialist or expert in a field surpasses my knowledge or experience within a specific field, by making links, tying loose ends, building bridges, I prove my value as a generalist. Generalism is also a specialty. Width and depth do not have to be mutually exclusive.
- I look where my curiosity goes that moment. Plural instead of singular.
- By exploring new interests I build up experience. Not everything has to result in a full-time job, business or diploma. Everything can positively influence my work. If it energizes, it is already a good reason to do so.