Who Are You?
I've had a mid-life revelation about my identity!
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Hello Fellow Creatives!
A quick question for you…
Who are you?
When was the last time you put some serious, deep thought into answering that question? Maybe the answer is really obvious and you clearly know who you are. Maybe you have inklings but are still searching for a magic North Star for your life.
And maybe, like me, you’ve had a series of events that have forced a shift in who you are and left you feeling unmoored and, well… floundering. My wife, Debbie, first used the term “floundering” to describe my recent condition and it sadly resonated deeply. (Also, I am hoping to make “floundering” the 2024 equivalent of “languishing”)
When you try to answer, “Who are you?” it’s rare to have a single answer, like “I’m a lawyer” or “I’m a vegetarian,” that sums up everything you “are.” For most of us, we are the sum of our parts.
For me, there are parts of me defined by my relationships. I am a husband, father, son, and brother, for example. There are other parts of me that are defined by what I enjoy. I am a comedy nerd, a music fan, a golf and tennis player, and a lover of oceans and nature. And there are parts of me that are defined by what I do professionally. I am a storyteller, an entrepreneur, a media executive, a consultant, an author, and a podcaster. And some of my identity is biological, like being a middle-aged white male.
In the last two years, I have had several very big parts of my identity shift, change, or disappear. My youngest kids left home to go to university a year ago and boom… empty nest. My identity as a parent has shifted to an entirely new stage as my kids become more and more independent adults.
I left my job running a podcast company a little over two years ago. I was burned out from helping to grow a start-up and ended up in a role inside a very large company that was not playing to my strengths and that I didn’t enjoy. My identity as an entrepreneur and podcast executive vanished almost overnight.
Oh… and I also turned 50 a few weeks before I left my job. (It was not a mid-life crisis to leave my job, I promise!) Suddenly, I felt like I wasn’t “young” anymore and that I was thinking a lot more about how I want to spend my time meaningfully.
A year ago, I tore a ligament in my wrist that needed surgery and a long period of limited activity, so I couldn’t do a lot of my favourite hobbies or things that brought me pleasure or “flow states” either.
Add these all together and you get “Unmoored Steve.”
It’s not like I’ve been sitting on my butt doing nothing for two years. I’ve written a book and I’ve done some very interesting consulting work with great people and companies. But I’ve also spent a lot more time alone in my house while my wife is at work in a hospital and all the kids are off at school. And when I’m alone and not busy, I feel restless. Something is missing. There is no North Star. There is no insatiable curiosity and passion to explore and push forward.
And so, it’s made me look fairly deeply inside myself and ask, “Who are you?”
Who are you when you don’t have kids at home? Who are you when you’re not fully engaged in a professional role? Who are you without your hobbies? And perhaps most important of all, who do you want to be in the second half of your life?
WHO are you? Who ARE you? Who are YOU? You can emphasize any word and it takes on a different tone. What a great question! What a hard one to answer.
I recently had a pretty interesting revelation, though. At lunch, a friend complimented me on my entrepreneurial instincts and without thinking about it, I said, “I’m not really an entrepreneur. I am honestly an accidental entrepreneur. I’m really a Creative who needed to find a new business model to be able to do the work I really love doing and that I’m good at.”
Wow.
As soon as it left my mouth, something shifted. “Accidental entrepreneur” instantly resonated. It doesn’t mean that I’m not an entrepreneur or that I’m not good at it, but it did hit home that being an entrepreneur is not the thing that drives me intrinsically. I didn’t dream of “being an entrepreneur” when I was kid. I dreamed of being on SCTV or Saturday Night Live. Or writing books like Kurt Vonnegut or John Irving.
Being an entrepreneur was a means to an end. The traditional media ecosystem was so broken, and, in my humble opinion, the business model was so flawed that if I wanted to continue to do the work that made me happy, I needed to find a new business model and industry to do it in.
I also instantly recognized that leaving my last job felt almost exactly the same as leaving my traditional media job to start Pacific Content—it was frustration with traditional media companies not recognizing how much consumption and content strategies had changed. No wonder I was unhappy. I had returned to the exact same type of work that made me leave the industry a decade before.
The real revelation, though, was saying “I’m really a Creative.” It just rang true. “The work I really love doing and that I’m good at” also screamed at me: PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU JUST SAID!
I have always wanted to make things. I have always wanted to find unusual ways to do things or to do things differently or to tell stories that people enjoy, remember, and talk about. I’m an ideas person. I like new things, new ideas, and new solutions. I get bored painting by numbers.
And so, my career has been the pursuit of finding new and different ways to make a living doing that. If I got bored of one medium or genre or format, I would move to another medium or genre or format. I got bored when things became formulaic or repetitive and the challenge of solving a puzzle with creativity was done. So I would find a new puzzle to solve with creativity where I could learn and be curious and experiment.
That is, subconsciously, how I ended up writing a book. I’ve never done it before and I’ve always wanted to do it. It was a giant puzzle to solve and I loved the whole (often deeply challenging) process of trying to figure it out.
And now that the book is written and off at the printers, I have tapped into yet another new medium and format that is fully engaging. To market the book, I started making a fake documentary about marketing the book on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, complete with fake book marketers, a fake agent to negotiate deals for me, and a fake social media coach. It felt like a lark to be making these, and I almost feel like I have to justify why I’m making them. But as I wrote about a few months ago, I’m having so much fun.
As I make more and more of these short videos, I am finding myself back in creative flow states, getting more and more curious about how to solve the creative puzzle of telling 30-60 second stories in video, and how to use my phone and new editing tools like Descript to produce it all.
I recently made a really dumb trailer for the book and when I posted it on Facebook, one of my old colleagues commented, “Love it. Reminds me of the great stuff you used to do (on television) back in the last century.” This comment made my heart sing–it felt like validation that I had successfully returned to my “Creative Zone.”
Is making TikTok videos my new identity? Is being an author my new identity? I think partly yes and partly no. It’s bigger than that.
I’m a Creative.
There. I said it.
At my core, that is who I am and what I love doing and what I’m good at. I think I’ve often felt some need to justify my creativity with business or career success –like being a Creative isn’t enough. But I’ve reached the stage where I’m done apologizing for it and I am comfortable owning it.
If I need to do other things that allow me to explore and utilize my creativity, then I’ll probably do it. But like my entrepreneurship journey, those too will ultimately be a means to an end. The end is creating things that entertain, inform, educate, and impact others.
I may not be parenting kids in our house anymore. I may not be an executive or an entrepreneur right now. I may not be young or even fully physically healthy. But my creativity?
You will have to pry it from my cold dead hands.
Creative Prompts
Who are you?
What are the parts of you that make up your identity?
How have you handled the loss or change of some of those parts?
Are there parts of your identity that aren’t truly your essence, and that may have been a means to an end?
Who do you want to be?
(Also, if you have stories to share about your creative identity, reply back and let us know! We’d love to hear from you.)
Geoff and I used to work with the amazing team at Atlassian on their Teamistry podcast and Christine Dela Rosa was one of the most progressive and inspiring people we got to collaborate with. She’s written a new memoir called Between Two Poles - congrats, Christine!
It’s 3:30 a.m. and I just read this after lying awake for an hour in a tiny trailer in a campground on Cape Cod, Steve. I can’t tell you how much it resonates! Our childhood dreams were almost the same, except that I’d substitute Broadway for Saturday Night Live. We’re on a two-month journey across the country (mostly to New England, from Colorado) in part for me to answer the question you pose: What’s the next way, and place, and form, for me to practice my creativity? Thanks for sharing your journey!
Hiiii!!!!!! I'm the opposite- I've always identified as a creative (more specifically a songwriter)... but it took me years to embrace the idea that I am also an entrepreneur, and to not feel icky about my music also being my business. I'm looking forward to reading your book Steve!