Breadth or depth?

Is it better to have a career through which you become expert at one thing, sticking with it through your working life or should you pursue an array of different careers, never becoming exceptional at any of them. Like the show “Let’s make a Deal” do you choose the prize behind the “deep and narrow” door or the “broad and wide” door? Which has the most satisfying treasure potential? If you choose one door only to discover the prize isn’t what you expected or wanted, you won’t be satisfied. You’ll have regrets. Then what do you do?

How did you pick a career path? Did you have choices or no choices at all? Was your career chosen by random meandering? By a deep seated passion or did circumstances restrict you. Did you believe that you had no choice at all, one road and were forced to take it?

After a few attempts, I believed I wanted to be just like Dad, a career corporate executive and pursued that path with a vengeance. But he died unexpectedly at a young 63, leaving me adrift in my 30’s despite my steady progress up the career ladder. It now felt odd, like I didn’t fit now that he was gone. Work was purgatory, without balance. I lost confidence. My chosen road that had been concrete transformed into mud, slowly pulling me under as I tried to trudge forward. Had I chosen what I wanted to do, what I thought I had passion for, or was I chose to seek his approval by following in his footsteps?

I started over. Some will say I was brave and courageous to leave a stable career. Others said I was a fool, to take such risks. But, you see, I had no choice but to search for a road that would take me forward, one step at a time even though I didn’t know the destination. It turned out to be a broad and wide approach to career. My daughter said years later, "I stopped going to Mom's farewell parties because she just kept reinventing herself."

Was I really good at those career reinventions? I excelled most of the time and failed only once. I stepped through the “broad and wide” door and liked what I found whether it was a career as a small business owner, agency leader, consultant, professor, sailor and now, in my seventies, a novelist.

The failure? In the back of my mind, I always envisioned becoming an artist, pursing it heartily in undergrad and later in art school in my 50’s. But satisfaction in painting and drawing eluded me. Creating a decent charcoal drawing of a hanky on a table would never evolve into anything more than it was—a dirty handkerchief. Being in love with art and able to create it are two entirely different pursuits. Happily, with much satisfaction, I collect the art of others.

So, I am a creature of the broad and wide.