What I Should Have Done with My Life

I had an epiphany a few weeks ago, while I was working on a computer problem in my home.
When I finally figured out the problem and solved it, I was awash with a sense of accomplishment -- there was a definitive solution to the issue, and I had discovered it. There was no opportunity for anyone to second-guess or point out a better way or recommend an improvement. Unequivocally, I had diagnosed and solved the issue.

And then I started thinking about my current career as a writer (using the broadest scope of the word, obviously). It's unusual I ever get that same feeling.

To be sure, I suppose I'm "accomplished" in my career -- for a while, I was the youngest editor named to head a magazine at my first company (in the process, revamping the content and helping the magazine go from #4 to #1 in the industry); I launched a start-up magazine into profitability at my second company; and overhauled the production efficiencies at my last publishing company, helping it go from "in the red" to "in the black" for the first time in five years.

I switched to communications and -- in 2008 -- won an award as "Communicator of the Year" from the International Association of Business Communicators. So, I suppose, I'm accomplished in my field.

Yet, it's rare that I ever get that sense of "it's done, and it's spectacular!" Part of this, certainly, is my own quest for greatness -- my personal commitment to doing the best job I can (and, writing or strategizing communications is a fairly subjective task). But even more than that is the presumption by so many others in the workforce that they too are "experts" in communication (even though research and employee surveys scream otherwise). So, it's par for the course for me to be given a tactical task, complete it, and then, submit it to a committee to be picked apart and "improved."

This is not specific to me; far from it -- I've heard communicators bemoan this for years. I guess it's finally just been made clearer to me.

For example, I would never head into the CFO's office and say, "hey, I was thinking of a better way to balance our books this weekend; let me take a crack at it!" Or to HR or IT or Sales - or any other discipline where those who hold those positions have earned their way to that seat. How could I possibly offer suggestions (especially unsolicited ones) in that scenario.

So, at times, I lament my choice of career -- how much easier would my life have been if I had gone into computers, for example -- get a task, create the product; if it works, it works (yeah, there's the 0.5% of the population that will pick apart your code and say how "inelegant" it is -- I'm not counting them). Most people, when they ask IT for a task, and it's delivered to their specifications, simply say "thank you!" and they don't concern themselves with what it took to get there.

Not so, when it comes to writing or communications strategy, I suppose. Although, again, I think this is the fate all communicators are doomed to live with. It just comes with the territory.