Did you guys know what you wanted to be when you grew up?
I didn’t for a long time. I went through phases: President of the United States (when I was 6), missionary (when I was 10– not even kidding), teacher (when I was 14), nurse (when I was 18), and then in college I just sort of gave up trying to find that thing, because none of those things were really what I wanted.
Do you sense a theme, though?
Yep, I’m definitely a Caregiver. My ArchetypeMe profile quiz says I’m 31% Caregiver, 28% Intellectual, and 21% Creative. (In case you missed my last ArchetypeMe post, ArchetypeMe is a new website that is redefining “personal” search by helping you curate, express, and discover differently, through the filter of archetypes.) So I was on the right track with the missionary/teacher/nurse thing (and maybe even President of the United States, because when I was 6 I just thought you got to, like, give cookies to the whole country if you were President), but I hadn’t hit on the thing that made me feel fulfilled in all the different areas of my personality.
I got my English lit degree, mostly because that was the subject I loved most and I was under pressure to pick a major. And then I went into administrative work, where I stayed for many years, sort of branching out from time to time into customer support, or marketing, or accounting. It was fun, but not really fulfilling.
And during all that time when I’d been picking a major and sort of blindly stumbling through my administrative career, I’d been blogging. I was in love with blogging. I’d always loved writing, and I was pursuing a writing career on the side, too, but blogging gave me the instant gratification that I didn’t get from writing novels or essays or short stories. Those things fulfilled the intellectual and creative parts of me, and my caregiver side got to jump in with volunteer work in my different writing and creative organizations.
Then, suddenly, at 31 (this past summer), I found myself for the first time in my adult life without gainful employment. All that was left was my blog and my not-quite-off-the-ground writing career.
In a miracle of perfect timing, good luck, and (hey, let’s be honest) some skill on my part, the blog took off at just the right time and I found myself, finally, in a place where I felt really happy, challenged, and fulfilled in my career.
I’m still working on getting some more Caregiver in here (and stay tuned for an announcement on that in coming weeks), but for the first time in my life, what I’m doing every day gives me all of the good feels. And I am all about the good feels.
Don’t forget to take the quiz yourself at www.ArchetypeMe.com!
To enter for a chance to win a $50 Visa gift card, answer this question in a comment below: Which archetypes are you? (You can find a list of the archetypes on the ArchetypeMe homepage at ArchetypeMe.com.)
Rules:
No duplicate comments.
You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:
- Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
- Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “#SweepstakesEntry #whatsyours”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post
- Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post
- For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.
This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.
The Official Rules are available here.
This sweepstakes runs from 2/13/13-3/15/13.
Be sure to visit the ArchetypeMe brand page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ posts and find more chances to win!














