What’s on your Carousel? A new model for multi-potentialites to explain what the hell they ‘do’.
I really dread the question ‘what do you do?’.
I always panic that I have to encapsulate my entire existence into one phrase, and that if I don’t mention every-single-thing that people can’t possibly understand me, or worse that they’ll think I’m ONLY about the tiny percentage I’ve shared.
It’s the adult equivalent of the anxiety-inducing teenage question, ‘what music are you into?’ where you worry you will be judged FOREVER on your answer.
[Answer I used to give: Stereophonics, Chillies, Radiohead. What I actually listened to: Robbie Williams, 911, Spice Girls, and shit tons of MUSICAL THEATRE but shhh…]
Then, the other day I came up with an image to help me explain my portfolio career with much more clarity and compassion.
Essentially it’s the idea of all of our projects being on a carousel, like a Yo Sushi conveyor belt.
We sit at the front of the belt and there’ll always be something right in front of us in focus, and other projects at the back, out of focus. But we can still see them and we know they’ll always come back around: the belt keeps moving.
These time frames could be years, or it could be a matter of hours. But we don’t need to force anything to stay with us or come back to us. We don’t need to feel guilty that we’re not working on that thing right now. Because it will come back, and when it does it will have changed and so will have we.
What I love about this is that it allows you to be with one main thing, but also acknowledge that there are other things in your life too: You can have the focus AND the variety.
I have now started using this with new people and instead of saying ‘what do you do’, I ask them ‘what’s on your carousel?’.
It’s such a relief for people to say ‘this is me now, but it’s not me always.’
It also allows you to acknowledge out loud that whatever is not in focus is not forgotten — it takes the pressure off everything always having to be in full gear. In fact, it recognises that putting things at the back of the carousel gives them breathing space and it gives us chance to pause, reconsider and come back with fresh eyes. I have had projects that I thought were totally dead emerge from the flames with a new guise and energy, precisely because I allowed them to be at the back of the carousel for the while.
It also means when someone says, ‘how’s DJing?’, or ‘what ever happened to x project?’, instead of having a mini-breakdown and saying, ‘oh my god, I totally abandoned it, why do I always give up so easily, what’s wrong with me, I’m such a failure and should probably just go and get a job because I clearly can’t operate as a freelancer,’ I can simply smile and say, ‘oh, that’s at the back of my carousel right now, I wonder when it will be back at the front again?’
So, what’s on your carousel?
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