Differentiating Who You Are versus What You Do

I am at the nine-month point in my early retirement from a large high-technology firm where I worked for 31 years. At present, I am waiting for a student to tutor at a local University where I now teach part-time. While I am waiting, I got to thinking about how different my life is now than it was just a year ago. In that self-analysis, one of the things that jumped out at me is how I now define myself.

The company I worked for was initially very structured in an entrepreneurial way. It sought to hire like-minded individuals who had, for the most part, a military background. The result was a corporate culture that was structured, disciplined, challenging, demanding, but accomplished a lot. During those early years, my personal description was the same as my business description: systems engineer. Indeed, I viewed myself as a systems engineer long after I ceased to do that line of work, having moved on to account management, sales, and marketing.

Using these standards, today I would be defined as a business and management professor. However, making the break from the previous career has also allowed me to freed me to not define myself by what I do. To a large extent, that I why I refer to myself as a futurist (one who tracks emerging trends and forecasts how those trends will impact future life, culture, business, and interaction). I was a futurist even while I worked for my previous employer, only I didn't recognize it at the time.

I am also a keen observer of people. This has been the most interesting aspect as an election year tends to bring out some of the worst in our friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and "heroes." This year is no different.

The point of this post is that I feel much better about myself defined by my passions than I ever did defined by my work. I would imagine that this is a key transition for anyone who retires after a long period with one or a few companies, or the military, or the government. So the question become, what are your passions? What makes you feel alive? What gets you up in the morning?

Food for thought.