Your job title does not matter
Your job title does not matter
What matters is that you communicate using words
Your job title might feel like the most concrete thing about your job, the thing that defines what you do. But the truth is, your job title doesn’t matter.
And writing may feel like a Precious Craft, but it’s not. It’s a trade like plumbing or masonry. In both, you make things. Your customers never understand how you do it. They always think it’s too expensive.
This is not uncommon in the world of makers.
All of the workers in Busytown (plumbers and masons, writers and dancers) do the same thing: they communicate meaning. Masons stack bricks to craft an idea called a “home.” Dancers scribe with their limbs. Writers communicate using words.
Communication is no precious craft either. It is a vulgar utility possessed by all creatures. Words are optional. Just ask the crows in your neighborhood.
Communication is teleporting ideas from one mind to another. This is magic! It’s also the realm of meaning. Meaning can exist without words:
Outstretched arms in response to a hand extended in shake.
Barking vehemently at a knock at the front door (especially if you're not a dog).
A Molotov cocktail hurled in the dead of night.
Communication also is about knowing your audience. The beings on the receiving end of your idea and the filagree of circumstances surrounding them. Let’s call this context. Context affects how your ideas are received. Maybe even more than the medium itself.
Communication paradoxically, ends and starts again the moment you share an idea. Outside your body, an idea is no longer yours. Now you must listen to how it is received. Meaning is a co-created experience.
You are a communicator whose medium is words. Your job title doesn’t matter as much as your mindset. To be a master builder you must obsess over meaning and context with every brick you lay.
Interesting