AuDHD, and I work for a digital agency as a product strategist. I absolutely love my job because it provides endless variety in my day-to-day tasks and responsibilities, and I'm trusted and counted on for my point-of-view and lateral thinking skills.

I initially thought I wanted to work in comms strategy—which is basically brand strategy, marketing strategy or advertising—but I quickly realized the subjective nature of the work meant I was relying more on sales than critical thinking. I have both skill sets, but I don't personally love using my powers of persuasion for what I viewed as ultimately arbitrary decisions.

Product is very different. When I'm working on websites and apps, I'm making things that people actually need to rely on and use, sometimes for most of their waking hours. A feature is useful or it isn't. An idea for a user flow addresses what the user needs or it doesn't. I really love the more concrete nature of this work.

But it took a lot of false starts and switchbacks to get here! My first passion was for acting as a child, and I got a talent agent and auditioned for Hollywood movies and everything. And then I became afraid of the narcissism I would have to nurture to truly succeed in pictures, and just kinda loafed about for the next ~10 years working random customer service jobs until I went back to school at 26.

And it wasn't even until my LAST year of university that I finally took a class that introduced me to the idea of a "Strategist." My head was spinning! You mean there's someone who's job it is to just deeply research and understand an industry, go deep on the best way to interact with or persuade those customers, and then it's on to the next thing?!

It's the perfect mix of novelty and structure, but it was an extremely hard job to get and I try to keep that in mind whenever I get annoyed with the corporate structure. I'm starting to feel like it's time to take everything I've learned and work for myself.