de minimis ago curat blog

My super-plan for being super-fabulous involves using blogging as a platform which showcases my awesomeness.  In theory, people will read my blog and be like, “Wow, this girl is SO AWESOME, I am going to pay her to do whatever she wants” (eg writing for cool publications, hosting The Oscars™, etc).

Obviously this is a Tortoise-paced project because I’m going to start being A Baby Lawyer (as, a young lawyer, not a lawyer that lawyers for.about infants) in just a couple of weeks, so you don’t need look out for me at The Oscars ’til like, 2027.

I still desperately need to get on to doing up my webiste front page and getting business cards.  But I’ve spent the last two weeks looking for a new place to rent and, yikes, it’s tough being a Lady of Leisure, you know.  There’s so much sleeping, DVDs, reading, yoga, etc to do, and yet so little time!

But, writing stuff is relatively easy for me so I’m going to work at building up my profile by writing guest posts for other blogs over the next few months and seeing if that will help introduce new readers to me.

I had a couple of shots at writing for a pretty popular blog (which I’ll leave nameless) but the owner, who was like “oh, cool, yeah I’ll totally use them”, never ended up posting my posts so I didn’t try again for a while.

Then, yesterday, Mike Meloni of Somebody Think Of The Children did a shout out on Twitter for a response to a horrible op-ed in The Australian about why we should trial the “Cleen Feed” internet filter.  I jumped at the chance, and instead of watching 2 episodes of The Wire as I normally would before heading to yoga I whipped up post for him!

Go check it out!

I’ve had encouraging feedback so I’m going to keep at it.  Hopefully I’ll hear back from from people with comments I want to include in my next article for New Matilda, too (here’s my first one) so I’ll keep building up my “portfolio” bit by bit.

Like Rachel Hunter used to say in those Pantene ads, I know it won’t happen overnight, but I’m sure that sooner or later, it will.

Months ago I found a great blog network for young professionals — Brazen Careerist.  I put off joining up until I sorted out my new blog here, but hurrah, I’ve finally signed up.

Brazen’s motto is “Define your career. Control your life” and it really epitomises a lot of the “Gen Y” trend about young people who use all the opportunities they’ve gotten to make their mark on the world .

My faves from the community are:

• GenPink
• Modite
• WorkLoveLife &
  
• Ryan Paugh

The “Gen Y” (or “iGen”, if you read The Worst West Australian and caught their stupid survey earlier this month) label is kinda controversial — discussions about stereotypes and West-centricity being key issues — and there might even be a suggestion that joining a blog network which will categorise you as being a “careerist” (and a “brazen” one at that) is a sure fire way to shoot yourself in the foot in front of employers and more-senior colleagues who’ll just look at you as another spoilt brat with a too-big a sense of entitlement and too-small a work ethic.

But let’s cut the stereotype stuff, ok?

As much as I hate to say this, I know stereotypes kinda come from somewhere.  And maybe little bits of the stereotypes are true of some people, and when they get bunched together, you get the general idea of a group.  But not everyone in the group is all of the stereotype. Ever. Unless they’re in a movie, or something.

I know a bunch of people who are intelligent, driven, energetic and want to be Prime Minister one day.  However, I also  know people who are incredibly happy to be stay at home mums or tradies. The fact I know more of the former rather than the latter sorts of people probably has a lot to do with where I grew up and what school I went to, not the year in which I was born.

This applies just as much to a group of people who are 20-25 as it does to people 40-45.  I think generational stereotyping is just silly.

But the label seems to have stuck, and if people are insisting on calling a trowel a spade, sometimes all you can do is be Roman.

So, let’s put on our togas and say that there are other traits of Gen Yers that are a lot more positive — like being passionate, socially & political engaged, educated and sensible, and having a strong desire to contribute back to society — and I think it’s really cool to be able to be part of a community that showcases these positive aspects and encourages others to take us seriously.

Brazen explains this philosophy really well:

The media often paints Generation Y in a negative light – citing high job turnover and impatience with paying dues as negative Gen Y traits. But we know better. We know that Generation Y does not want to job-hop every two years; we know that Generation Y will be the most productive generation in the history of the workforce, and we know that the single best way to connect with Generation Y is to meet them on their turf – online.

I reckon that by calling oneself a “brazen careerist” we’re actually taking the label into our own hands and moulding it into what we want it to be, rather than continuing to let others (particularly market researchers, who, honestly, have barely got a clue) control how everyone else sees us.

I’m really looking forward to contributing to the Brazen Careerist community and interacting with the great bunch of people who are part of it.