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What in the World Do You Do?

Written by: Don Doman

Article Overview: It's hard to explain to people what I do. This happens to many people. While it doesn't happen everyday, knowledge changes our outlook and direction. What we do could change tomorrow. We know what we do, but how do we tell other people so they appreciate who and what we are?

What in the World Do You Do?

It's hard to explain to people what I do. This happens to many people. While it doesn't happen everyday, knowledge changes our outlook and direction. What we do could change tomorrow. We know what we do, but how do we tell other people so they appreciate who and what we are?

I've got a friend who's an attorney. He's also a Certified Public Accountant. Being an attorney and being a CPA are just two of the titles he has collected for what he really does. He's a real estate consultant, who works with people who create real estate developments.

Jean Butler, the freckled beauty from Riverdance, grew up taking dance lessons. She says she was too tall and her feet where too big for ballet, but still she took classes. People would ask her what she did, but she couldn't really answer. The answer was Irish Dancing, but at the time, no one else really knew what that was. Jean didn't know how to explain that to casual questioning. She debuted with The Chieftains at 17 and once Riverdance took the world by storm in 1994, everyone finally knew what Jean did.

But in reality it didn't help. Jean had ambitions. She didn't just want to dance, she also wanted to act. Although she co-starred in The Brylcreem Boys, she auditioned for other films and didn't win roles. "I found myself cemented in a box with the word `dancer' written across the top of it," she confessed. "I'd get all these scripts for the redheaded Irish girl who can jig, and that's a bit frustrating."

Take my best friend, Randy, you could say he's a life insurance salesman, but he would argue that he's a financial consultant offering annuities, salary protection, health coverage, and mutual funds for investing.

I think what's happening is that we're all awakening to a new reality that throws off limitations and let's us chose more widely who and what we want to be. It's a great big world. We truly can define what we want to be . . . if we can just decide what it is that we want to be.

I know what I am today, but explaining that to someone else gets a little complicated.

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