[Bonus] What does Olya do?
This week’s topic was inspired by a conversation we had with my friend Olya Polevikova in a primeval forest. So she wrote an essay of her own!
Olya is a marketing leader in agtech, a therapist, a journalist, and a writer. It’s remarkable how, despite living very different lives, Olya and I independently arrived at the same idea of overarching professional identity.
I’m grateful to Olya for sharing her perspective with you and me. Enjoy!
Recently, I went to Białowieża Forest with a random group of smart people. One evening, while walking through the forest and chatting, someone in the group asked: do you like what you're doing now? Anton and I both confidently said 'yes.' But it wasn't about which specific companies we work for or which projects we're involved in. We had independently arrived at the same realization: the answer to 'what do you do?' isn't tied to a particular degree, trade, or job title.
No matter what we do, we're always doing the same thing.
It took me about 15 years to understand what this means.
Not this, not this
The question "who am I and what do I want to do?" has always been an agonizing one for me. For some people, it comes easily: I envied people who knew from their childhood that they had a talent for the violin, basketball, or coding. I never had that. I had lots of interests, lots of doubts, lots of insecurity. So I had to try many different things to find my answer to this question.
I largely see life as an endless search: we search for partners, friends, a place to live, hobbies, passions, favorite foods, and, of course, favorite things to do.
Yes, this
My answer is:
I tell people stories about themselves so they can understand who they are. I tell these stories either through their experience or my own.
The idea that ‘whatever we do, we're doing the same thing’ I first heard in the context of coaching. It comes from the fact that we, consciously or unconsciously, choose the same values, that our focus of attention falls on the same thing across different domains. "Follow your bliss," Joseph Campbell once said. What gives you pleasure and excitement, what gives you meaning experienced not just intellectually but in bodily sensations—that becomes your guiding star.
Put to test
I figured out pretty early that I like listening to people, asking them questions, and then re-telling what I heard. But only after three professions and a dozen different jobs could I claim this as something valuable.
As a journalist and editor, I did this directly—my job was to listen and then share what I had heard.
As a manager and marketer in IT, I listened to the team, listened to the management, told them about each other and told the world about the company.
As a therapist, I help people understand what's happening in their relationships with the world and with each other so that life is easier and happier.
As an author,I tell others about what I experience myself, because I want to share the beauty that I see in the world, the compassion and awe that I feel. I know these stories can be a shortcut for someone, just as other people's stories serve for me as a compass in the labyrinth of life.
So what?
Why do this? I've always been terrified by the thought that I might live a life that isn’t my own, and this storytelling—about myself to others and about others to myself is needed in order to live my own life and help others live theirs.
Subscribe to Olya’s Telegram channel (@whereyousleep) for more.