This blog is about career advice. And about me.
My career never had a straight path, but I am always learning and trying new things, and that's what makes my career fun. And sometimes scary.
I had a crisis in college when I realized that all entry-level jobs sucked, so I decided to play professional beach volleyball instead. Then I went to graduate school for creative writing and had a boyfriend who taught me HTML. This miraculously made me qualified to run an online marketing department for a Fortune 500 company in the mid-90's. I stayed in software marketing for a while and then founded three internet companies. I'm at the third one today: Brazen Careerist.
Throughout my career, I have always been a writer. Often unpaid, always obsessively interested in which media is best for which writing. Before I even knew how to write, I would dictate my days to my dad. As an entrepreneur I got a column in a national magazine and started spewing advice in places like Time magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and the London Times. Then I got a six-figure book deal. Today, my column runs in more than 200 newspapers, but my blog is where my heart is.
What I think my life is about is figuring out how to find success at the intersection of work and life—one happy, synchronized adventure. It's a difficult task, and I don't want to do it alone. So my blog is a community where we all do it together.
Why do 30,000 people subscribe to this blog?
Some days I wonder that myself. And every day I feel lucky to have them. Readers come here for career advice first, probably. I mean, that's what I'm known for. But I'm also known for writing on the edges of my topic, so most of my long-term readers have come to expect career advice from wildly varying angles. And from plenty of examples from my personal life, which often become my favorite posts. Here are a few of them.