How do you become somebody? For starters, you need turf.
You need a thing you are strongly interested in and personally committed to which will be a central theme for your career even as you switch jobs periodically. It may not be immediately obvious to other people how different jobs relate to your turf or your larger career goals, but it should make internal sense to you and be something that is or can be building towards something larger.
How do you get turf?
Sometimes you were raised a certain way and you find yourself at a certain point where everything other people decided for you from birth suddenly clicks into place and you finally really accept personal responsibility for something which seems inevitable if you know the whole story. Kind of like John Connor in the Terminator series.
Sometimes you see something that others do not see and you feel strongly that it is important that this get addressed and you decide "Since no one else will do this, I will do this." Kind of like Frodo in the Lord of the Rings.
If their career interests are very different, they may not have much to talk about in order to establish and maintain an intimate relationship. There may be no there there.
If their career interests are similar, it creates a conflict of interest that makes it hard for both of them to get jobs in the same field. The woman is usually the one who goes and does something else when they can't both get their dream job because of this conflict.
I once saw an interview with Madeleine Albright in which she said she had wanted to be a reporter but that never happened because her husband was a reporter. Given his job, no paper would hire her as a reporter because it created a conflict of interest for the paper. The paper he worked for wouldn't hire her and neither would other papers.
That aspect of women failing to be taken as seriously as men doesn't seem to get a lot of press. In the case of Madeliene Albright, Wikipedia simply says:
Instead, I see a lot of prosaic happenstance where it's just hard to work out the logistics for a woman to be both serious about her career and serious about her marriage and family. It's just logistically vastly easier for him to be serious about his career and her to be more committed to the family as a higher personal priority.
I read one article about a Hollywood couple, I forget who. They were both committed to their careers and committed to their family, so they took turns shooting movies on location while the other parent stayed home with the kids.
They both had real careers and they both had a good relationship to the children, but they ended up having no time for each other. They eventually divorced and continued to share custody of the kids and at least one of them was soon remarried to someone with less Hollywood mojo.
David Copperfield was involved for a time with a Super Model and they lived together. Both of their careers were jet set careers involving a great deal of globe trotting.
They talked about getting married but they felt that marriage meant they needed to make more of a commitment to each other and spend more time together. They realized neither of them was willing to cut back on the travel their careers demanded, so talking about getting married resulted in them breaking up and going their separate ways.
In practice, a woman who picks a turf often finds herself alone whether she wants to be or not. It's simply logistically easier for a man to marry some woman who will be content to make him and their family her turf than for two people to sort out how to both have turf, not because of sexism or whatever but because of real world logistics.
So in practice when a woman commits to her career in a serious way, a lot of men simply lose interest. They don't want the hassle of trying to accommodate her "demands." For the man, it's easier to pick a woman who doesn't have turf and will uncomplainingly change jobs as needed to accommodate his hard-charging career.
When push comes to shove, a woman who will not stand down and meekly give up her own turf is a woman who very often finds herself alone with her turf. Most men walk when told "I am not giving up my dreams and commitments to be with you."
They don't try to figure out how to make it work where they can both have turf. Going and finding a more accommodating woman is the easy answer for him and that's how that often plays out.
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz found a way around all that. The I Love Lucy show was started so they could actually spend time together and have children and not both travel all the time to further their careers.
That's a long story that is out of scope for this piece. The short version is they had to remake an entire industry to make their marriage work while both having serious careers.
For some years, I thought I might get with a businessman I was acquainted with. We have a lot of interests in common where our interests would marry well and co-founding a company is one of the few ways I know for a couple to each have turf and have that be career enhancing for each other instead of a conflict.
Most men interested in me de facto expect me to give up my turf in order to be theirs. I did the wife and mom thing for a lot of years and many men feel that I can just keep playing the role of little wifey and be content to be a bauble on their arm.
I don't want that. I find that suffocating.
Most men just don't get it and are not in a position to make their turf not a death knell for my interests and ambitions if I get involved with them.
Men who find me attractive because I am "like them" in some sense seem to very often not comprehend that they are attracted to me because I have turf. If I gave up my turf to be with them, I would soon be as boring to them as every other woman on the planet.
It has been a shockingly common experience for me to meet some man who thinks I'm hot because I am "like him" and then promptly try to break me and force me to defer to him. I'm quite clear in my mind that if I allowed that, it would not only break me, it would break the spell.
They would be disappointed to actually get what they wanted. They would fall out of love.
So going along with it would not only ruin my life and career, it wouldn't even get me some great love as a reward for giving up my dreams. The relationship would soon be as cold and dead as my murdered dreams.
You need a thing you are strongly interested in and personally committed to which will be a central theme for your career even as you switch jobs periodically. It may not be immediately obvious to other people how different jobs relate to your turf or your larger career goals, but it should make internal sense to you and be something that is or can be building towards something larger.
How do you get turf?
Sometimes you were raised a certain way and you find yourself at a certain point where everything other people decided for you from birth suddenly clicks into place and you finally really accept personal responsibility for something which seems inevitable if you know the whole story. Kind of like John Connor in the Terminator series.
Sometimes you see something that others do not see and you feel strongly that it is important that this get addressed and you decide "Since no one else will do this, I will do this." Kind of like Frodo in the Lord of the Rings.
LOTR: "I will take it."
If their career interests are very different, they may not have much to talk about in order to establish and maintain an intimate relationship. There may be no there there.
If their career interests are similar, it creates a conflict of interest that makes it hard for both of them to get jobs in the same field. The woman is usually the one who goes and does something else when they can't both get their dream job because of this conflict.
I once saw an interview with Madeleine Albright in which she said she had wanted to be a reporter but that never happened because her husband was a reporter. Given his job, no paper would hire her as a reporter because it created a conflict of interest for the paper. The paper he worked for wouldn't hire her and neither would other papers.
That aspect of women failing to be taken as seriously as men doesn't seem to get a lot of press. In the case of Madeliene Albright, Wikipedia simply says:
In January 1960, the couple moved to her husband's hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Joseph worked at the Chicago Sun-Times as a journalist, and Albright worked as a picture editor for Encyclopædia Britannica.Much of the world seems to see some evil plot to deny women rights and agency and keep them "barefoot and pregnant." I don't.
Instead, I see a lot of prosaic happenstance where it's just hard to work out the logistics for a woman to be both serious about her career and serious about her marriage and family. It's just logistically vastly easier for him to be serious about his career and her to be more committed to the family as a higher personal priority.
I read one article about a Hollywood couple, I forget who. They were both committed to their careers and committed to their family, so they took turns shooting movies on location while the other parent stayed home with the kids.
They both had real careers and they both had a good relationship to the children, but they ended up having no time for each other. They eventually divorced and continued to share custody of the kids and at least one of them was soon remarried to someone with less Hollywood mojo.
David Copperfield was involved for a time with a Super Model and they lived together. Both of their careers were jet set careers involving a great deal of globe trotting.
They talked about getting married but they felt that marriage meant they needed to make more of a commitment to each other and spend more time together. They realized neither of them was willing to cut back on the travel their careers demanded, so talking about getting married resulted in them breaking up and going their separate ways.
In practice, a woman who picks a turf often finds herself alone whether she wants to be or not. It's simply logistically easier for a man to marry some woman who will be content to make him and their family her turf than for two people to sort out how to both have turf, not because of sexism or whatever but because of real world logistics.
So in practice when a woman commits to her career in a serious way, a lot of men simply lose interest. They don't want the hassle of trying to accommodate her "demands." For the man, it's easier to pick a woman who doesn't have turf and will uncomplainingly change jobs as needed to accommodate his hard-charging career.
When push comes to shove, a woman who will not stand down and meekly give up her own turf is a woman who very often finds herself alone with her turf. Most men walk when told "I am not giving up my dreams and commitments to be with you."
They don't try to figure out how to make it work where they can both have turf. Going and finding a more accommodating woman is the easy answer for him and that's how that often plays out.
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz found a way around all that. The I Love Lucy show was started so they could actually spend time together and have children and not both travel all the time to further their careers.
That's a long story that is out of scope for this piece. The short version is they had to remake an entire industry to make their marriage work while both having serious careers.
For some years, I thought I might get with a businessman I was acquainted with. We have a lot of interests in common where our interests would marry well and co-founding a company is one of the few ways I know for a couple to each have turf and have that be career enhancing for each other instead of a conflict.
Most men interested in me de facto expect me to give up my turf in order to be theirs. I did the wife and mom thing for a lot of years and many men feel that I can just keep playing the role of little wifey and be content to be a bauble on their arm.
I don't want that. I find that suffocating.
Most men just don't get it and are not in a position to make their turf not a death knell for my interests and ambitions if I get involved with them.
Men who find me attractive because I am "like them" in some sense seem to very often not comprehend that they are attracted to me because I have turf. If I gave up my turf to be with them, I would soon be as boring to them as every other woman on the planet.
It has been a shockingly common experience for me to meet some man who thinks I'm hot because I am "like him" and then promptly try to break me and force me to defer to him. I'm quite clear in my mind that if I allowed that, it would not only break me, it would break the spell.
They would be disappointed to actually get what they wanted. They would fall out of love.
So going along with it would not only ruin my life and career, it wouldn't even get me some great love as a reward for giving up my dreams. The relationship would soon be as cold and dead as my murdered dreams.