This is typically the first question you are asked when you get a new job, or meet someone at a conference. What is probably meant is, which organization do you represent or where did you most recently work? And people probably ask for several reasons, but maybe also to find out if you are worth talking to beyond pleasantries…?
Since I have been a job nomad for the past many years and have pitched my tent in many different organisations, in many different sectors, and in different roles, I usually find it a little difficult to answer. Also because I know that the first impression is difficult to erase. And if I answer “Lean consultant” or “HR consultant” or “Risk manager”, people usually think that this is the only thing I can do.
Therefore, I have often said “I come from everywhere!” and then picked out what I thought was most relevant to add according to the context.
Since October 2023, I have chosen not to work, just as I do not receive benefits. So now I really don’t come from anywhere, as well as from everywhere… Like Thomas O’Malley from the Aristocats, who is the only cat of his kind…
Some of the things I’ve spent my time on over the past six months (& counting):
- Listen to myself and other people, as well as to nature, structures and organisations (“listen” in the broadest sense of the word, including all senses).
- Express myself, for example in writing
- Help myself and other people (including volunteering for established organisations, but also more than that)
- Spend time in city nature
- Allow myself to be slow and follow my own rythm much of the time
- With about 30 other people: Participate in a one-year program “Unlearning Patriarchy to embrace fluid leadership”, which is part of the Thomas Hübl associated Pocket Project. We use Transparent Communication when we communicate, and we follow the Collective Trauma Integration Process (CTIP) from Thomas Hübl’s book Attunement.
- Participate in democracy furthering projects, for example about Wicked Problems, Post-Growth Economics, Digitisation & Privacy, Climate Crisis, etc.
- Continue to Meditate, do Yoga and other Consciousness work, as I have done for decades now.
- And then of course everything and nothing, very important…