The Conversation That Sparked a Book

This is piece #9 of a 9-post BTS series about my book Polyworker which examines what building a portfolio career actually looks like from the inside. If you missed piece #1 (titled My So-Called Millennial Midlife Crisis) or piece #2 (Mad Men Living in a TikTok World), I’d read those first to get your bearings.

There’s something fitting about ending the behind-the-scenes series for my book by revisiting one of the influential conversations that helped set the whole project in motion: a conversation with the lovely “Anna Mac”!

When Anna Mackenzie and I first recorded our podcast interview a little over a year ago now, Polyworker did not yet exist. It was just a desire floating around in the liminal sludge of my brain: representing a collection of questions I wanted to explore publicly as I tried to make sense of how quickly and untidily the working world was changing.

And, as conversations with fellow portfolio careerists do, our chat rattled something loose in me! I immediately called up my friend MJ Halberstadt, who would eventually become my writing coach, and began the journey of writing what is now the book.

A year later, what amazes me most is how little of the conversation feels dated. In fact, listening to it again doesn’t feel so much like revisiting the past but rather a returning to the source of something that is still unfolding.

I love that this is how the body of work continues to grow: no more straight lines for this gal! Just a series of returns, echoes, strange thresholds, and ideas that keep finding new forms and new ways to help people move through the messy middle of becoming who they were always meant to be. Each ending becoming a new beginning, carrying everything that came before it, and, somehow, everything still waiting ahead.

✍🏻 Notes in the Margins

Corporate Fleabag

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Feb 6

In the wake of yet another round of corporate layoffs—Amazon, UPS, and others—and the now familiar spectacle of big tech executives and Congress circle-jerking on cue, I’m releasing the first film adaptation of my book Polyworker this week.

👇🏻 Smash the link below 👇🏻

👇 Here are a few ways that I can help you out! 👇

SUBSCRIBE to “the lab” (it’s FREE.99!) → If you’re keen to come along on this whole polyworking journey, give this account a follow or a subscribe!

BUY the book → 📖 🎉 Want the full Polyworker experience? Go grab a copy on Amazon or Bookshop. She’s right there waiting for you! 😉

TALK SHOP with me → Ready to make real progress in your portfolio? Put my product brain to work via a 1-to-1 office hours session!