When I first started talking to FlexPaths, I didn’t realize the scope of what Flex is. Needless to say, that didn’t last long.  Quickly, I found out that it really relates to just about everyone that has a job today. In order to share the way I found that out with you, I’m going to trace my career path.

I’ll start at the beginning.

August 2001 I move to New York City. Fresh out of college, I do what I need to survive while I find the “perfect job,” and so I continue what I’d been doing for the last 8 years and get a job in the restaurant industry. This is how I find myself with a bartending shift on the evening of September 11th. The night before I was staying with a friend in Manhanttan and I’m one of the few employees that isn’t trapped (bridges closed, subway shut down) in an outer borough. Numb, I go to work, those who lived in the neighborhood needed a place to be with other people, cold drink in hand, watching everything unfold on the television, not speaking. I cover for other employees who can’t make it in to work. I’m relieved to be there so I can hold onto something - to remind myself that what’s happening is real, and that life does go on – it’s the only way I can fight  back. Flex in a disaster.

October ‘01 – March’02 I find a job in my Brooklyn neighborhood at a sound stage. I work strange hours to accommodate film shoots and live events on the weekends.  Odd days, flex hours and a very peculiar job – my role is site specific, but my job isn’t schedule specific. Can I get a scanner so I can get some better photos on the studio website? This turns into helping a film crew get polaroids to their team back on the West Coast for approval one day using a scanner and a connection to the internet. Looks like it could use some color-correcting, quick fix in a big pinch. Interesting, but not what I want to do with my life. On the plus side I inherit a living room couch from the set of a Wu Tang Clan music video. Did I mention this job was strange?

April ’02- November ’04 My first “good” job. I take on a series of roles at a production company cum boutique ad agency. “Sure, I love travel,” I say when I get the job. Almost three years later on a schedule that turned into 30% on the road with extraordinary demands of my energy and passion, and I’m tired. I was up to my eyeballs in formatting video for the web, delivery for broadcast, for editors.

Archiving and content management- and trying to do support from afar when the library is still very much a spare room with piles floor to ceiling with reels:  D1’s, D2’s, digibetas, beta masters, hundreds and hundreds of ¾” reels, there’s got to be an easier way. And then there was the big chore - turn this room of video into an interactive DVD and a website. We were on the cusp. Everyone was in the same boat. We had too much physical content, and not enough virtual spaces to store it.

Relief was coming, but either we couldn’t see it from where we were, or what we knew was priced out of range. Server space was still precious, and the tools to get it there still cost hundreds an hour to use. It was my first web build, and it was outsourced – only to London, not India. I learned how to wake up early so I could get the most out of the developers before they quit at 4pm to head to the pub, (instead of later day worries about an 11 hour time differential with teams in the East).  I get to know and work with a lot of successful and famous people, music videos, commercials, parties, film screenings, studios, unheard tracks, high times, fine art. We did a lot of great work - I’m flexing left and right, I’m drowning in high rez photographs, video tape and digital files. I’m a road warrior. I’m a right-hand to too many people. I need a break.

November ’04- November ’05 My first “Start Up.” Most people wouldn’t call that a break, but concert.tv was bootstrapping it, and I wasn’t working full time- I had a few projects of my own that I balanced as well, and I was enjoying life. Some days I’d work from home, some days I’d work from the web shop downtown, some days I’d head into the office on Union Square– but never during rush hour. We negotiated all the agreements to get usage of high quality audio and video of bands on digital cable and over the internet – and that’s no small feat with the grumpy labels. I learned database structure, how affiliate deals work, CDN’s, CMS’s and how to do my own Information Architecture. Mashable.com was born this year, I’m immediately an avid reader. “OOOH, you can do THAT with THAT, and how do I get me some of THAT?”

Web based technology for consumers is springing to life, and I can’t get enough. We got a great website up and we were in maintenance mode, I was ready to jump back into the fire. By this time I knew I wanted “all-day-everyday” to be about digital technology and online production. The web and what it facilitated was a common thread through my previous job, and now it was time to take it primetime.

December ’05- December ’06 My first completely inflexible job. I learn a lot, I find a great mentor, I handle dozens of site builds - handfuls of clients. Enterprise e-commerce, desktop applications delivered via the web, emerging social media strategies, CAD interfaces through web browsers, databasedriven touch screen interfaces. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. The day I write or respond to what I counted to be 300 emails by 4pm is the same day my (bi-polar) client calls me (on my cell, while I’m trying to eat lunch) to scream obscenities at me about something I didn’t do. This is the same day I return to the office to find out my mentor is leaving… I start looking for the next thing. I sure hope it flexes.

December ’06- May ’07 Out of the pot and into the fire. Start-Up #2. Working with the “internet famous.” Sure did learn a lot about personalities. Shooting in the morning, publishing to the web in the afternoon. Syndicating feeds, organizing metadata, optimizing keywords, downloading uploads from all over the country, spec’ing editing stations, managing emotions of a young staff near and far,  coordinating the platform build that was ultimately to syndicate to over 100 different iterations, with all the new whoseitwhatsit badges and hooks and traction points of the web 2.0 world and custom designs for each piece. I was flexing alright, but I was flexing to accommodate a 16 hour work day. Late nights, blackberry around the clock (and under my pillow while I slept), the fall guy for the egomaniacal founder’s circle; my boyfriend leaves me, my friends stop speaking to me… You’ve got to be kidding me.

June ’07- May ’08 Taking a break. Give me a big, predictable, advertising agency that arrives at 9 and leaves at 6. Let me put my head down and not get noticed. Let me fall in love with technology again, and have some time to think, to breathe. I revel in the luxury of gynormous budgets – extended timelines, stable after stable of resources to tap and hundreds of minds to pick. Great mentor #2. Best informal flex manager on the planet. Get your work done, let me know where you are. I’m squared away on the job by 3 today, and would love to skate over to the New York Public Library for a lecture on Net Neutrality and Intellectual Property.  I’ve got my cell if you need me, I’ll only be 10 blocks away. “Go for it,”  he says, “but bring me details tomorrow. I wish I could go too.” I get promoted within the year, I get relocated to a different account and a micro-manager. I lose great mentor #2, my informal flex evaporates and I start looking again…

I find Robin. I find Meryl. Out of this I get the pleasure of a Sandy and  a Karol. Don’t get me wrong, we have our challenges, we have our long days and long weekends. We’re a 100% virtual team and so we have to closely coordinate schedules, observe time differences and personal lives almost blindly. Everything I ever did before was about selling to people and leveraging the web. Everything we’re doing now is about taking care of people and leveraging new business strategies. They’re different worlds. My world was filled with tech buzzwords, speedy solutions and “The Next Big Thing (for the next ten minutes)”

I say “ruby on rails” and they smile and ask if that’s how Dorthy gets back from OZ these days. The best part about it, the part that keeps me coming back for more, is that every day they teach me about something I never would have learned anywhere else, working with 100 other people like myself. Now I care about BI strategy and secure data transfer; SaaS, cloud computing and online collaboration. Now I get to work on products and services and partnerships that really might just change the world for millions of people. Maybe I’ll get to be a part of that.

Here I am today, 9 months into start-up #3, working with great people, making great stuff (more on that this Spring). Work these days has a lot more meaning and a lot less BS. Third time’s a charm. The true “Big Thing” I learned out of all of this: it’s a hell of a lot easier to find something when you know what you’re looking for. I sure took the long route, but maybe I can help you find yours easier.

Put on your flexible spectacles, what’s your flex career story?

What are you looking for?