Prestige Margarine

How would your parents explain what you do for a living?

Does it matter to you that they can’t quote an important title at an even more important company?

That they sometimes go out of their way to invent roles for you to shield themselves from the immense embarrassment you’ve caused them?

(that was only partly a joke.)

Should it?

Solopreneurship is notoriously unsexy.

There’s nothing fancy or notable about our work to the uninitiated.

Heck, we often feel unappreciated and unrecognized because we’re usually working for various clients doing various disjointed projects that may or may not promote world peace.

The only structure we can claim is no structure; this lifestyle often trips us up.

We’re social creatures, and hierarchal arrangements have kept us alive since… well, forever.

It helped to know who was the boss, who deserved the most reverence because he was the guy who knew his shit and could lead us through the storms our environments threw at us.

Being even remotely associated with an established boss — and his company — meant that reverence trickled down to our ancestors as well.

Your role in such a community was a matter of life or death.

Extreme, yes, but those were also extreme times.

Guess what?

That prehistoric wiring remains as wired as ever today.

We want to be able to mention our boss and see a spark of recognition flash across our conversation partner’s eyes.

We want to boast an uncomplicated position that turns heads at dinner parties and commands respect afterward.

We don’t want to be the odd one out at those excruciating high school reunions who can’t quite describe what we’ve been up to beyond “Niko tu online.”

And we certainly don’t want to spend 30 minutes updating Uncle Steve on precisely what we do all day at home in front of the laptop he helped us buy.

Welcome to this side of hell.

I’ve always said I’d much rather just be rich than be rich and famous.

Fame is vain.

Fame is fleeting.

Fame is exhausting.

Fame strokes small egos.

Tenda wema, nenda zako.

It shouldn’t matter what people think of your occupation, whether they can digest your eclectic host of clients within a snack break, or whether your job description is palatable to the relative whose approval you’ve been seeking all your life.

☆Are you fulfilled?

☆Do you enjoy your work?

☆Do your results speak for themselves?

☆Are you not doing anything to advance international crime?

(or if you are, is it totally badass and worth a Netflix remake?)

That should be enough.

You’re hotter when you’re self-validated,

Hope. ☆