“You know. Working for da man. So, you wanna dance?”

Guest post by Angela Durden

Creatives have a difficult time explaining what they do. This is not a new state of being for the creative. For instance, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was a sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer. Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was a polymath, seeking answers in painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, invention, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, cartography, and more.

But here is what I can double-gaurOdamnTEEya: If either of them had to fill out a job application today, they could not get past their name, address, and SS# seeing as how job applications are not friendly to independent contractors who do one-off custom projects for multiple entities by applying their skills over a wide area of fields. In other words, Michelangelo and Leo could not be pigeon-holed.

Their skill set would not fit into an easily check-marked list of core competencies so that a corporate bureaucrat could place them in a static position. If they went out dancing and a woman asked them what they did, fifteen minutes later she’d be walking away sneering and thinking, “Poser. Faker. Con man”, and he’d be thinking “All I did was answer her question. What did I do wrong?”

And being the investigative types that they are, they would study the situation. So, since they just might want to eventually go out on a date with a woman, they would eventually learn to say something that the masses could comprehend. Something bland like, “What do I do? Oh, you know. Same as everybody else. Working for da man. Hahaha! So, you wanna dance?”