An Unconventional Way to Live a Reasonable Life
I have had, conservatively, 785 jobs.
I still don’t have one résumé. I have a collection of résumés. One résumé implies a straight line, and my line looks more like a rabid raccoon got hold of the paints and, instead of making a beautiful rainbow, smeared the entire canvas in what one can only describe as poop brown. (Beauty is in the eye of the beholder??)
For most of my adult life, I thought this was something I needed to explain. I’ve never really had a “career” in the traditional sense. I’ve had jobs. Lots of them. Often several at once. Chef. Caterer. Event worker. Social media manager. Freelancer. Production Assistant. The job I took because I wanted to learn something. The one I took because it paid well (I had Europe on the brain). The one I took because I wanted an adventure.
For a long time, I thought my résumé was evidence that I couldn’t figure my shit out. Why can’t she just pick something? I would shout to myself.
The thing is, I actually do want a career. It just has to be on my terms. I like being useful. I like having somewhere to be and a reason to get dressed. I like meeting people I wouldn’t otherwise meet. I like having a project to obsess over.
What I don’t particularly like is the idea that all of that has to fit inside one job.
The conventional career is supposed to look something like this: get a job, get better at the job, get promoted, stay long enough that leaving would not seem suspicious, get another, slightly better job, and repeat until you die or retire.
That sounds wonderful and also like a hostage situation.
I’ve spent most of my working life in the service industry, freelancing, and doing gig work, where the tradeoff was pretty obvious: brutal hours, inconsistent schedules, decent pay, but not much of a safety net.
What I got in return, though, was something I didn’t realize I would eventually value more than almost anything else: autonomy. I had options. If one job disappeared, I had another. If one client became unbearable, I could walk away. If I wanted to travel, I could rearrange my work instead of asking permission to rearrange my life.
That became its own kind of stability. Not the traditional kind—a predictable paycheck, benefits, and a retirement plan. A different kind: the kind where no single job gets to hold your entire life in a vice-like grip.
I’d made peace with the chaos of it years ago. What I hadn’t made peace with was explaining it. That was the part that still nagged — not the life itself, just the not having language for it.
This year, a couple of Substack essays finally gave me some: portfolio career. Reading them was like someone handing me the manual for the machine I’d been operating on instinct for over a decade. (Ummm thanks.)
Around the same time, an artist friend used a word I’d never heard before — Collectera — to describe her own gathering of inspirations. Not a career term at all. Just a way of talking about the references, obsessions, and stray fascinations she pulls from when she’s creating something.
The second she said it, I knew it was mine too.
Portfolio career explains the jobs. Collectera explains the whole operation — the reason I can't commit to one hobby, one aesthetic, one version of myself. Some days it's teaching how to grill the perfect medium-rare steak. Other days it's building my online business with vigor, and then immediately championing the get off your phone movement. The jobs are just one piece of it.
For a while I was embarrassed by all of it. “So, what do you do?” is a normal party question, and I did not have a normal party answer. Rattle off the shortlist and watch someone’s eyes glaze over. I wanted a title — something that made the pieces look intentional. Now I think all the pieces are the point.
Collectera.
A collection of everything that makes up who you are and who you're becoming — dreams, obsessions, skills, and the strange little things you pick up along the way. An encyclopedia of your own brain. Artists build them to remember and reminisce when they're chasing their next creative fires. In its physical form, I envision Collecteras as a handmade leather book, three inches thick and bulging with secrets just waiting to be released.
Suddenly my work history made a lot more sense — not as its own thing, but as one piece in a much bigger collection. Some jobs were there for money. Some for people. Some for the story I’d tell later. Some taught me something I used somewhere completely unrelated. Some got me out of the house. Some let me travel. Some let me know what I do not want. Some led me to lifelong friends. Some were simply just fun. Not every piece of a collection has to serve the same purpose to belong.
That’s also why I closed a successful business at the end of 2024. Success and wantaren’t the same thing — and I’m more interested in building a life I want to wake up and have coffee with than a career I’m supposed to have.
My Collectera has paid more than just my rent for years now. It is my life’s work after all.
Right now, my career collection looks like this: leading Butter Cult, social media strategist. A standing Saturday shift at the farmers market for a local bakery, because getting up early for baked goods is the closest thing I have to a religion. Slinging beer and pretzels at a concert venue, because apparently I still enjoy crowds. Some very mundane remote fractional office work that pays like an adult even when I don’t feel like one. Of course there’s more — that’s just the short list 😉.
Each one does something different. Money. Creativity. Community. Structure. Movement. Curiosity. Together, they make a life that fits me better than any single job ever has.
A career isn’t supposed to be a straight line. It’s supposed to be a collection. Mine’s still growing — new pieces, new obsessions, new jobs I can’t yet explain at a party. That’s kind of the whole point.
Cheers,
Nicole | Butter Cult🧈
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