Careful what you're good at

I feel like this is something a wise grandparent would say, advising their youngsters on the path to fulfillment. On the lines of, "Careful what you wish for..." Like, praying for patience. Pray for patience and you won't magically become patient, what you'll get is a load of opportunities to practice patience! Darn it!

So I've been pretty good at my job. Twenty-plus years as a packaging engineer and I have a healthy resume to show for it. Had a long run at a single company that happened to be a healthcare products company. I'm one of those folks who went to college and got a specific degree and then went out into the world to get a job in that specific field.  Not that it's a limiting field, not at all. But I am hearby branded for all eternity a "packaging engineer," and anyone who looks at my resume will see me as just that.  Well, what if I want a role on the strategic marketing side? Nope. No experience there. What if I want to shift from healthcare to, say, toy packaging? Nope. My background is all healthcare. I did not create diversity in my career path.  And now I'm pigeon-holed for being good at one particular thing.

If you're the one in your family who's "good at" doing dishes, guess what? That becomes your job, right?  Or if you're the one who knows how to maintain all the yard equipment in the garage. I could go on. Some reputations we want to earn, sure. But getting stuck in a corner because we earned the reputation for being the one who always brings the snacks, who always takes the meeting notes, who always cleans up the messes...who only knows how to think about packaging engineering...that's not rewarding.  I'm busting out.