Designations and Hierarchy

I chose to be a freelance writer about ten years ago. During all these years I have had the same designation, except that I added 'editor' also to it as per my experience.

I look at my colleagues of ten years ago in business networking sites and see where they are today--they have designations like President, Asst Vice President, something Manager, Head something else, and they have gone from being simple writers, visualisers, programmers and artists to marketing, branding, business strategy, various areas of design and management. It's almost like a different language--the language of today, and it seems to my eyes and ears a noisy, loud language that needs translation and gains status from its complexity and verbiage.

If I had continued working for companies, maybe I would be listing my areas of experience with this same language, and hold a similarly grand(iose?) designation. I raise no objections to the way life is here, but just observe from a distance because I have remained aloof from the flow in a way.

But few people understand or appreciate being different from the crowd. Parents want their children to have these designations and salaries, the means to showing off and not being different--quite like the Dursleys in the Harry Potter series.

Even teachers appreciate students who have gone into the same race, all running with foreign labelled clothes, smelling suavely of perfume and cologne, clocking so many hours of work a day, driving cars, buying houses in the plural. Definitely they deserve much appreciation for the race is tough and you need to survive it everyday with various skills.

But the few who choose to stay out of the race and try to live their dreams deserve no less. Some friends have said to me, I wish I had the courage to do as you did, leave behind the good salary and the security to take on the adventure of working as a freelancer, on your own terms and pace. But most other people are unimpressed, even sorry for the likes of us. :)