by Joelle Steele

I have always loved to work and be productive. I’m not the kind of person who can sit around and do nothing. Even when I’m watching TV I have to be doing something aside from just sitting there staring at the tube. Both my parents were the same way. As I write this, I’m 69 years old, and I still work and I have no intention of retiring. To me, retiring would be like giving up the things I love to do the most. That is definitely not what I want for my life. The idea of retirement is an old 20th century construct that I just can’t get behind.

To me, picking a career that was right for me was not easy. I am a creative person and a polymath. I have been that way since I was a small child. I express my creativity through whatever medium I choose, and I like to study, learn new things, and do a wide variety of things professionally. This is what makes it appear to some people that my career and work experience are erratic, that I do a bunch of things that are unrelated or unfocused. But, they are definitely not. If you look very carefully at what I’ve done throughout my life, you can easily see that there has always been a very clear connection among all the things I do.

In particular, there are two common career threads I’ve woven to fuse everything together quite seamlessly. First, there’s writing (which includes editing and publishing); and second is art (which includes illustration, photography, and graphic design). These are the things I love to do most in the world and I have done them all consistently since 1973. I consider being an artist and writer as the primary focus that blends together everything else I do.

What else do I do? Well, I’ve done quite a lot over the years, most of which I became interested in as a child and as a teenager. I’ve been a face and ear ID expert since 1980, court-certified in 1989; an astrologer since 1975, specializing in career/life purpose; a handwriting forgery expert since 1985, court-certified in 1993; a legal writer since 1983, specializing in small business contracts; designer 1977-2010 consulting on and doing interior, floral, interior/exterior landscape (court-certified in 1991 as an expert on the usual and customary practices of the horticultural industry); digital photo restorer 1994-2016; residential property manager 1983-1997, managing 200+ residential rentals and doing vintage home remodels; speaker 1983-2003, covering 15-20 cities twice per year, speaking on small business practices and a few other subjects, mainly to the horticultural industry; and adjunct faculty instructor at various colleges in California and Washington 1983-2016, teaching all of the things I do, including writing, publishing, web design, genealogy, and small business management.

Whew! That’s a lot of work, and I have enjoyed almost all of it except for property management. I also had a lot of temp and part-time jobs over the years, mostly doing editing or office work, including everything from switchboard operator to photo archivist. These were mostly jobs that I didn’t particularly like, but I had to pay the bills, especially when I was sick and had enormous medical bills to pay for almost 20 years. I also did a lot of volunteer work along the way (1970-2010), mostly consisting of editing and producing newsletters for non-profit groups, and also volunteering at low-cost/no-cost spay and neuter clinics and feral cat colony management. I had planned to quit volunteering after I moved to Washington, but then I got sucked into helping seniors downsize and organize their things when they moved into much smaller homes or retirement communities, which I did for four years (2006-2010).

So, that’s the life of this polymath. It’s 2021 as I write this, and today my primary career focus is on my writing and on my forensic services: face and ear comparisons to authenticate identities of people in photos, and forgery detection in handwritten signatures. I do occasionally help someone with their small book, genealogy, and landscape projects. But I mostly want to spend a lot more time on my own projects. Right now, I’ve got a lot of books in progress, and there are a lot of blank canvases in my art studio that I would like to paint. Always something to do!