I don’t want to be a designer, a marketer, an illustrator, a brander, a social media consultant, a multi-platform guru, an interface wizard, a writer of copy, a technological assistant, an applicator, an aesthetic king, a notable user, a profit-maximizer, a bottom-line analyzer, a meme generator, a hit tracker, a re-poster, a sponsored blogger, a starred commentator, an online retailer, a viral relayer, a handle, a font or a page. I don’t want to be linked in, tuned in, ‘liked’, incorporated, listed or programmed. I don’t want to be a brand, a representative, an ambassador, a bestseller or a chart-topper. I don’t want to be a human resource or part of your human capital.

I don’t want to be an entrepreneur of myself.

Don’t listen to the founders, the employers, the newspapers, the pundits, the editors, the forecasters, the researchers, the branders, the career counsellors, the prime minister, the job market, Michel Foucault or your haughty brother in finance – there’s something else!

I want to be a lover, a teacher, a wanderer, an assembler of words, a sculptor of immaterial, a maker of instruments, a Socratic philosopher and an erratic muse. I want to be a community centre  a piece of art, a wonky cursive script and an old-growth tree! I want to be a disrupter, a creator, an apocalyptic visionary, a master of reconfiguration, a hypocritical parent, an illegal download and a choose-your-own-adventure! I want to be a renegade agitator! A licker of ice cream! An organiser of mischief! A released charge! A double jump on the trampoline! A wayward youth! A volunteer! A partner.

I want to be a curator of myself, an anti-preneur, a person.

Unlimited availabilities. No followers required. Only friends.

~ Danielle Leduc

First published HERE (thanks to Emma Arogundade for sharing it on Facebook).
Note from the author:
I actually didn’t write this as an ‘anti-preneurial manifesto’ – it was more of a poetic rant written in frustration from combing through the online job market. I meant it as less of a takedown of capitalism and more of a critique of how we are told to sell ourselves as brands, to self-promote, in order to make it in this world, and as such we allow our job titles to define us to a certain extent. I think all of us are many of the things I listed towards the end, but these things don’t appear as marketable skills in a neoliberal economy with a tight and precarious job market. We are not our resumes, is all.