Last week, I had dinner with someone I've known for more than half my life. This is one of the reasons I came back to Philadelphia-- so I could be with people who have known me through multiple incarnations. When I met her, I was a free-lance producer for National Public Radio. We've been friends through the intervening careers-- in archives, museums and urban revitalization. I told her that these days, I was thinking a lot about the evolution of identity. That I was increasingly comfortable with my current role, but could not always define myself completely in terms of what I am now. That sometimes I still feel the need to explain who I used to be.

She didn't see the problem. That 25 year identity shaped what you are now, she said. You're still the same person. Why shouldn't you tell people what you've done for most of your life?

Smart woman. I have wonderful friends in some of the other places I've lived. But only here do I have friends who look at me and remember who I was when I was 28.

Dress the Part

“If I give you this job, you’re going to have to dress better.” It was early in my museum career and I had just been offered a major promotion. So, I focused my attention on how I should be dressing, invested in a business wardrobe, and never looked back.

A couple of years ago, I was looking for someone to fill a highly visible position and brought a candidate in for a second interview. Great resume. Great phone interview. But the applicant showed up in clothes I would not wear to wash my car. Different generations have different ideas about what constitutes work-appropriate clothing, but this was something else entirely. I couldn’t even consider someone who would dress that way for a job interview.

A short digression: I’m at a party in Cambridge. A man I’d just met looks at me, tilts his head and says, “Let me guess. A position of responsibility in an arts-related organization.” I don’t remember what I was wearing, but obviously it spoke very clearly.

In fact, clothing speaks much louder than words. This spring, I led a couple of resume review sessions at a national museum conference. After one of the sessions, I spent a little time with a woman who was seeking a position in an art museum. Despite her impressive credentials, she’s offered volunteer opportunities and board positions, not the actual paying job she wants. This was easy to understand. Women who work in art museums tend to have a specific look, a certain style. This elegant, stylish woman in her pink tweed jacket and pearls looked exactly like a museum trustee.

Clothing is theater. The way you dress defines the role you play.

Living in Reloville

Last week, Peter Kilborn published a book called Next Stop, Reloville: Life Inside America's New Rootless Professional Class. It describes the "relos" for whom relocation has become a way of life. The classic relo family has a father who works for a large corporation that transfers them every three or four years, a mother who stays home in a high-end subdivision, and kids who have to re-establish themselves in new schools. They're affluent, and rootless.

For thirteen years, I moved a lot for career reasons. I didn't work for a large corporation, I had a series of museum jobs. In some cases, I knew they would be transitory. In others, they just didn't work out. But every three or four years, my husband and I would uproot ourselves and start again somewhere else.

By Kilborn's definition, we were not classic relos. My career drove the process, not his. We don't have kids. We never lived in a subdivision. But we did have to re-establish ourselves, over and over again, and our lives had no context. No one knew who we had been before. They only knew who we were then.

You expect to leave your friends and family behind when you relocate. What you don't think about is that you have to reconstruct every detail of your life: new doctors, dentists, drycleaners. One of my favorite jackets, a spectacular designer piece I had found in a thrift store, was shredded-- literally shredded-- in a dry cleaner that apparently employed Edward Scissorhands. I carried it around for years, in the apparent belief that I would find a faith healer who could wave his hands over a mangled jacket and make it whole. I hunted for bakeries, places to eat breakfast. I stopped strangers on the street and ask where they get their hair done.

As we left each town, we left what was best about each of them. Orlando had Cuban food, a dog park with the best swimming lake, wonderful birdwatching and canoing. Harrisburg had great crafts shows, an amazing jazz piano player at a local bar (really) and a group of terrific women ("Women with Attitude") who met once a month for drinks. I made two really close friends in Pittsfield and it has the incredible cultural richness of the Berkshires.

Three years ago, we came home. Reloville is an ok place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there forever.

Sometimes it really isn't your fault. My friend Jim was an absolutely competent local reporter who covered city council sessions and school board meetings for a regional newspaper in New Jersey. His newspaper hit a rough patch and he lost his job. (In retrospect, this was an early warning sign for the transformation of the newspaper industry, but no one could have known this at the time.) Problem was that at the same time, one of the biggest newspapers in the region went under. (Another early warning sign, this one a little bit louder.) So Jim was competing for newspaper jobs-- which have always been tough to get-- with people who had won Pulitzer Prizes. It took him a very long time to find another job. He was just as competent as he always had been. The competitive environment had changed around him.

I've talked to a lot of people who are looking for work in the last couple of months. Some just finished graduate school. Some were downsized. Most of them are struggling to stay positive-- trying not to internalize the situation. A situation which really is not their fault.

Remembering Stonewall

The performance had been organized by a gay rights group called Stonewall Nation. It was taking place in the auditorium of the Berkshire Museum. I was the director of the museum, so I introduced the show, and I mentioned that I had been at Stonewall. 200 people gasped aloud.

Stonewall was forty years ago. I was living in the West Village, around the corner from the dive bar where it all began. I didn't go to jail, I didn't get beaten up by the police, but it was natural for me to show up -- to make a statement. I thought it was ridiculous that gay sex was illegal. So I joined the crowd.

A couple of months ago, my husband and I went to see Milk. Great movie. It reminded me how very far we have come. My parents were bohemian intellectuals and we always had gay friends, but when I was young, ordinary people were not openly gay. There were no gay characters in movies or television shows. Gay couples did not adopt children (Well, they still can't in some states.) No gay teachers or legislators. Magazine articles on interior design did not feature gay couples. No listings in the New York Times when gay men and lesbians got married, celebrated commitment ceremonies or civil unions. Is everything perfect for gay people? Of course not. Homophobia is very real. Gays get beaten up, even murdered. Gay teens commit suicide at a higher rate. We're still arguing "don't ask, don't tell." Gay couples can only get married in a few states.

But forty years ago, it was so much worse. Until the 1970s, homosexuality was defined as a mental illness by the American Psychological Association. One of my mother's friends was committed to a mental institution in the 1950s because she was gay. For no other reason.

I'm writing about this for two reasons. The first is that today is the 40th anniversary of Stonewall. The second is that forty years ago, as a very young woman, I knew that it was wrong-- just wrong-- to discriminate against anyone because of their sexuality. I knew that my parents' friends Brad and George were just as committed to each other as any other couple. I knew that Tina was perfectly sane. I knew that the laws were wrong, not my gay friends.

I have had six careers. I celebrate reinvention. My core values were set when I was young and they haven't changed.

Keeping a foot in the door

People grow like rings on trees. If you're reinventing yourself, you haven't left that previous self behind. What you were is still there, underneath what you are now.

I spent a lot of time with career # 5, the museum career. I truly love museums. Always have. Always will. I have a lot of friends in that world. And I still know a lot about it. So, it was important to me to retain a connection so this identity didn't just erode.

First, I tried serving on the board of a museum professional association. That didn't work very well. The organization needed people on its board who currently represent museums. After three years, although I keep up with the field, I'm not in the trenches any more and my knowledge base is getting obsolete. And yes, I do mean trenches. The persistent ivory tower image of museums was far removed from reality before the bottom dropped out of the global economy.

I've found a niche that keeps me involved with museum, or at least with museum conferences where I can see my friends and stay connected. The last two years, I've spoken at the annual meeting of the American Association of Museums about change. This year, I led two sessions on resume development and one on managing career change. I got a call last week about another museum conference-- same topic. I'll probably do it too. The conference is at the Maryland shore in February, and I've always liked the ocean in the winter. I'm a walking advertisement for a skills-based resume. Living proof that you can take what you've learned in one career and apply it in another context. Proof that there's life after museums.

Change is a funny topic in a museum context. Museums are all about preserving stuff. Someone I admire very much told me once that she thought many people were drawn to museums looking for what she called "an island of stasis in a sea of change." She knows, as do I, that there is no island of stasis. There is only the sea of change.

This image is used by permission of www.freefoto.com

Do I know me?

For years, there was no line between what I did and who I was. I was a museum person. It never occurred to me that I would ever be anything else. I used to say that it either said something wonderful about how I felt about my career, or something really sad about my social life, but the annual museum conferences were among my favorite parties.

Three years ago, I took a job as Director of Development for a community and economic development agency. My husband and I had decided to return to Philadelphia and this was the best choice at the time. It turned out to be a very good choice indeed. My work benefits a neighborhood I've known and loved for years. I've always liked knowing the inside story, and I understand how the city works infinitely better than I ever have. Thinking new thoughts builds brain cells. And economic freefall has not been kind to museums.

My identity is in transition. At first, it was hard to introduce myself as Director of Development for University City District without providing a bit of the back story. Now, it's easier. Everyone doesn't need to know who I used to be. This is who I am now.