What is your job title? We all have one. I have been a student worker, a telemarketer (yes, yes, I know I’m going to Hell, but I’m saving seats for some of my best friends!), a special ed teacher, a graduate student research and teaching assistant (GTRA), and an instructor. And now, I’m… stumped. Well, okay, I am the Managing Editor here at Work It, Mom! However, I am still a contractor, a freelancer.

When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them I am a medical editor. A consultant. A grant writer. A writing consultant. In addition to these things (which are all the same thing, because it is just one person– me– doing all of them), I am also the owner of my own business. I have a Limited Liability Company. An LLC. (And oh yes, I will be doing an article about why you need to have one too, yes indeed). I am also the sole proprieter of this business, and when people do work for me, they are also independent contractors, consultants, grant writers, and medical editors. Otherwise known as freelancers.

I consider myself to be more of a consultant than a freelancer though. I have had repeat clients for the entire time I have been consulting (three years; two years exclusively). Even though there are occasional slow periods, I don’t often wonder where my next project is coming from. I understand what it is that I do– I am not under any misconceptions about that. And you could even say that I have a certain amount of confidence that I am good at it. But I still don’t know definitively what to call it, or what to call myself.

Am I a CEO? A Director? A President? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each of these titles? I think of a CEO as someone who runs a company that is expanding and growing. A CEO manages and oversees the growth of the company and hires other people to conduct a lot of the work that the company accomplishes (i.e., the CEO of Spring doesn’t sell cell phones in the store). However, I did not feel comfortable calling myself a CEO. Part of this is because what I am doing– editing other people’s writing– is quite intimate in many ways. Also, I am personally doing 99% of the work, and my title needs to convey that. There is a large amount of trust involved in giving someone your words to re-work. And so it is very important to me that I have a very personal relationship with my clients. My clients refer to me as “our editor” or “our writer,” or “Jen.” If I were a CEO or a President, I think that would formalize things in a way that is de-personalizing or distancing, and that might make people less comfortable allowing me access to their projects, their words, their ideas, their heads.

I studied creative writing in college and graduate school. I am, by first trade, a poet. I am a woman in love with language. I love the mouthfeel of words: Consultant has a lot of hard consonants, which are professional, but the “s” in the middle of the word softens it. Founder is another good word: I found it, I own it, I’ll keep it– and it has a soft “f” and lots of nice, round vowels in the middle. Nothing threatens people if I say, “Founder.”

But lately, I have been using as my signature on my emails (which is really the only place where having a title really seems to matter– I take contracts to get them notarized quite often, but the contracts list me as Jennifer Creer, Edit Rx, LLC. I am synonymous with my company, as I should be): Medical Editing and Writing Consultation, which sidesteps the title altogether. I hadn’t even realized before I just went and looked at my email settings that I had done that.

Before I sat down to write this, I was a little worried about my lack of a definitive title. I didn’t know for sure what that meant. However, I know think it simply means that I don’t want to be boxed in by a title. I want the fluidity to grow and assume new challenges and responsibilities.

Even though I may not think of my company as a corporation that is going to grow in terms of employees, my ultimate goal is very clear: I want my name to by synonymous with excellence. I want to be the absolute best there is in my field. Do you think I can start using that as my title?

Nothing gives me as much pleasure, however, as when my clients introduce me to others as “Ours.”

What is your title? And what does it mean to you?