Once again, I’ve got a podcast guest whose Venn diagram of interests looks strikingly similar to my own. Multi-passionate Elin Filbey and I not only share a work history (museums, higher education and career coaching) but other factors as well, including being moms of small children, coming from the upper Midwest, teaching fitness classes, and our love of performing. In the wide-ranging conversation this podcast is known for, we cover this and so much more. Elin’s experience is proof that taking side quests makes a Renaissance Person’s life more fulfilling!

Promised Show Notes Materials (take a drink):

• Sign up for updates on my podcast and what’s happening in the Renaissance People Community.
• Sign up to work with me and Find Your Golden Thread
• Patrick Meaney’s LinkedIn post about shaping your career like a bramble
• Sara’s career coaching newsletter, Take it With You, focused on Packing Your Skillset Suitcase
• Sara’s newsletter with the word cloud of skills needed for remote jobs Appreciating Your Value
• Sara’s newsletter about translating your skills to potential employers Time to Translate
• Queued for Thought episode introducing Conversations on Loneliness, Healing and Connecting
• Social Contract Theory was the idea I was referencing, but looking at it, I wasn’t quite remembering the full definition. Oh well!
• Ep. 8 Bringing Worlds Together Full Circle with Jess Rowell, Renaissance Woman
• Tamara Poles’s guest episode where she discusses side quests on podcast Research Adjacent
• When NASA Gave Spiders Drugs to See how it Affected their Webs, 1995
• Ep. 10 The Forever Revolution with Jenni Gritters, Multi-Passionate
• My preferred metaphor: Reimagining STEM Workforce Development as a Braided River
• A beautiful rant about “soft skills”: Stop Calling Them Soft: Why Today’s Essential Skills Are Anything But
• Ep. 9 A Mind for Memory with Brian Skellenger, Survivalist
• United Karaoke
• Elin’s podcast Curate Your Career Podcast, co-hosted with Alli Schell, Spotify | Apple Podcast | YouTube | Instagram
• Elin’s Facebook Group Deaccessioned: A Network for Former and Aspiring Ex-Museum Pros
• Elin’s website Deaccessioned Career Coaching

Follow Elin on Social Media:

LinkedIn | Instagram |

A few things Elin and I discuss:

• Museums as a stimulating place for multi-passionates
• Drawbacks of museum life
• Elin’s path to career coaching
• How to explain your career jumps
• Toxic relationship industries (i.e. museums, journalism, education, non-profits, pretty much my entire career…)
• Translating your skills or job title
• Finding a career that fits your current values
• Being a helper and a villager
• Keys to answering, “what do you do?”
• How we live for the applause (and give Lind Belcher from Bob’s Burgers vibes)

Quotes from the episode:

(Elin) And I used to think that it was a defect or a, a liability because I was so interested in so many things. But now as I'm getting older and I'm learning more about myself, I see it as an asset, right? Because I am able to pull from all these different places and all these different ideas to inform the core of my work and what I do.

(Elin) I found out later that I got placed with the finance and real estate students who were notoriously difficult because my former director told the person hiring me at the business school that I was a “velvet steam roller”. I was really good at gently pushing back on people, and working with difficult people in a way that still got things done but wasn't super inflammatory, which was a skill I learned through my career. Because when I started, I was like, burn it down!

(Elin) It's an industry (museum work) that takes and takes and takes and takes and doesn't always give a lot back. I often describe it as a toxic relationship

(Sara) Oh, yes!

(Elin) Where it's bad and bad and bad and bad, and then you get to hold a manuscript from the 1500s and you're like, this is the best thing ever! And then you're like, rebounded and you're in love again. And then you just get shit on somewhere else.

(Sara) I like sharing resources. As a Renaissance Person, are you one of those people where, you know, you join a Zoom meeting and you're adding links to things in the chat, emailing people afterwards?

(Elin) It's my love language.

(Elin) I heard something the other day that was, you know, everybody wants a village, but not everybody's willing to be a villager.

(Sara) I love that!

(Elin) Right? And I was like, oh! I caught myself too because I was like, where's my village? And then I needed to reflect, to be like, well, where am I being a villager? And I can't expect that to come back around to me if I haven't given it out.

(Elin) Love a good side quest. It really just brings a lot of joy to my life. And it's also probably part of my neuro spiciness of like, I was born to dilly dally.

(Elin) And a lot of times when people are wanting to leave the field or they're wanting to change, they just start running really, really fast in a direction. And sometimes you're on a treadmill and you're not going anywhere. But you feel like you're, you're really working hard. And you're running, running, running, but you're not getting anywhere.

(Elin) I'm like Tinkerbell, I need applause to live. So I love just being on stage and getting up in front of people.

Follow me, Renaissance Woman Sara Kobilka, on LinkedIn, where I put most of my social media energy, and Facebook.

If you’re extra curious, check out Renaissance Woman Consulting to learn more about some of the many types of work I do.

And should you care to support the production of this podcast, I’d love it if you’d buy me an oat milk cappuccino, my caffeinated beverage of choice.

This podcast is hosted and edited by Sara Kobilka.

Theme music is by Brian Skellenger

Podcast distribution support provided by K.O. Myers of Particulate Media