For years, I called myself a product designer, and that felt right. It was tangible. I solved problems, built things people loved, and grew in ways I could see and measure. But somewhere along the way, I started to struggle with aligning the title to the work I was doing.
Now, with me leading teams and making more strategic decisions than creative ones, I feel this tension every day. Like I’m straddling two worlds, never fully belonging to either. The label “designer” now feels limiting to just pushing pixels.
This is not just a career question. It’s a question of identity. Who am I if not the person I’ve trained to be for the last decade? How do I reconcile the skills I have with the impact I want to make? Sometimes I feel like I need to completely reinvent myself, and other times I wonder if I’m overthinking it, if this is just part of growing up.
The truth is, I don’t have all the answers. And maybe I’m not supposed to right now. Maybe this is just a season of figuring things out, of being uncomfortable, of realizing that identity isn’t fixed, it evolves. I just need to give myself permission to step into the version of me that I am yet to meet.
