Webster's New World dictionary defines an expert as someone "very skillful; having much training and knowledge in some special field." And I myself am very familiar with the concept of being an expert. Not from my own personal experience, but because I am a person who was born into a family of experts. My dad is an expert accountant, my mom is an expert math teacher, and my brother is an expert chemist. He is currently finishing his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry, and whatever it is that he does is so specialized that no one can understand the layperson's version of his work because there isn't one.

Last year he gave a presentation at a national gathering of his peers and my mom sent me his title and abstract. Out of 97 total words, here are the parts I understood:" to be used in the", and "naturally occurring substance." That's it.

He also routinely calls my mom to ask for her help with math problems like this:

"OK,imagine that the Universe is a sheet of paper. Then, crumple the paper up into a little ball. Then uncrumple it. Now, how do you mathematically track the behavior of all of the vectors in that field?"

That is, of course, an excellent question. But here is where you can tell them I am not an expert, because my first thought upon hearing this story was, "Why would anyone ever need to know that piece of information?" If the Universe ever did get crumpled up in a ball and accidentally dropped into some kind of cosmic trash can, is our first priority really going to be WORD PROBLEMS?

Me, I don't worry about situations like that, because I am NOT an expert. I am a dilettante, defined by Webster's as, "a person who loves the fine arts," or, "a person who follows an art or a science only for amusement and in a superficial way, a dabbler".

As you can probably imagine, it has not been easy being a dabbler in a family full of specialists, but over the years I have discovered a few strategies that allow us all to peacefully co-exist.

First of all, I've learned that the best thing to do is to just ADMIT that this is who I am. I spent countless years and untold amounts of energy trying to be something I'm not, even to the point of getting a Master's Degree, but it never worked. Despite all the pressures (real and imagined) I felt around me to be an expert and to specialize in something, nothing I did ever altered my fundamental nature as a dabbler.

And ironically, when I finally got tired of all the subterfuge and just announced, "OK, world, this is who I am! I love knowing a little bit about a lot of different things, and I HATE being tied down to just one job," well, the world already knew. As it turned out, I was the only person from whom I was hiding this essential truth. Apparently the fact that my mom, my dad, my brother, and husband have all had only 1 or 2 different jobs since they became adults, and I, at last count, have had approximately 10 jobs in the 12 years since I graduated from college, kind of clued everyone in.

So in the immortal (and slightly paraphrased) words of Jeff Foxworthy, "If the number of titles, degrees, or certifications that follow your name is longer than the length of your actual name, you're probably a dilettante." Or, "If the number of jobs on your resume is equal to or greater than the number of years you've been out of college, you're also probably a dilettante." And this will NOT be news to the people around you. Trust me on this. So, you can stop pretending. Because the only person you're fooling? Is you.

The second thing I learned about being a dabbler in a world of experts and specialists is that a lot of people will just not understand me. And that's OK.

For example, in addition to the many other things I am trained to do, I am also a Certified Life Coach. I know that personal coaching is still making its way into the general population, but I have one friend in particular, an engineer, who is absolutely convinced that coaching is a completely made up job.

My husband tried to mediate this little misunderstanding, and so he asked our friend one day, "Well, didn't you ever wonder who you were and what you wanted to do in your life?"

And our friend replied, "Well, yeah. But then I turned 10, and I decided to become an engineer. And then I was fine."

It really used to bother me that I couldn't figure out a way to MAKE everyone around me "get" me. For a long time I interpreted that to mean that I was somehow "failing" in life.

But then I started to think about all the people that I, personally, do not "get". Like all the engineers I know who will be having a perfectly normal conversation, and then all of a sudden will reach the point where they will no longer be able to continue living unless they fire up Google Earth RIGHT THIS SECOND so they can look at satellite photos of the house where they lived when they were 5 years old.

I personally do not "get" that. But I do enjoy it. To me, that just proves the truth in the old saying that, "Variety is the spice of life." So maybe, in some ways I may never even know, the fact that I am a dilettante rather than an expert is adding spice to someone else's life.

So once I realized that I could stop hiding who I am, and that it's OK if some people just don't understand me, I then saw that I had the power and the ability to choose my own "tribe". I could actively and consciously seek out other "like-minded souls" with similar interests and personalities, and form my own network of support.

By this time I was very good at identifying people who, I was pretty sure, were not members of my tribe. Like all of the techy people I know who routinely get together and have lengthy conversations about how they have figured out a way to wire together every single electronic device in the entire world, and can now operate them all merely by blinking their eyes. Or something like that. Truth be told, I tend to space out pretty quickly when that particular topic comes up.

But fortunately, I also began to meet people who shared my various interests in things like cats, scrapbooking, personal growth seminars, mystery novels, and debating obscure points of Spanish grammar. And the more I met people like me, the more confidence I gained in embracing and expressing my own, unique, approach to life, and the more comfortable I felt in my own skin.

So now, every time my tech-y friends start rambling on about SAPDOSFAQSQL whatever, I can turn it right back around on them by waxing eloquent on the best adhesive to use when you create a scrapbook page, and know that I am supported by legions of other creative women just like me.

To conclude I just want to say that if you ever find yourself in a situation where you are not a part of the majority, I hope you can learn from my NUMEROUS mistakes and remember these simple strategies: give yourself permission to be who you truly are, give the rest of the world permission to NOT "get" you, and claim your power to create your own tribe.