Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
Many years ago, when a company in Boston was interviewing me, I got lost driving. Deliberately.
My reason was not any form of masochism – I was considering a relocation to Boston. If you're going to move to an area, one of the ways to get familiar with it, intimately familiar with it is to drive through it if at all possible.
Do you have a Career Best Friend? Someone to talk to for advice? Someone to bounce career ideas off of? Someone who can talk to you about their career? Someone you share professional experiences with?
We all need a career best friend – or friends – because for careerists life can get awful complex. We can get lost in a maze of certifications and job data, we may need a boost, we may need someone to shoot down a harebrained idea. We also need someone who we are truly friends with to do that, since otherwise we're probably not going to listen to them.
So you want to make sure you live your geek interests as part of your career? I've discussed how you can do that with what you do, and what you create, so let's look at another way.
You can live your interests in who you work for.
There are companies and businesses you can work for, clients you can support and consult for, that do things that fit your interests, your geekery, your otakudom. In working for them you can support the things you care about and are interested in even if you don't use "geeky skills" or even have much involvement in actual product.