Jedidiah Jenkins
Los Angeles, CA USA
"Life is lived in seasons...some seasons are meant to teach you and some seasons you’re meant to teach."
Career Roadmap
Jedidiah's work combines: Writing, Travel, and Communicating / Sharing Stories
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Day In The Life
Skills &
Education
Advice for getting started
I like writer Elizabeth Gilbert's advice to follow your curiosity when you don't know what you want to do in life. If you're curious about something, walk through that door and see where it goes. You might find whatever it is you're meant to be doing. I also suggest writing down your goals and why those are your goals. If you can't pinpoint the "why," then down the line you'll realize you spent time and energy chasing something and you don't even know why you were chasing it in the first place.
Here's the path I took:
High School
Bachelor's Degree
Creative Writing
University of Southern California
Doctorate
Law
Pepperdine School of Law
Life & Career Milestones
I've taken a lot of twists and turns
1.
I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and aspired to become a famous film director.
2.
I moved to Los Angeles, California, for college, but once I started taking some film classes and realized what being a director actually meant, I knew it wasn’t for me.
3.
I changed my major and graduated with a degree in creative writing.
4.
Unsure about how to make a living in the creative industry, I decided to get my law degree and work toward becoming a human rights lawyer.
5.
I wasn’t fulfilled by the legal jobs I had tried, so when my friends started Invisible Children, a human rights nonprofit, I jumped at the opportunity to come on as the organization’s lawyer.
6.
As I got closer to age 30, I started feeling like there was something else I was meant to do—I wanted to become a writer but didn’t think I had enough meaningful experience to write and impact others.
7.
When I turned 30, I quit my job to cycle from Oregon to Patagonia and have an adventure to write about—the experience became the subject for my memoir “To Shake the Sleeping Self.”
8.
I’m now living my dream of being a writer—I have another book coming out soon and I also share my writing through Instagram.
Defining Moments
How I responded to discouragement
THE NOISE
Messages from Myself:
Maybe I shouldn't do this...I'll just embarrass myself.
How I responded:
When I quit my job to cycle from Oregon to Patagonia and write about my experience, I was afraid I'd end up embarrassing myself as a writer. I had to talk myself through it and remind myself that even if I was a terrible writer, at least people would know me as someone who tries things, takes risks, and follows through—and that's good too! If we walk ourselves through the fear to the other side, we almost always realize that it wasn't that bad or scary. So why stay frozen? Why not try it?
Experiences and challenges that shaped me
As a child, I was very aware that the world wasn't made for me because I was gay. I spent so much time observing the world so that I'd know how to navigate a society that wouldn't cater to me. That experience is a big reason that I became I writer.