December 2011 was an interesting month for me. I was closing out a pretty good year when I was slapped pretty hard by reality. I won't get into the gory details, but after 18 years of being in the communications business, I was back on the job market right before the holidays.

Needless to say, it was a tough pill to swallow.

However, everything happens for a reason, as the saying goes. And after the past two weeks, I truly believe that the saying is dead on.

Flash forward to today, and I find myself sitting on some very interesting opportunities -- all leading in different directions, yet with a very similar focus.

You see, I've built my career in order for me to be a generalist/specialist. This means, I'm good at a lot of things as it relates to Public Relations, Marketing, Digital Communications, Mobile Marketing and of course, Social Media.

I've worked for big, mid-sized and small agencies. I've worked on the client side. I've developed programs for big, mid-sized and small companies across a variety of industries.

This broad experience means that one day, I can be pitching trend stories to connections I have at the Wall Street Journal and later that hour, managing a client's social listening program in order to provide them with market intelligence via online chatter.

What this boils down to is that I'm good with people. I'm good at managing relationships. I'm good at connecting people with people, people with brands and brands with brands (in the case of B2B communications).

This leads me to my point: