Ripping, Running, and Finally Taking a Beat
It's Q4! This season seems to come faster every year. I'm wondering where the hell the time went, while also reflecting on where I've focused mine.
Though I've dabbled in a side project here and there this year, I've mostly been heads-down at my full-time job. It's the first time in a long time I've been able to do that. Recurring and unexpected maternity leaves have interrupted my workflow for the last couple of years, and before I reentered the workforce, I was exclusively freelance for a while.
So, with some steady ground finally under my feet, here are a few of my observations…
1. Having a job that actually tends to your interests and skill sets
I climbed the corporate ladder hoping to get to this point.
Plenty of people can work a job that simply pays the bills. But I'm the type of person who needs a job that uses my key skills and interests. If it doesn't, I start to wonder what the hell I'm doing there.
And it's always been that way.
Since around 2011, I was certain I wanted to be a creative director. I knew my way around the design world and its tools in a way that felt natural and cathartic. Every medium of digital design felt like a great way to channel my energy, so much so that I couldn't see anything else for myself. That route felt made for me… until another door started to open.
During my stint as a freelancer, I found myself advising just as much as I designed. That advising laid the foundation for my projects. That skill acted as a clarifier that made sense of each client's vision and goals. But at the time, I just saw it as a part of the job.
That changed when I started at my current agency, where strategy became the whole purpose of my job.
Talk about an aha moment. I went from an assured path, one I didn't even realize was misaligned, to one that uncovered a breadth of skills that had always been there. My current job ripped the lid off what I thought was my only potential, my only true usefulness, and replaced it with something that, in this day and age, feels more natural to me.
The plus-up is that I understand creatives: how they think, how to brief them, and what helps them produce their best work. And I get to do all of that without opening Photoshop or Illustrator (which, surprisingly, I don't miss).
2. The results of hard work
Part of working misaligned jobs was that I'd leave. A lot. And by leaving, I missed out on what comes with a solid trajectory at one place: established rapport with coworkers, "growth" talks with upper management, being rewarded for the work you've put in over the years.
That's not to say I was ever looking for those things. I was solely on a quest for alignment. Lo and behold… I found it.
Three years in, I've got to see both my tangible and intangible skills strengthen and grow. To have hindsight. To remember:
What the junior jitters felt like before important presentations
What it felt like to question my contributions
How it felt to obsess over a task until it felt just right
I'm not who I was when I started. I've shed the imposter syndrome almost entirely, and what's left is my true capacity for greatness, unencumbered by what once weighed me down. I'm better for seeing this process through, for going through the full growth cycle and understanding what it looks like to unleash my potential.
It's also changed how I see the work itself. Moving from senior management to director level has me looking at things organizationally, beyond my own deliverables to the bigger picture of how the team and the work fit together.
3. Functional burnout as a mainstream phenomenon
We want to excel. We have varied projects and passions we feel called to tend to, so we sloppily try to give them all some love. I'm very much a Jill-of-all-trades girl who's had to put some of those trades down indefinitely. I've had to ask myself: What am I striving for? What do I actually value? What feels non-negotiable? Ten years from now, which parts of what I'm doing will have felt worth my time? This exercise has helped me tremendously. At first it was sad and sobering to accept that some of these dreams had to fall by the wayside, for now or forever. But I'm much better for it today.
That's not to say I'm not still tired af. Keep in mind I have two daughters on top of all my other obligations. So what does relaxing and resetting look like? For one, things like this blog post. I'm constantly ripping and running, and never giving myself a chance to take a beat is another way of letting life pass me by. There's no reward for never stopping to audit what's been. Writing like this helps me actually remember the life I'm living.
It also looks like low-stakes activities: long walks, analog creativity (painting, drawing), dillydallying, and passing what I've learned along to people earlier in their journeys.
I can absolutely say I'm not who I was when this year began. Much has changed, and much will keep changing. But here's a quick hello from my current stop on the ride.
Until next time,
Chanée