A consistent theme I picked up on throughout my time listening to many of our guest speakers is embracing the unknown. For years I naively thought that my life would contain a series of events that would become a clear trajectory building a solid career for myself, and boy was I wrong. That may work out for a lucky few but many of our speakers didn’t have that experience and they embraced the unknown. That really resonated with me. They kept moving when something didn’t work out, taking time to process failures and pivot from there leading them to their next opportunity that would offer further clarity. That is what I consider true growth which deeply inspired me.
I do consider myself a lifelong learner and follow my intuition when it comes to deciding where I place my energy. With that being said, I think there are several routes where I could end up. I enjoy getting into the nitty gritty of developing a conceptual idea and seeing it to fruition, but knowing myself and my past experiences I struggle with day-to-day monotony and sometimes that scares me. Realistically I do need a lot of variety in projects to motivate and energize my creative well. I think I would like to work for a design agency that has a lot of diversity in projects, ultimately leading me to an Art Directing position. I often think about what I want to visualize when looking back on my career in 30+ years, one clear thought that comes to mind is never staying in anything until a bitter end and knowing when to move on. I know for certain I don’t want to look back and realize that I spent years of my life doing something that was not giving back to me energetically and only depleting my well being, or even contributing to something that doesn’t align with my personal values as a designer. So I would say trusting myself and my intuition is the most important factor in staying true to myself.