More than five years of sustaining my life through marketing and creative work have passed. I’ve kept mostly quiet online and offline throughout this journey, contrary to my communications background. Partly from being busy and anxious. Partly from rebounding the opposite direction in response to what an oversized role social media plays in our lives and careers. 

But, what better a time than quarantine to set aside imposter syndrome and talk openly about what these artistic endeavors have been like? And maybe to make more of a habit of expressing these thoughts?

While appreciative for any opportunity to use my crafts to help others (especially for a good cause), this kind of work has taken a lot of patience for failing between successes. It’s gratifying, humbling, and sometimes panic attack-inducing. What began as an effort to make a living as a copywriter quickly morphed into developing an arsenal of skills in photography, graphic design, videography, and more depending on an employer’s immediate needs.

Lately I’m trying to make sense of the whole process and how to push forward in a more authentic direction, one that is personally fulfilling and meaningful in a worldly sense. A lot of my pandemic anxiety (besides health and existential that is) has been manifesting as a struggle feeling out what to write about privately and what to publicly shoot the shit about around the digital water cooler. More than anything, I question if my voice and identity are really all that important or useful. If so, how should I apply these parts of myself and life experience ethically and novelly?

Earlier in the 2010’s I’d experienced what I thought of as fulfilling work spending thirteen hour shifts in an animal shelter helping people adopt their next dog and/or cat family member. Some of those animals saw the absolute worst of humanity, and needed a world full of love to have any hope of recovery. It deeply affected my outlook on the world, and brought a sense of calm relief to help these creatures. 

One day while giving vaccinations and cleaning gnarly surgical wounds, the thought occurred of being able to use my creative hobbies to help animals in some way. Telling their life stories, creating portraits of them for loved ones, making media that might contribute to people respecting wildlife more globally. There’s a noble opportunity there. It’s a vision that has always been part of the ultimate endgame in the most realized version of my life’s arc. 

But all journeys require a first step, and each has its own distance markers. If this goal is a marathon, I’m at mile 10. While some of my efforts have benefitted animal organizations and causes, it isn’t the bulk of the work I do. Already though there have been some wonderful achievements and surprises along the way.

For instance, I never thought I’d be hired on the merit of my portfolio purely as a graphic designer. Someone liked my attitude and past multimedia work though, and soon projects like designing wraps for the next fleet of Indianapolis’s green energy buses landed on my desk. I didn’t think opportunities like managing the entire social and digital presence of the Indianapolis Art Center and Purdue Fort Wayne would cross my plate either, but a foundation in writing and public relations paved the way for that opportunity. Each subsequent success a welcome win against crippling self-doubt.

Each success and failure also a lesson learned in self-management. Lessons about growing a creative career. Lessons about mental health and the impact of trauma. What a sustainable workload means to me. What a company I want to be part of offers, looks like, and values. I’ve broken my body and been humbled by my luck and our amazing ability to heal from life’s many injuries. I’ve also gained wonderful friendships from my various office adventures and visits to freelance-land. Often with kind, talented people who I enormously respect. I’ve been reminded of how beautiful community is and why we need to prioritize togetherness—preferably offline when restrictions lift and vaccinations are in arms.

The coronavirus is currently acting as an amplifier of these lessons, reinforcing a drive to do ethical and useful work for worthwhile causes. Part of this renewal of spirit led to my decision to leave IndyGo recently in search of a more compatible, progressive culture. Despite being in a worldwide pandemic, I still think it’s a great idea to leave jobs that make you unhappy if the employer or responsibilities become too overwhelming. Frequent all-nighters, being the only graphic designer on staff (in light of all that organization’s visual needs), a lack of leadership and a stable team dynamic, and very little regard for employee health and safety amid a global pandemic: all contributed to one of the most stressful and incompatible career experiences of my life.

And that scenario isn’t uncommon unfortunately, often the result of an organization believing it can save money by downsizing a multimedia team into a multitool individual. It’s draining, it’s extremely mentally exhausting. Beyond creating a self-imposed wound on a brand, it puts so much pressure on one or few individuals to perform at superhuman capacity on an impossible to do list meant for distributed specialties. And then what happens? Poof, the multitool (see: my brain) breaks, needs to be repaired, and goes away for awhile in search of a different opportunity. The system is flawed.

Friends and family think I’m nuts when I leave jobs for ANY reason. “Why leave without having another job lined up?” “What about gaps in your resume?” To justifiably concerned souls, it is a risk to leave a company without a backup. But once you’ve hit a breaking point what option when leadership won’t listen to reason? Plus, searching for a job IS it’s own full-time job. Personally, I hope the world’s hiring managers are reasonable enough to see a gap on someone’s resume and to give them the benefit of the doubt that life is hard. We all need to take time to check our compass, see if we’re headed in the right direction.

While many find the struggle demoralizing, I mostly remain hopeful of finding the right culture fit. Careers in artistic content creation are notoriously hard to enter and maintain, but I’m willing to put up with the struggle because it feels thrilling to see a project succeed, to grow more capable with each finished result.

A tremendously motivating speech I think about constantly when working on projects is this video of Neil Gaiman addressing a crowd of college graduates. Gaiman says, “I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from my mountain.”

And indeed the past five years of strife have brought me closer to my mountain. I have a creative portfolio I’m proud of, growing each year with the weird concoctions of this weirder brain. I have some quite lovely feedback on my work and great references from people who’ve enjoyed being coworkers. I have decent health and the knowledge of what is enough to live a satisfying life. I have an understanding of the general direction I want to go, and causes I will and will not work for. Looking at you, Big Oil. 

One of the values the world is really hammering in right now and that I am truly excited to see adopted everywhere is workplace flexibility towards remote work and irregular schedules. Something the pandemic has made clear is the benefit of a well-designed home office—not to eliminate going into the office permanently, but for those times you really don’t need to be there to do your job. In many cases what we’re learning is these positions can be mostly permanent unless some travel or fieldwork is required. With this alternative staring directly at them, large organizations are realizing the cost-savings of not needing to rent large, prominent, and expensive buildings.

For someone with as troubled a medical and surgical history as myself, this seems like a missing piece of the puzzle. If these practices are adopted it means between meetings I can foam roll sore back muscles without office awkwardness or transporting gym equipment. It also alleviates frequent migraine symptoms instigated by atrocious fluorescent lighting (search your ceilings, you know it to be true). Most importantly, it means I have zero anxiety about my apartment building burning down with all my old animals inside and not being able to save them. You get the gist. There’s some healthy neuroticism here. But some logic as well that both makes fiscal sense and encourages our collective efficiencies.

Going forward I’ll be pursuing paths that bring my career in closer alignment with animal and environmental causes, and with a little luck more reasonable benefits and responsibilities. I hope the next five years are filled with equally rewarding and exciting projects, reflection, and growth. I hope the next workplace I land will be a better fit. I hope 2021 is a better year for the world. A year that offers healing from physical and cultural pain for as many people as possible. Another year to stay positive about making a difference where we all can, and to be lenient on myself when I cannot.