12.01.2005

spoiled. rotten.

i'm working right now (literally, RIGHT now) with wunderman chicago, which was my first job out of college and is to date still the best paid and most stable place i've sat in front of these machines that run my life.

today i'm sitting on the fifteenth floor, overlooking michigan avenue and laughing at the kid two cubicles over who found his nerf gun was not so broken as he thought. i've been here since last monday - four days now - already i've been asked to a movie and to lunch. the people that are still here from three years ago, all of them at least act happy to see me except one guy who was a real buddy of mine before so he's freaking me out a little. but this job is so comfortable, it's such a nice change of pace. it's easy monkey work, which is why i left in the first place, but now that i've gotten that creative freedom, i realize the beauty of the mundane. i can save my creative juices for the pro bono projects at home. today at work i'm making contact sheets, which means i take pictures, make them smaller, and grid them page by page so we can print them as a reference to what's on a CD. so a CD of picts comes with an index (the contact sheet) and i'm making the sheets. dig?

part of what makes this place rock are the cubicle setups. we sit in groups of four, each person has three walls with the fourth open to the middle, and these things are like little playpens. we throw things at the other groups, and because we are typically seated by project, there are territory lines drawn and inside jokes in the playpens. in our crib, if you will. this place has the best environment EVER, which is why i fought a little to get back in here.

let's not kid ourselves though, of course i would PREFER to have a creative job over a monkey job, one where i can take the creativity to work for clients i care for - that's the collective dream of design, i'm not alone here, but at the same time we all kind of know that it's one of those pedestal dreams and the prize exists only in theory. but the possible Target job is a step closer, which is why it's so ideal. the guy at Target i need to do the final interview with gets back to the office tomorrow, so i'm not expecting to hear from him until next week. check back for details :)

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