when did that happen

i swear someone slipped something into my food last night. i had dinner with lou and erin at bergoff's around 5:30 and was antsy. am still antsy. dinner was fantastic - or let's say the company was (food not so hot and beer not so cold), i haven't seen lou or erin in a solid 1.5 months since they got married and it's been too long!

afterwards i cabbed it home and paced. paced like i used to do in high school when i was on the phone, i used to circle the dining room table endlessly for hours, sometimes switch to the kitchen island and then return to the dining room, walking like i was generating the energy for the phone the old-fashioned way. i did that last night for the television, for the movie, for the dishes and the laundry. was MOVING until 2am.

dreamt i was trying to put on gloves, looked down to see what the problem was, and found all of my fingers to be out of joint. i had to pull them to get the knuckles to go back into place, and they cracked loudly like splitting wood.

woke up calmly but with a chip on my shoulder that i expressed by wearing my aviators. softened up quickly when a toddler was crying from being cold (and probably from being bored). i loaned her my rainbow mittens and scarf, and chatted with her mom, who was probably my age.

got to work a few minutes late, around 9:15... now it's 10:45 and i keep forgetting and remembering again that i have a new doctor to meet at 5pm today. my regular doctor isn't in my Aetna network, so i had to choose a new one and convince them to maintain my referral to my new endocrinologist for my appointment a week from tomorrow. i'm really excited to get crackin on this thing.

still in the mild stress mode. moved on from the silverchair into the matisyahu (a new love).

the cat's out of the bag

let's just get this over with: the fisheye camera is a little lump of coal in my stocking. you get what you pay for, it's a silly toy, it puts out useless pictures. [sheds single, disappointed tear]

that being said, i'm still bringing it to my cousin's rehersal dinner tonight and wedding tomorrow. GAME ON.

{interlude}

so i have this new idea and no idea how to shape it. there's something new going on. i've decided to give up all freelance after the new year. there are a couple of things motivating this decision.
• i haven't read a book for fun in YEARS
• i've never just gone to work and gone home. i would like to try it.
• suddenly there's a dependable, consistent source of income
• and a health thing that i won't get into but it involves insulin (i am not diabetic, thankfully) and it involves me wanting to work out five or six times a week instead of three.

so really, i don't see the need for a portfolio site that i never finished anyway. and now my registerfly account is due, and i'm like, what for?? and then i was like, your customer service is so lame. i'm going over to GoDaddy. so i did.

i have a new site. it's not built, it's not even well thought out, but it's my new idea and it's where i'll be posting articles. not like a blog, at all, not daily nonsense but researched ideas that i have about propaganda and marketing. almost no one knows that i actually have a legit fascination with propaganda, like i've actually put time into learning about it and am slowly building a little propaganda library. that i PLAN TO READ IN JANUARY. totally.

and i think it's a product of my generation and of design in general that i keep feeling a desperate need to include everything, to make public my body of work and artist statement and eighteen ways to contact me. that's so dumb. all i need to have is what i want to focus on, right? right.

"plus a links page."
(damn)

ProgressiveConspiracy.com, coming soon to a monitor near you.

withdrawl

the last photos i took the saturday after thanksgiving
(just before my camera poquito up and died).

jimy and kristy's engagement photos

austin and jeff at wise fool's pub.
if you've never heard how unbelievably hot one guitar + one cello is, educate yourself. [austin and jeff] or [matt nathanson and matt fish] are two such examples. discuss.

i drew up a budget yesterday to find out how i get actually get this new camera. it's gonna take some work, but i've been promised some help from Santa and my birthday is in february... until then i'll make some good use of another new camera that's a ton of fun. photos to come.

another post that should have been posted two weeks ago

listening to Nick Drake and worried about freelance. i have two web clients this month and web always takes a long time for me. the design drags and then suddenly i have this huge IDEA that WORKS but then i have to still build it. never fun.

i want mandy to be in town today really, really badly. more than the usual nostalgic "we could be at the beach today" feeling, like i'm homesick for her.

this is funny, i'm totally not in any kind of negative mood, i'm just a little sleepy after lunch and letting my mind wander. it's a confetti blur of owen and mandy and brad and a different brad and denver and minnesota and my design camp crush and a resurfacing of my original crush, remembering what that felt like way back in the beginning of infatuation. coasting on that warm fuzzy feeling for a while :)

a couple weeks ago after i got back from denver, someone from denver was in my town and it was kind of a big deal. i took a half-day from work so that i could do a half-assed super amateur photo shoot of brad corrigan's band, in town for a show.


things got off-schedule like the tend to do, so we took photos by walking around the block and finding things like someone's stoop, a green door, a brick wall to shoot against. i was apprehensive that it would be awkward but then it totally wasn't. sometimes i'm still timid after all i've been and done, timid that i'm an intruder, but they definitely let me in and feel like they were glad i was there.

so we took some good shots and i killed time with the guys in the green room of the beat kitchen before the show, getting some dinner and watching YouTube clips.

the show was wednesday night, and the crowd was different than usual: older, meaner, more drunk than ever before - but i chalk that up to it being wednesday. the show was great, the music was solid.

one of the best parts: rampant drum solos.

joke's on me

eating froot loops. remembering how when my sister jenna was little she said her favorite flavor of food was "blue, because that means it's fake and it's candy."

this week, i'll tell you what.
i was all set to go to Design Camp™ and have a grand old time, and i did - but just before i left wunderman made a counteroffer for me to not only stay, but go into Strategic Planning. like at 5:05pm. and i was shaking, i was so flipped out about it, but i had to take a deep breath and tell them i could only have an answer when i got back from minnesota.

here are some camp highlights.

(you CAN'T JUST LEAVE THAT TOPIC HANGING, right??? that's how i felt. the ten hour drive each way, the workshops, the bonfire - it all had a low-level anxiety underneath it as i thought out which would be better for me in the short term, the long term, the contacts, the exposure. so now you'll know how i felt - camp is so great but you just want to rush to the decision. and it's not that easy.)

highlights: making new business cards with a stamp i bought at office depot on the way up. they got some great reviews, being called super modern. that had me feeling like a super designer :)

staying in a log cabin

late nights at the bonfire


walking down to the beach whenever i felt like it

quality speakers

nerd activities like Pantone Bingo

the pavilion with the band and the bar
click here to see more.

so what happened then? every person i talked to said to keep the dotomi job. every last one but my friend ryan. which stuck with me, because i've always described his and my relationship as "our points A and B are the same, but our paths between the points have nothing in common." in other words, i trust his opinion like i trust my own, knowing that though he and i are totally different, i am very likely to reach the same conclusion in most cases.

but there was pressure from parents, co-workers, strangers weighing in. everyone said "you shouldn't stay where they wouldn't hire you without that pressure of losing you."

and then everyone said "it's great to have a choice."
and i was like "yeah, yeah."
so i got back home and decided to go with dotomi.

then i went and talked to a woman at wunderman with every intention of going in to say goodbye and thanks. instead she sat me down and made me accountable for why i was leaving. together we talked through all my hesitations, and then i realized what was really stopping me was that i was being told "you would be so great at this" and i had no idea what "this" was. so we talked to the planning women, and i found out that since i was "such a natural" they all assumed i already did know exactly what i was getting into. and the more we talked, the more it became so very clear that planning is something i didn't even really know about but it could not be more tailored to what is exciting to me about design. according to everything i've heard and read and asked and answered, this is my ultimate dream job.

on top of that is the fact that the other planning women are the first two women in a long time of whom i've thought "i want to be you in five years." and that's just as exciting. i love art direction, being a designer, but this allows for more ambition, bigger goals, a further reach. when i thought long-term, this role does outdistance the role i've been shooting for since graduating college.

so right now it's 4:36pm on friday afternoon, and i'm waiting to have the actual offer letter in my hands before i call dotomi and break some hearts... i feel like a jerk for accepting and then declining the offer, but i take a lot of pride in being able to say "it's not you, not the money or the perks or anything else - it's the work. the day-to-day work that would be different, and i can't deny this new opportunity."

so as of Monday, October 16th, i'm going to be a Strategic Planner for Wunderman! full time and everything :)

NEW JOB

um, i put in my two week notice today at Wunderman because Oct 23rd will be my first day at Dotomi. i'm trying to wrap my head around my career this morning after talking to HR and my mentors in production and strategic planning...

what this change comes down to is that even though i found out that Wunderman had an intention to hire me before the end of the year, it would have been for about 10k less than what i make now and it would have been 75% administrative work for the first year. i had to tell HR look, i really appreciate knowing this, but i don't have that kind of time to invest any more when i could be choosing a career path right now. Dotomi will have me on as an art director from day one, and that's a career move.

the worst part of today: telling people.
the best part: their reactions.

everyone understood 100%. they've all watched me hang on for the past year and deliberate my own worth while working for three distinct groups internally and keeping up two freelance clients on my own time. i've been a nut for design, and it's amazing the recognition i didn't know i had around here. HR even went so far as to say they'll be calling me when a position opens in planning, probably in two years, and the head of Strategic Planning said she understood but is not going to stop trying to get me hired. possibly the most encouraging morning i've ever had, and it's the day i declare my departure.

[deep breath]

so new place! it's in the lyric opera house, so it's the other side of town - but i'm actually going to be working exactly in-between where my two sisters work and next door to my former roommate. i start in about 2.5 weeks and it's a lot of things i like: casual atmosphere, hard working, collaborative structure, still get to wear jeans and pumas every day. plus training in boston!!! i get to go back east for a couple weeks. not sure when, but i'll post when i find out :)

i loved confessing to HR that i only kept my resume on the market half-assedly to cover myself. i didn't go out looking for jobs, i got several cold calls, i turned down a couple of jobs to stay here, and ultimately it looks like it has worked in my favor. being in a position of interviewing while i had a job i liked made me able to hardball things - - like how i actually said to Dotomi "i like my job, i like where i am and i'll only leave for something better." and then my new director turned around and gave me exactly that. and when i told HR woman i had said that verbatim, she hugged me.

[another deep breath]

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poster idea

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