Cultivating the pivot: A focus on inclusive teams, continuous learning, and an organizational culture that thrives

Make it stand out

Or : if my resume had Alt Text

Well, I am sad to say that my most recent contract has ended, leaving me available for employment. This has put me in a kind of silly mood, reminiscing about the jobs I’ve had, giving them all human names, as if they were people I had once gone on boozy lunches with, rather than just dusty old “job titles” at “companies” paying me “salaries.”

While I am directing my search towards a long-term contract or a full-time role as a part of a creative production team, coordinating the digital artifacts used to build websites, software, advertisements, games, and apps; developing new software to present those creative projects; and managing fellow creatives that do the production needed for the clients to accomplish company goals.

While I have a formal resume with company names and dates and all that ATS-triggering info, something happened to me while I was editing it for the hundredth time to match the keywords/tone to a very creative job description. I was inspired to think of my past roles as people who had a profound influence on me - people who I had once gone on boozy lunches with and written hilarious training presentations for and searched for very specific images to flesh out their projects - and wanted to write a sort of biography of my job history, rather than just a list of dusty old “job titles” at “companies” that formerly paid me “salaries.”

I let my jobs took on personalities of their own, and rather than listing them as “positions in which I helped a company grow and improve and succeed,” I had fun thinking of names that described the personalities of the brands as I remembered them, and writing about them with those personalities in mind. I think of this post as the “alt text” for my actual resume - or maybe just an engaging resume narrative, focusing on the whole experience rather than just listing company names.

Mary Sue

Mary Sue and I worked on one single project, a part of a larger non-profit website where all she needed was someone to jump in, figure out how the software templates worked, and then plug in about 100 team training resources, sorted via tagging, careful naming, and adapting the template’s search capabilities. Mary Sue was generous with her time, honest about what she didn’t understand about the process, and brilliant at communicating what the greater consortium stakeholders *actually* needed rather than the “pie in the sky” conceptual project outline they used for the grant that funded this simple but important resource we built.

BorgCollective

As you can imagine from his name, BorgCollective was cool. As a 9-month gaming production contract, BorgCollective brought constant change, great co-workers, incredible branded images with very specific rules about how and when to use them, and truly intense but essential learning opportunities for my career. I learned so much about alternative versions of production and the ever-changing needs of a HUGE gaming company - and thanks to my teammates, I made the crossover from “creative producer” to “marketing producer” to “games producer” and back several times due to changes within the various departments and my willingness to do whatever it takes to get the job done.

Madison

The defining “relationship” of what I look for in a career, working with Madison was an adventure, with the freedom to explore new code, introduce creative projects, and participate in editorial in ways that the production and design teams aren’t always granted. Every day for 6 years, I built endless websites with gorgeous images and incredible writing, all fueled by the ability to indulge my passion for popular culture and focused by the direction of incredible art directors, photographers, and mavericks, including Madison herself. I loved participating in daily editorial meetings with my brilliant and popular-culture-focused, deeply inspiring team. This was the best, most influential moment in my career, and I confess, I’ve been looking for another gal like Madison ever since she left Chicago. I will always treasure the people I met there and the nuances of design, culture, tact, and grace I learned from my cohort at Madison.

Mabel

My long-term career position that ended up being my COVID-19 layoff job, Mabel brought me 9 years of consistency, collaborative support, and creative mentorship working in an advertising agency, with a very diverse group of creatives, software developers, and engineers, all working together to create millions (literally, millions) of interactive digital projects. I am proud of the work I did with Mabel, and I wish I had kept a portfolio from many of the clients whose projects I produced - the range of templates I adapted with the art directors was dizzying. Because I don’t have the images or the 1000 words per image to describe everything, I will say that I am proud to have been a valuable contributor to the consistent design and brand identity over nearly a decade of collaborative, creative, innovative work.

Karen

I spent 15 months with Karen, embedded as a creative with her Marketing and Communications department. I came in to apply my managerial and innovative digital experience in an environment that had previously hired vendors for all its creative needs. It was a confidence-building, emotional-intelligence experiment in which they let me build a fun, diverse, kind of crazy creative department, a content management system outline, and an innovative website production process from the ground up. Surprisingly, the whole experience wasn’t as daunting as it would have been if I had been told at the beginning: “Hey, let me tell you what we’re gonna try to do together - and which skills and experiences you brought to the table were the real reasons why we asked you to come out with me - it’s not what you really thought.”

THE FUTURE Job - Jane (or John) doe

What will the next job be? I believe it will be a long-term, life-changing, innovative, visionary experience with collaborative and companionable coworkers, incredible and potentially unusually interesting benefits, and, of course, loaded with opportunities to learn, grow, change and mentor others to do the same.

I am looking. And networking. And researching.

Let’s meet up for a drink and a chat - shoot me a note and I’ll we can talk schedules….

“Change just happened. I am in a new phase of the life I am living, and I think I am going to like it.”

I was laid off due to the pandemic and budgets and I know something like 80% of the world is dealing with the same thing.

It’s all up(stairs) from here, I hope.

I am striving to feel camaraderie with my fellow job searchers and with the world and sometimes it is so easy and my heart feels full with empathy and other times I just feel….

Well, sometimes just get to have feelings without opening that up to the world and the community and the zeitgeist and just feel for myself.

And that’s ok. It’s not selfish to have feelings about your personal situation and not compare it to anything except what you’ve experienced and felt before - sometimes you just gotta do you, right?

There is so much more to think about now, so much more uncertainty and I have to admit, I surprised myself when I realized that while I am a little apprehensive about immediate day-to-day things, like if my unemployment application went through properly, and hoping that it did so I can pay for healthcare and rent and all the things that still need to be funded…and I realized that I am invigorated by the possibilities brought about by change.

I didn’t even have to make that thought happen -

I didn’t have to coax myself into believing it, the thought just popped up:

“Change just happened, I am in a new phase of the life I am living and I think I am going to like it.”

Don’t get me wrong, I have experienced and enjoyed change before, and the possibilities offered by change motivate me to act, of course.

But this seems bigger, and is really interesting to feel how it is affecting my perceptions and actions and thoughts and experiences.

So many wonderful people have reached out, and have responded to my having contacted them.

I am so grateful - the possibilities for “what happens next?” don’t feel like they’re limited to “waiting for something I can’t control” anymore.

I am not waiting for something to happen to me - I am acting on change and it feels like I am making things happen.

I’m stretching, I’m reaching, and while I am still not quite strong enough to open up and look to see the wonderful things are within my grasp, I know I will get there soon.

And I hope you all will be there with me, cheering me on and knowing I am here to cheer you on, too.

a redesign and a reboot...

Winter Rooster. no reason. 

so, in the last year or so, I've been working at a job that has been so exhaustingly involved that I haven't been able to think, let alone be interesting in my free time.

and for years before this past one, I'd loved my job so much I was afraid of being dooced (look it up) for blogging about it. and everything in my life, pretty much, was somehow centered around my job.

so, this domain has been lying fallow, and I've been completely out of practice at writing things.

I found a new home for the domain, and a new host for the system, but I can't decide what I want to do with it yet. not even sure if I should repost my favorite stuff from the old site, or just start anew. I know it's too much to hope to be good, or even interesting, at first, but maybe with practice I'll find my voice again, and that will be something. 

while archiving the old picturepicture(dot)net, I couldn't help but re-read everything - and I'm pretty shocked at how little I remember writing from that old site. There was a lot there I quite liked - but I think I am going to start fresh rather than re-posting old stuff. 

either way. it looks like this is the new picturepicture(dot)net for now. And I think I like it.

TV. Just Enough Of It.

Because I watch so much tv, some of it actively, some of it is "something to have on while I do other things" and some of it is just plain "this is soothingly edited and narrated so I fall asleep to it" I thought it would be interesting (to me, anyway) to list what is on my DVR and put it into some sort of context for my own amusement.

I discovered there are fully 96 things set to auto-record (i took off 4 things that had been canceled since I last went through the list). 

Writing out the "story behind everything on this list" would be an exercise in explaining why I watch such shameful reality tv, or how I can’t stop watching a cop drama that has gotten top far past its prime, but as a completist, I am so far into it, I need to see it through to the end. So far, the process has been mostly "Man, I am grateful for television because I am not sure there are enough books on my reading list to keep me from falling into a pit of passive boredom."

On the other hand, I had been feeling like I might spend too much money on cable, but looking at how much tv I watch makes me realize that I actually really use the service to its fullest without watching the news, sports, or Survivor. And that’s not a bad thing.