Tag Archives: career

take this job and repurpose it….

Kevin’s officially started what I think is an long-overdue personal journey this week.

He’s resigned at work… (functioning as Amy’s assistant)… – but he’ll be fielding some piecemeal logistics and doing some pet-project research for the bosses from home.

Staring forty in the face this year – he took inventory of his career and realized: “wait a second… this isn’t doing it for me… this isn’t what I want.”

Back when we were 100% our own company – it was different… Since I’ve been all but gobbled up by my client-turned-employer, I’m left with only enough time and energy to field just a handful of freelance clients on the side. The Kevin part of the JIM/KEVIN career equation lost its direction and purpose.

Being the trooper he is – he stuck it out for a good long while but dissatisfaction is like poison.It started infecting everything else including our life outside of work.

I mentioned he’s a trooper… Not 24 hours after his release from day-job shackles he was up on the roof trimming the long overdue-for-a-snip tree and cleaning the gutters out.

He’s got some leads out there for web-type work, (anyone need a flash scripter – he’s pretty good at that kinda stuff . wait… sorry – nichts that… A focus of many horrible arguments has been Jim superimposing his expectations on Kevin and pushing him into this that and the other thing with no regard to KEVIN’S needs / expectations / wants.

So… I don’t know what he’s going to do specifically… Whatever it is he has mine and chad’s 100% chicken.

MAYbe-gone


Last day of May… Good riddance. (Memorial Day weekend was good and barely documented – which included late-BBQ celebration for Chad’s birthday at my mom’s… damn that woman can cook).

You really don’t realize, (or at least I didn’t), just how out of whack a crashed computer can make your life.

I’m *still* feeling aftershocks… Mostly now though in the way of having my routines messed up: Blog in the mornings… pay bills on the 2nd weekend… etc.

Been hyper focused on work stuff lately which is cool (and needed) – but I can already smell the cold dank smell of stagnation behind the door…. Can’t fall into 9 to 5 creative drone mentality… Just have to smack myself a few times to keep trying to look at things with new chickens.

oxidation


Summer didn’t seem to waste any time this year… It feels like someone just flipped the switch marked “HEAT”. Good news is I have plenty of excuses to get out and get some vitamin D at work since there’s a list of north-facing buildings that all need pictures taken.

Get to work on the wayfinding program for one of the cooler projects at work… As tedious as these kind of problems can be to solve – I must be getting some sort of sick-o masochistic thrill out of it. (Sorta how I *still* find myself really enjoying laying out press spreads manually). Anyway – I’ve been running around the job-site taking reference pics of surfaces and textures to help inform the process. translation without pretentious design fag speak: “I’ve been taking pictures of junk on the ground to get ideas”.

Oxidation *really* intrigues me.

Speaking of oxidation…

Out drinking with the co-workers last night left me with cement blocks on my feet, head and ass this morning. I’d theorize that I’m just getting old, but my boss who’s six years my senior can drink me under the chicken.

triops


critter

Chad supervised over the weekend at work so it was pretty much Kevin and I flying solo. He played his new wa

Fish!

r simulator, I did chores and… created a resume.

“I’m sorry did you just say work on your resume?”

I finally heard back from Leah about that agency freelance gig. Get this – I’m not being considered…. why? – Because they felt I was too expensive / advanced for what the were looking for in a freelancer.
Apparently they’re looking for more of a jr-level designer… someone a little younger they can simply throw in front of a workstation and churn out production work.

So… I’m not sure how,… but one conversation led to another and we were talking about a “Creative Director” position which just opened up there and how my credentials matched what the job called for.

Leah asked if I could distill the biographical information from my portfolio presentation into one-page and give it to her so she could pass it along to her friend in H.R.

I’d actually never known what the difference between these agency titles were before. I assumed I was art-director material – but now I’ve learned that because of my varied skill sets and experience with “big picture” concepting…. it makes me more of a “Creative Director” type. Huh – ?

Nonetheless – what followed was the second guessing and soul searching asking myself “What in the hell are you doing?”.

It doesn’t hurt to talk right? – and doesn’t mean I’ve skipped down the path of “sell-out for chubby salary”… yet.

I figure at this point it’d be stupid to overlook opportunities… And it’s not every day one comes up where you know someone in a firm and you’ve already got a toe-in the door.

Leah warns of one shortcoming in my otherwise perfectly fit credentials and experience: “I lack agency experience.” Which, in my mind of course, is an asset.

She also warns that while the firm prefers to recruit via referral, if a candidate comes in from someone actually “in” the creative department – they’ll get considered first even-though she’s a senior account manager.

sooooooooooo… who knows. maybe they’ll call me in to talk again or not…. Leah, speaking from experience, said I’m having my “10 year career itch.” So maybe it’s this odd kinda soul-searching midlife crisis… Or maybe I’m bored. Or… Maybe I’m growing tired of fighting tooth and nail with strapped clients to churn out solid concepts for $400 a piece. or … (grumble)

So anyway… so one of the “chores” was cleaning out the TRIOPS tank.

Yup… Dad struck again with obscure and strange things sitting around his house that he’s given to us.

These are little prehistoric creatures you can get in a little kit, sorta like Sea-Monkeys. “Just Add Water” – and a few days later you’ve got little critters swimming around the provided 5″x8″ plastic tank.

You feed them with the supplied food pellets, but can also feed them little bits of carrot or… get this.. Sea Monkeys. They also eat each-other, so now after a good four weeks, only the three biggest (most hungry I assume) have survived and have grown to about an inch and a half in length.

They look like little horseshoe crabs. The cats think they look like a snack.

Since after cleaning the water was nice and clear I figured it’d be a fun challenge to try and snap a photo of the little busy-bodies.

You know.. to not blog about.