Hello again
It’s been a while, a long while, since I’ve written here. My last post, on June 11th, was written a few days before I graduated from college (UC Davis), and began life in this crazy place known as the “real world”. I suppose it was slightly prophetic to end my last post asking, “Will I blink? Or will I take the step forward?”I think I’ve taken steps forward. I’ve probably taken almost as many backwards, but progress is being made, at least that’s what I keep telling myself. Much has happened in my world in the last four months. I finished school and continued my freelance design projects, and managed to build a business that made enough money that I thought I was going to continue freelancing for the foreseeable future. Things change quickly though… more on that later. At the end of July I moved out of Davis, a place that’s been a great home to me for the five years I spent in school (minus a long trip, and then a shorter one, to Australia). Although I didn’t think much about it when I was moving out, Davis is and was a wonderful place to be a student, a great place to do some serious growing up. I grew fond of that place, maybe more so now that I don’t live there anymore, but looking back 5 years to a time when I lost sleep over deciding between UCLA, Cal, and UC Davis, I’m fairly certain that I made the right choice.—
“Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than its worth.” – Baz Luhrman.
—A few days after I moved out, I spent almost a month traveling in South America with my dad and my brother. I haven’t spent this much time with them since I moved away to college, and it was great to reconnect with them and spend sometime learning about the person that my once little brother has grown into.I have a lot of thoughts about some of the things I saw in South America… I think I’ll save them for another day, but it was an eye-opening trip in many ways.I came back to California ready to get back to work, and moved into San Francisco the day after I got back… Unfortunately, my once burgeoning freelance business had pretty much come to a halt in the August slowdown that (apparently) is typical of corporate america. It was a nerve wracking few weeks until things finally started to get rolling again, but that kind of slowdown was new to me, and it spooked me. A re-evaluation of priorities (the flexible schedule student life becomes less important, a steady paycheck and professional development becomes more important) and a very strong desire to continue living in San Francisco sparked me into looking around for a full time job.Serendipity stepped in, and I figured out that what I’ve been doing in the freelance world is called web production, and after finally figuring out what to call the skills that I have, I found a job with an exciting startup (Affinity Labs) as a web producer, with my first task being to help grow an online community for artists and designers (ArtBistro). More on Affinity in a future post, but a month to the day after I started and I’m still challenged and learning new things every day, and that’s exactly how I want it to be.
