Exhibit 5a | Creative Disobedience

I’m having another one of those career days. One of those days when I wonder what I should do next. I get like this occasionally, and often nothing comes of it. But this time I feel as though it’s time to really start making some decisions. There are several factors that have started this little debate in my head, and they’ve all come around sort of all at once.

First of all, I just received my five year anniversary pin at my job. It’s a little gold lapel pin with a diamond chip. This was accompanied with an email from someone I’ll never meet in charge of the human resources congratulating me on my five years of toil. So of course it’s time to start seriously thinking about what my job means to me, what I’ve learned, what I have left to learn, and whether or not it’s time to consider making a change. Making a change has been on my mind for some time now, but every time I go to make the move, something comes up and I stick it out a bit longer. Now there is a possible chance to make a positive move within the company, which would be great as far as maintaining salary and benefits.

Another factor came from reading over the latest issue of HOW. There is a profile of Coudal Partners, whose blog I’ve been reading for some time now. Essentially, at least according to the article (which is backed up by what I’ve read on their site), Coudal Partners is the best design job in the universe. They design cool and crazy things “because they can”. They create fifty percent of their own business through side projects like JewelBoxing, because they don’t want to rely on silly details like clients for all of their income. They do this because they can. And they wear jeans to work. Hell yeah.

Then there is the fact that I’m going to turn 30 next year. I know I just turned 29, and arbitrary numbers like 30 shouldn’t mean anything yada yada yada. But open up any design magazine, look at any firm and every time they profile up and coming designers, they are usually under 30, and they’ve usually opened their own firms and are working with super cool clients etc. Of course, they almost always have fancy degrees from the big colleges and internships at Pentagram. But still. It strikes a nerve. I don’t need to be profiled in a magazine, but I would love to be working in that dream job that I’ve always wanted.

Hmm, the dream job. So what would that be? When I moved to New York, my current job was my dream job. But then again, when I moved here, the bar was a bit lower: I wanted a design job in New York City that would enable me to live here. Done. Now, five years later I’m looking for more. The only thing is, I’m not sure what “more” should be.

As I work through this process of figuring out what to do with my life, there are a few challenges that will need to be met. First of all, no matter which direction I think about in which to move my career, it seems inevitable that I’ll have to take a pay cut. This is something that I’ll just have to come to terms with, I guess. But beyond salary comes the difficult question of benefits. Health insurance is a necessity. Recently, someone close to me has been going through the nightmare of needing medical care without insurance, and quite frankly, the idea scares the hell out of me. So finding a job with health insurance is a must. Next, there is the matter of education. While I am proud of how far I’ve gotten on the merits of my skills rather than my degree, I often wonder whether additional education would be worthwhile. After all, colleges have connections to the design firms and there is always more to learn. The idea of becoming a student again is scary, and the debt…whoa. Design school ain’t cheap.

Since I can’t do anything this instant, I must content myself to making lists. Lists of things I want. List of things I don’t want. Lists of opportunities. Lists of challenges. Just the fact that I’m saying “challenges” instead of “buckets of suck” shows that I’ve been in the corporate environment too long. I think what I need goes beyond looking obsessively at the job postings on Craigslist and Monster. I think that if I’m going to find the job and the future I want, I’m going to have to design my dream job myself. But if anyone has an opening for a senior designer in a firm that pays well, is full of fun, creative people, and will allow me to wear jeans in the office, give me a call.