Where I was, am, & will be
who i was:
A curious cat. Always asking the right questions, but not always asking the right people. A happy girl with a sad soul. A loner. Oftentimes felt like I was born in the wrong generation (but I do love self-checkout). I was an eccentric child, often categorized as “weird” and “too much”. Too much of this and that, too loud, usually asking too many questions.
I love to learn but not so much in the traditional sense. I preferred learning on my own through various measures of trial, error, and joyous exploration. School often bored me and I found myself wondering about another life, wishing to be anywhere, everywhere but stuck at my desk. I suffered through hellish lectures on complicated math functions I would never understand and didn’t care about, during which I would draw, doodle, and sketch, wherever I could. Most of the time, my doodles were temporary. I would draw a scene or random abstract shapes on my desk during lessons only to quickly wipe the graphite away before anyone could notice I wasn’t paying attention. A daydreamer at heart.
There was a day in fourth grade when I drew on my own hands and wrists, combining various shapes to look almost graffiti-like. It was thrilling, to use my own body as a canvas for what I knew to be art. However, the excitement faded when our substitute teacher grabbed me by the arm, pulled me aside, and yelled “Jesus Christ! What have you done to yourself?!” as if it were a permanent tattoo. It was a ballpoint pen. She made me scrub my hands until it was gone, and I left the sink defeated and ashamed, hands red and burning from scratching off
the ink.
I often had negative experiences with art in school, it didn’t feel like all art was accepted, only the kind that looked and felt like an elementary school kid made it. Maybe I was ahead of my time. There were many instances like the time with the substitute teacher where I would love something that didn’t fit the status quo, and so I shrunk those parts of myself down quite a bit.
I did love collecting, though. Collecting the shiny and pretty things. I loved looking at old junk really, baby books, old cameras, rocks, jewelry, and art. Oh, how I loved art. To look at it, create it, or destroy it completely and make something else of it. To me, art was everywhere, and everything.
where i am now:
Two words: lost and uncomfortable. They say this is how you’re supposed to feel in your twenties, financially uncomfortable, emotionally uncomfortable, socially uncomfortable. I recall spending so much time as a child wishing I was a grown-up. Someone who would wear high heels, the office type. I would play dress up and pretend I have my own job and means of making money. I didn’t understand that adulthood came with much more than high heels and wads of cash.
I’ve barely started my twenties and all I want is a time machine to either fast forward to retirement or rewind to my childhood. But here I am, about to be rocket-launched into the formative years. Many people I’ve spoken with look back fondly at their twenties because these were the years that made them who they are today.
Once I gather my items for my portfolio and get my resume in better shape, the race is on. My heart is telling me to look for jobs far far away from here, but my mind is limiting where I can go. I have many late nights where my thoughts are swirling about my future expenses, where I will live, and if moving out of this state is really possible for me. For some reason, my heart is telling me it will all work out, but my brain is saying not in this economy!
where i want to be
one year from now:
To FEEL better. I don’t need to have everything figured out by now, but hopefully, I have some system that works. I predict that I’ll have a “fake it til you make it” attitude, perhaps this will be my greatest adventure yet. I’ll have a full-time job, but don't anticipate it will be the perfect fit for me. I want to be out of my parent's basement and working somewhere in brand strategy or management.
Although never formally diagnosed, I feel like I have a mild case of synesthesia. I’ve always had a knack for being able to pinpoint how listening to a certain song feels like a Thursday, looks like the color green, and smells like rain all at once. There is some sort of sensory crossover in my brain that often helps me through my creative work.
Sometimes I’ll listen to a song and create an entire piece of art in my head the way I think the song would look if it were to be painted on a canvas. This type of thought pattern has assisted me in my journey of graphic design and I believe it will be a gift in my future career.
I rely heavily on my intuition, gut feelings, and sensory interpretation to guide me wherever I go. To me, if it doesn't feel right, then it simply isn’t.
where i want to be
five years from now:
One goal: financial stability. Fretting about money is out, buying a new car is in! Realistically, my current vehicle probably only has about five more years in her before she breaks down, and I want to be in the financial position to purchase my dream car.
Five years from now the budget will loosen and I’ll be able to afford the little luxuries in life, like art that makes me feel good and, god forbid, health insurance. As for work, I wouldn’t be surprised if I shopped around a few companies until I found one that I align with on a personal and professional level. It is truly against everything in my being to just be a warm body in a chair. I need a place of work with a strong idea of what a positive work environment looks AND feels like. Somewhere with a mission statement that doesn't make me want to roll my eyes and throw up. Somewhere that allows me to take the risks I’ve always wanted to take in design or marketing, and clients that trust and allow me to do that.
I’ll have years of skill under my belt whether that be learning more about Adobe products, how the industry works, or maybe learning more about how other people work together. I have wonderful ideas and goals to bring them to fruition with kindness, creativity, and never-ending brainstorming sessions with like-minded people.
I hope to find friends on the same wavelength as me, maybe I’ll have a strong community in a new city and state, or maybe I’ll become some ruthless businesswoman who girlbosses her way to the top in record time. Who’s
to say?
where i want to be
ten years from now:
Without a doubt, I’ll be living lavishly. My parents would often ask me as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up, sometimes I would give bogus answers that aligned with whatever I was hyper-fixated on in the current moment, but most of the time I said I wanted to be the boss. The person at the tippy top of whatever company who would make decisions for the betterment of not only the brand but the people working there as well. Ten years from now I want to be the boss.
This mentality came from a film I loved in childhood, School of Rock. In the movie, Dewey Finn gets kicked out of his band and this forces him to find a new means of making money. He stumbles upon a substitute teaching gig at a private elementary school, and introduces his students to his way of viewing the world, his favorite rock legends, and how to stick it to the man. Ten years from now, I’ll have stuck it to the man so hard that it makes the people who wanted me to fail feel sick.
I was told once that out of our group, I would be the least successful. I think about this conversation every so often, wondering why they thought that, and why they felt like they had to tell me that to my face. That conversation could have sent me into a spiral, but instead, it lit me on fire.
A decade from now, I’ll be more successful than all of them combined. This success will not be defined by money but by fulfillment. Each day from now until 2034, I’ll be working, fine-tuning, and obsessing over new skills that I can take with me wherever my heart desires.
By then, I’ll have found people and work that appreciate my weird and too muchness, wherever that may be.
