New Season, New Opportunities
Published: September 25, 2017
For most of my life, September was the start of a new school year. A change in my classes, my day-to-day peers, and my time schedule. This year has been a little bit different. I’ve graduated from both of my programs and I’m officially no longer in post-secondary. The result of this is that I didn’t get that resurgence or change in my life cycle that I’m so used to having. Naturally, when September came around this year, I still got the longing for something new. Which is why I’ve made some of my own choices to switch things up a bit to continue to grow and exceed, (as if I was in school), without having to be in it at all.
Welcome to my Fall 2017
Here are some choices I’ve made recently made that will break my routine:
1. I’ve mentioned this in previous blogs already but I’m no longer working at Lonely Cloud Design, and I have instead taken on the role of Jr. Digital Marketing Coordinator at WINGS Restaurants. My experience at LCD is irreplaceable as I’ve grown so much when it comes to design, time management, and organization. I will forever be grateful for this experience and want to thank LCD for everything that I learned and was a part of. This change is going to impact my life in a multitude of ways, one of them being my daily work hours. With LCD I worked in an office about 3 days a week starting at 9 or 10am and then we would be out by usually 3pm. Now, I’m working the generic full time 9–5 (or in my case, 5:30) with very minimal flexibility. I also was so used to working from home at LCD (as it would be half at home, half from the office) and closer to the end we were getting in a routine of remotely working and communicating together. Now I’ve already started to notice, travel time. It takes so much longer to make it to a job when you’re stuck in morning traffic, having to drive to work everyday increases my gas payments, and making it home by 6:30pm leaves me little time to pick up outside client work. Which transitions me into my next point.
2. I am saying goodbye to the Mandy Gill team. Mandy Gill was a client that I was introduced to during my practicum at BCIT and I have been working with her ever since. She is a Reebok Sponsored Athlete, Total Body-Mind-Spirit-Wellness-Advocate, and overall incredible Entrepreneur. I have learned so much working with Mandy and I love that both of my past jobs have been with strong, talented, business women. My role with Mandy grew to great extents and as much as I loved the work that I did for her, I have found I no longer have the bandwidth for the position. She needs someone who can take up a full-time role in her business and focus all of their responsibilities onto her platform. Mandy has so much to give and if she could wear every hat, she would. I want to thank Mandy for completely trusting me as a doe-eyed student and for always having her full support in me as I overcame some learning processes in the mix. It’s not easy to land a client when you’re first out of school and it was a blessing for my first to be with Mandy Gill.
3. While I no longer have the bandwidth for daily social media posting, ongoing website maintenance, blog posts, etc. with Mandy; I will still have a little bit of a time for 1-off projects. This is where I would like to welcome Lashes by Alisha as an official new client. I’ll be honest, this is my older sister’s new business and I am so incredibly proud of her. Leesh has been an eyelash technician for around 7 years now, before the trend blew up, and is an incredible talent in the industry. You can see the relation between us already as we both had the urge to switch up our lives and dive into something new. She left her salon a couple months ago and has already been booming with her own personal clients, solely from word-of-mouth and Social Media Marketing (which is where I come in). While I won’t take the credit, Leesh has done a phenomenal job staying consistent and posting her work on clients on a daily basis. She has hired me to design individual posts in cases she would like to promote certain events or showcase her pricing, etc. I look forward to spicing up her social media and designing any future projects. Here is some of the work I’ve done for her already:
4. Now that I will have my weekends free and hopefully 1 or 2 hours after work, I aim to focus back on myself. I love creating for others and supporting their endeavours but I was getting to a point that I didn’t have a lot of time to myself. After my gap year (year off after high school), I jumped right back into school (working weekends) from 2012–2014, and again from 2015–2016 which depleted my social life. The only times my friends got together were on the weekends (which I didn’t have because of work); and the chances that they had during the week, I was in school. Now, I get to have my weekends back and I hope I can build that social foundation back up again. It became a bit of an identity crisis when I had more photos of Mandy in my phone than of myself. I’m happy to start building my life up again.
While I do wish a full-time position was more of a “do this work and you can go home” instead of a mandatory “must take 8 hours of your day, everyday” situation, it’s something that I know I need. Another goal is to update my portfolio. I have so many projects from LCD that I can start inputting on this website. After all is said and done, I also want to begin updating my own social media a lot more often. I know that I love to write for this blog and if I had more time to brainstorm and come up with some strategies, I think I could really begin to grow my platform to be more than what it is.
Near the end of all of my ongoing projects, I kept getting sick which I think was a sign of me overdoing it. Typing this I’m still sniffling from a 2-week cold (that’s finally diminishing). There is little in our life that’s permanent but we will always live inside our bodies — so we have to take care of them; we will always have the need to interact and keep up with our relationships, and we will always need to work (while it may not always be in the same industry, that shouldn’t stop you from chasing the one you want it to be). I know that the job I’m in now is one that I want to keep up with; the friends and relationship that I have now are ones that I intend to last; and I know I need to start looking after my body a lot more in the way I eat as well as hopefully starting to get into some sort of fitness routine. It’s a real cliche, but you are the main character in your own story. If you don’t look after yourself, there’s no one else that will.
There’s something about the Fall season that I think will always bring my attention to re-evaluate where my life is at. As the trees shed their leaves, I’m shedding the extra weight that was on my shoulders. And while I’m so thankful to have the experiences I’ve had, I’m looking forward to really learning who I am again and becoming someone who has balance in their life. This new season, brings new opportunities.
