Join hosts Justin and Katie Kemerling, Jake Welchert, and Adam Casey at this event for Megan Hunt, Candidate for Legislature in District 8, at Round and Round in Dundee. We'll have cocktails, conversation, and homemade snacks from the official #campaigngrandma, Mary Beth.
Tuesday, September 12
5:30–7pm
$25 Suggested Donation
Round and Round
5013 Underwood Avenue
Omaha, NE 68132
There is one core reason I’ve come to love a career in design. From month to month, week to week, day to day, the one constant in looking back on 15 years as a designer is this: change. Doing the same thing day in, day out, in the same way, within the same framework just doesn’t work for me. The uncertainty within an outlook that embraces change can, at times, be high in stress. But overall, that is overshadowed by newness, excitement, and looking into the unknown of what could be next.
What is next? Hard to say. Earlier this week, my wife took me out to dinner for my birthday. Wonderful time spent with great food, drink, and conversation. She’s very good at direct questions and follow-up. We went deep on what I’m looking for in the next few years from a creative business standpoint. The thing that I emphasized was change.
Now, I love being a designer. I feel very fortunate I’m able to do what I do, where I do it, and for whom I do it for. But I’m at a point where I feel something needs to change. There needs to be some sort of big shake up. New risks, new emphasis, new goals. I can feel that in the center of my being. I’m ready to embrace some sort of change, some sort of shift. I didn’t get into this business to accept the same old same old and I certainly have no intention of doing so now.
Some other careers I find myself drawn to, for one reason or another:
Just let “good” go. Do not even categorize what you do in terms of good and bad (or not good). Instead, just do the design work. You went to school for it, you honed your skills, you’ve evolved over the course of however many years. Why does it matter if you’re good? Instead, focus on the task at hand: solve the problem, find the opportunity. Be a worker and get the job done in the only way you know how to do it. If you can let go of being “good,” you can focus on delivering what it is you came to deliver.
All the shit you’re holding on to, just don’t. Let it go. Close it out. Move on. Say good-bye. Just be done. Maybe it’s a lingering project with no deadline or perhaps you can’t bring yourself to state the obvious, but you know deep down you just have to cut the chord. Set it lose. Get rid of it. It no longer is part of you, it doesn’t bring you joy, and it isn’t what you want to be thinking about. So there you go, just be brave. Clear it out and move on to the next. And trust yourself, there is a next. No need to be fatalistic.
Not to game the system or get around the system. Not to take the easy way out or to half-ass it. Or to phone it in. Yes, I can be lazy, shirk duties, and have days when my heart just isn't in it, but the standard approach I have to design is that I’m here to spend the time I need to put in to do the work. I’m not here to overcharge, do the bare minimum, or to get it done as fast as possible. (I suppose that last one depends on the deadline.) I’m not hear to automate the thinking, to do something that barely passes, or to even have something that’s just OK. No, I am here to put in the work. Sometimes I’m tired when I’m putting in said work, but that, I think, just comes with the territory.
Symbols matter. Symbols are powerful. And how we choose to use symbols says a lot about us as a people. It takes very little effort to learn just a little bit about why Confederate monuments are seriously problematic and should be removed. There is no “other side” that can even be considered respectable. The symbols of slavery, oppression, hate, and racism should never be celebrated. It does seem, at this moment, we are collectively setting out to fix that wrong. We shouldn’t let up.
