Purpose-Driven Careers
My twelve years of training and experience are in graphic design, but I'm only taking graphic design clients I can be excited about. I'm turning down offers to pay to make printed spam, with a new page on my site: "Why I Won't Design Your Ad".
It's not that I don't like graphic design itself. I enjoy operating graphics applications. But that's not enough. It's entirely dependent on what I'm asked to make.
In fact, I could say the same about any of my skills. I don't do any of them well when the company does something boring. My main employment challenge seems to be selling myself as doing one particular task. I don't love any particular skill set, I'm only motivated by the purpose of what I'm achieving. If it's about manufacturing widgets, there is no amount of money that will energize me to participate successfully in any aspect of the company. I know how the attention, concentration and memory functions in my brain. Before long I'm staring out the window. I can work, but it requires a lot of willpower for bare adequacy. In the long run, that's not in anybody's best interest.
I have a lot to be proud of, and one thing that all my successes had in common was that I don't remember ever having to apply willpower to them. I can and do apply willpower whenever it's called for, but it's not optimal. It's probably a good idea to start trying to play to my strengths more often. I know I'll work my ass off on community building, administrative organization, print/web publishing -- or heck, probably a lot of other tasks I haven't even thought of yet -- if the purpose involves enough of this:
- smart and creative people who are different
- innovation
- fun
- changing the way the world works
- science fiction
- popularization of science and education
- the future
- communities of passionate users who have fun promoting through word-of-mouth
I'd like to add to "Why I Won't Design Your Ad" to talk about this so that the page would be more positive, and possibly call the reader to action. Even better to call the reader to action would be to describe some awesome alternatives to print spam, such as the methods is using and considering to promote LOLbars. It would be interesting to get them excited about doing the same.
Comments
rachelann1977 on Jun. 12, 2008 5:28 PM
What happened to the Discovery Institute report? I wanna know what happened!
I have nothing either derogatory or supportive to say about the ad thing except to say that it is totally in fitting with your core personality, and that is something that cannot be ignored. Also, I do happen to like your core personality, or I probably wouldn't hang around so much.
matt-arnold on Jun. 12, 2008 7:53 PM
Thanks!
I've been writing the Creation Museum report one exhibit at a time. You'll like it. I'm waiting for the photos, which aren't online yet.
Incidentally, the Creation Museum is run by Ken Ham's organization, Answers In Genesis. I saw no mention of the Discovery Institute, or the version of Creationism it advocates, Intelligent Design.
rachelann1977 on Jun. 13, 2008 10:26 AM
Oops, my head was confused. By the way, there was supposed to be a pout in there, but I surrounded it with the wrong symbol, and LJ ate it :-(
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