STRT_SCRPS v182

Committing to a circus

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I promise I at least try to get one of these out every week. Been a while since I’ve done that though.

Reason for delay this time around is that some change has been afoot on my end.

But first some ancient history: ~11 years ago, I left silicon valley and the world of UX, and moved to NY for my first agency job. I joined Day One Agency as a strategist and the first official employee.

This month, I accepted an offer for a full time position.

At Day One. This time as a VP of Strategy.

I made this choice for a few reasons.

Because I’m bad at paying my own taxes.

Because I think I do better strategy work when I have time to cultivate relationships across teams.

Because they are working on a brand I wanted to work on.

Because after freelancing there for months it was clear they have been been really good at hiring really good people.

Because they invest in making cool stuff for the sake of it.

Because they are doing more and more AOR level work and I can bring experience in that arena.

Also I honestly missed being part of a team.
Being a mentor and being a student.
As a consultant, you have to have confidence that your way of doing things is the best way and I always liked seeing how someone else would have gone about it.

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a photo of the cubs game.

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You know what’s most interesting about the switch to full time?

I suddenly have waay more material for the newsletter. I have to be a bit more considered in some ways, because suddenly it is public where I am drawing these thoughts from (its not the only source of thought. There are other pieces to my life I promise). But I also am having so many more casual conversations. I’m not billing by the hour, so I am more often looped in to work “just for visibility”. And I’m having more honest conversations with people about the good bad and ugly of the job.

And that means more scraps…

So here are some scraps from the past week or so…

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Polish proverb: “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” » »

Manager version: “Not my circus, still my monkeys.”

Leadership version: “My circus, but not my monkeys”

Freelancer version: “Just a monkey looking for a circus”

Full time employee: “I’m a monkey, paid in peanuts by the circus”

The truth of the matter: Monkeys don’t belong in the circus at all.

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There is also another ~t h i n g ~ going on in my (and your) life… Which is the casual descent we’ve made into authoritarianism.

I had to put thoughts to paper¹, but an 800 word essay referencing state sponsored disappearances and such felt like it should live somewhere else. So if you want, you can read that here on a cool little publishing tool called fold. Or here in a plain google doc.

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WEEKLY MONSTER

Paid for internet on the plane but it never worked. After transcribing ~100 post it notes to google docs, I did my favorite plane activity. edited photos on my phone. Problem is you’re stuck with the most recent photos that are stored locally, so I only had one image that wasn’t meeting notes..

Still fun tho. the app is called glitché

1. And now I exist in the Palantir database of potential dissidents marked for observation!