Starting over

I was sitting on this chair when I officially handed my resignation, on July 27th, 2022.

After over five years as a full time senior UX designer for a Berlin tech company, and just over ten as a designer, my time had come to an end. I burned out and didn’t know where to go from here, literally and figuratively. At this point, I honestly thought I was only leaving a job and taking a break, but what happened over the following months forced me to face the facts: I was actually leaving a career.

Up until last summer, the plan was to come back and find a full-time designer position, in a Berlin-based company. I can’t tell for sure if I was in South Korea or Japan. Probably somewhere and sometime between the two, but I don’t think it was earlier than that.

One morning, I just wanted to start reminding myself which case studies and projects I could potentially showcase in a portfolio, because I would definitely need to have it ready before applying to open positions. After a short time browsing through folders full of design files, ppt presentations and exports of work documents, something felt off. Something felt really off.

I was mindlessly executing a plan laid out by a burned out version of myself months earlier, and I didn’t agree with this plan anymore. I guess travelling on my own helped me gain just enough peace of mind, clarity and confidence to tell myself: “let’s be real, that’s not what you want for yourself”. No drama, no tears, just a quiet voice asking what I actually wanted. I shut down my laptop and went out for a walk.

I studied Data Analytics and Data Science last autumn, because that’s something I’ve always been curious about, but also as a way to challenge myself. If we’ve worked closely together in the past or if you know me very well, this decision shouldn’t surprise you. Did I enjoy studying a completely new subject? Yes. Did I find it easy? The analytics part was, but the data science part wasn’t. Do I want to make a career out of it?

I’m not definitely rejecting it, and there might be a career path out there where my profile and experience could be a good fit, but I don’t see it as the most likely outcome anymore. I’m glad I got to learn a lot of new things, both conceptually and technically, and these new skills won’t be lost, no matter where I decide to go next. Learning new skills was fun, and allow me to write things like that while sipping on my morning coffee, before starting the day. Just for fun.

I spent the entire winter in my living room, juggling between job applications in a quite sad market environment and working on my book. This project let me reconnect with something that I hadn’t done in a while: doing something creative for myself, on my own, from the beginning to the end. Not something to complete for a client or a company, or for anyone external. Just doing and completing something, for my own sake. I felt a stronger alignment with this project than with any of the mission statements of the companies to which I applied.

This book taught me a critical lesson: I can do things on my own. Independently. And this idea of staying independent grew and stuck with me, despite my deeply rooted rejection of the concept itself, when it comes to occupation. I generally value independence, but oddly, I've never truly questioned this belief in the context of employment since I secured my first full-time job many years ago. I've been continuously employed throughout my adult life, and have never seriously considered an alternative to being employed during this entire time.

A couple of weeks ago, I used an AI tool to proofread and send a message to someone I know, and she called me out on it immediately in her reply. It didn’t sound like me. It might seem like an insignificant little detail, but it helped me understand I shouldn’t outsource or subcontract writing to anyone.

Another indication came from everything I shared with you last year. I did my best to write semi-regularly, and some of you told me they were patiently awaiting my newsletters, and expressed appreciation for what I was sharing. My thoughts on the places I was visiting, the soul searching experience I was going through, alongside my bad grammar and the spelling mistakes I make as a non-native speaker. I’m very grateful for your support.

So… that’s where I am. I’m sitting on this exact same chair and something tells me to write. The process is not effortless, but I don’t need to force it either. It doesn’t feel like an absolute chore, and I’m actually enjoying it. I don’t restrict “writing” to a strict definition of putting down words on paper (I feel like I ‘wrote’ a photography book, even if it doesn’t contain any words), and it’s not the only exclusive thing I’m doing, but it’s one I’m willing to spend time and improve on.

I have a few posts ready to be published, and some others that are nothing more than ideas still needing a lot of work. There are some themes I explored last year I would like to revisit. I have some projects deep in my archives that haven’t even made it to a first draft. I don’t know if I’ll publish everything here, but I’ll be writing for sure, even if it’s just for myself.

I’m still figuring it all out, and in the meantime, I’ll be writing. Until I find something better to do.

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(Note: you may have noticed that this post was been sent by ‘fffred’. It was fun writing under “one way flight”, but as I’m moving on to a new chapter, it only felt appropriate to reflect this change in the publication’s name. All my previous posts are still accessible.)