Hey career? It's time for a break.
Hey career? It's time for a break.
How to figure out what you want from life.
Welcome to Thrifted Design Leadership, the weekly newsletter where I share design leadership tips I’ve begged, borrowed and stolen from my betters ✨
Hey thrifties (is that our name? suggestions desperately required.) It’s been a bit. How’s life?
Since the start of 2023, bloggin’ has been lower on my priorities. As I announced last week (somehow Twitter is still in its death spirals [PLEASE LET ME BE FREE])… drumroll please… 🥁
I’m officially taking a career break. Sabbatical. Time out to feel the grass between my toes, make art, write about design (hello!)
What brought me to this decision is the point of another post, but the high level stakeholder takeaways are thus;
I’ve been some sort of designer in tech since I was 18 (when I started as a pixel art intern on Minecraft). I’m turning 30 next month.
I’ve not had meaningful time off in that time. I worked every summer in internships, freelancing and volunteering, terrified if I took any down time I’d never find a job.
Some difficult stuff happened the last few years. My father passed away, we had the whole global pandemic, I moved countries three times. Through it all I took high stress, high intensity design jobs (no furlough here!)
The project I’ve been working on for two years is launching imminently. I’m incredibly proud of what the team have built! But it’s time for me to pass on the mantle.
All throughout this, I’ve started to question what I wanted my job to be, and where I wanted to centre work in my life. Shout out to Four Thousand Weeks, a book about how short life really is and how productivity hacks don’t make us happier, and The Happiness Lab (thanks Bianca!) for reminding me of all the options we actually have when it comes to how work sits in our lives.
I started The Artists Way again (how many times have you heard that from your creative friends)- and this line stuck with me so hard I wrote it all over our house.
So I did a helluva lot of soul searching, saved some money, made some tough phone calls (shout out to my boss Johanna Vuorela for being my biggest cheerleader through it all), and took the plunge. As of the 23rd March, I’m gainfully unemployed!
2023 is a big year for me- I’m marrying the most amazing person I’ve ever met. I’m turning 30 (cue Bo Burnam). I’m releasing the biggest product I’ve made, to date. So it’s time to figure out what design leadership means to me.
What will this newsletter become? Well, I’m about to have a helluva lot more time to write, think and work on my path. We’re back to a weekly(ish) cadence. Things might get a lil’ more personal and philosophical around here. I hope you’re ready 🔥
Next week we’re gonna talk about how to plan for your own career break. See you there!