Swiss Army Sword

Jack of all trades, master of some? It’s been some time since I’ve last worked in social media or marketing in general. It was around when TikTok began to catch on and my contract with the World of Fruit pop-up exhibit ended. I knew I wanted to pivot away from social media management and specialize in a creative or technical skill so I buckled down to refine my entire marketing tool-belt in hopes of finding my calling. 

     I was thrown into the fire and learned as I went with most of my acquired skills. I could never shake the feelings of imposter syndrome proclaiming myself as anything more than a hobbyist. If I wanted to make it as a professional in a creative field, I had to learn to be confident in my abilities. The process of breaking down and rebuilding myself begins with an email from Adobe. They finally caught on and I couldn’t use the old, cracked Photoshop I downloaded for free somehow. This was a welcome inconvenience. I had to be as comfortable with Adobe Premiere as I was with Final Cut Pro if I wanted to be a legitimate video editor so I began paying for the entire Adobe Creative Cloud. It was like learning to walk again weaning off of Final Cut Pro. I eventually discovered the world of creative stock assets and began running. I completed a series of videos showcasing my past work and even scraped my Wix portfolio and started fresh on Squarespace. Just as I was applying again, the pandemic happened. Living and caring for parents on the older side, I stayed home mostly. I tried to not let it stop me from getting my career up and running but it did. However I still hunkered down and continued to create content I was passionate about and even dusted off some books.

I was feeling burnt out having just familiarized myself with a few new different programs and technological workflows. There had to be a simpler way for me to make it in the world of advertising. As a copywriter for my high-school yearbook my senior year, we took a field trip to USC for a journalism seminar. It was there I was shown all kinds of different ads during a headline writing class and it was at that moment when I believed I could pursue advertising as a career. Having just spent most of my previous job writing captions for other people’s pictures, I figured maybe the pen was the next sword to sharpen. I finally got around to reading Hey Whipple, Squeeze This: The Classic Guide to Creating Great Ads by Luke Sullivan and Edward Boches and The Adweek Copywriting Handbook by Joesph Sugarman to refine my copywriting skills. But with the pandemic looking like it was going to drag on and my confidence that I could make it in the world of advertising dwindling with each unanswered application, I took a bigger step back to try and discover what I really wanted to do. 

     I grew up in awe of the magic of movies. Whether it was sparked from the Universal Studios Tram Ride or the behind the scenes features of movies; I’ve always dreamed of working on a film set or shelled into an editing bay like a goblin. I began editing silly sketches and music videos on Windows Movie Maker when I was 12. Going into college with a business marketing degree, ‘Plan A’ was to try and make it as an advertising copy-writer. Silently, I aspired to start off editing commercials, then music videos, and then hopefully full length feature films. I saw this time as a chance to learn and position myself to somehow break into an industry that couldn’t even earn money from their main source of revenue at the time. Here are some of the books I had read; The Business of Film by Paula Landry & Stephen Greenwald, Rebel Without A Crew by Robert Rodriguez; and Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee. Months went by. Movies on my watch list were crossed off. Production assistant jobs turned out to be scams and in one instance, a cult initiation. Hopeful real job opportunities became a rarity and the industry dejection settled in. It was time for another pivot. 

     When the world began opening up, I didn’t just catch COVID again reconnecting with a friend…  I also caught the “YOU CAN TEACH YOURSELF TO CODE AND EARN SIX FIGURES!” bug. Of the skills I provided for the businesses I’ve worked with, building websites was most enjoyable. It felt like the exact opposite of being a social media manager. During the fall of 2021, I planned on self studying to be competent enough to attend a coding bootcamp or at least become a Wordpress developer with coding, marketing, and media knowledge. Here are some of the resources I got through in my few months of self-study; Free Code Camp (Web Design, Javascript Algorithms and Data Structures, Front End Development Libraries), The Odin Project (Foundations, Intermediate HTML & CSS), and the 100 Devs free online bootcamp on Twitch. I crammed technical documents, shed tears over practice problems, watched hundreds of hours of Youtube courses in 1.75x speed only to hit replay afterwards, and still couldn’t build anything without a tutorial holding my hand. None of my apps were properly working and maybe the whole coding thing wasn’t going to work either. I felt like I fried my brain trying to teach myself how to do something that others usually pay thousands for. I gave up. This wasn’t a career pivot, it was a career pump-fake. 

     Financial burdens bubbled to the surface and I began working at the Yamaha Motorsports warehouse to stay afloat while figuring my career out. I got to interact with new people again coming out of a very isolated few years and even lost 45 pandemic pounds. Having to just show up somewhere and your only responsibility is to move things around felt like a dream job. I was getting paid more than I was as a part time independent contractor that still had to put taxes aside. There were no technologies or pop culture moments I had to be prepared for. After 5pm everyday I could go home and not have to worry about work and just play music. I saw myself becoming complacent and getting stuck with my love of routine. As the year mark since I’ve been there approaches, I know now is the time to make a move.

     Maybe I never needed to make a career pivot. No sort of career pump-fake, step back, fade-away jumper was going to get me on track. Maybe what I actually needed all along was career spin-move. Maybe I had already found my calling, and I just let it ring. I am now returning to the world of marketing with a renewed sense of direction and refined skillset. I am set to attend a Digital Marketing Bootcamp through the University of California Irvine’s Department of Continuing Education in the fall to reacquaint myself and improve on the analytical side of marketing. Maybe I’m still just a jack of all trades, master of none…. a marketing swiss army knife if you will. But I know that once given the right opportunity and guidance, I can be forged into a Marketing Swiss Army Sword.