The Start of Something New
You can change your hair, and you can change your clothes. You can change your mind; that’s just the way it goes. You can say goodbye, and you can say hello, but you’ll always find your way back home.
This song lyric (punctuation my own) does not really have much to do with what follows, except for the word “change.” It also builds nicely off my title for this entry, in that both were born of Disney Channel originals. Anyway.
I am now just about a month into a new job. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to say something like that. I was at my last agency for just over three years. When I began to look for a new opportunity, I had to remind myself how to seem desirable as an employee and colleague and human being, both on paper and via video interviews. Revisiting a résumé is scary stuff.
I will not dwell on the upset and politics that reigned over my last many months at my old agency, or how they grew to a fever pitch in the week following my expressed desire to depart. I left behind a deal of great friends at that office, the best of whom I will keep close.
On March 23, 2023, at the opening of my previous gig, I wrote on this blog: “Starting a new job is a moment ripe with possibility, because I get to make a first impression on a whole new group of people. I get to shovel aside the mental crud and make room for a whole new set of skills and lots of novel information. It’s a moment of redefinition. I remain myself, but I add a new layer to my personhood. Addition, not revision.”
I am not fully supportive of the fact that I called the moment one of “redefinition” but then refused to call it one of “revision,” seeing that those two work very similarly. I do, however, support previous-me’s idea that change can be considered a new layer to someone, not a decimation of the layers before. We must not strip the paint! Or another layer-building metaphor of your choosing. (Geological strata is a nice one, if you’re having trouble deciding.)
The work I am doing day-to-day, in essence, remains the same. I am a copywriter at a pharmaceutical advertising agency. That truth remains from a month ago. Now, however, I am doing this work among new processes, new people, new routines. It has allowed me to observe my work at its most basic and determine what works in the work and what doesn’t work in the work. For instance, I have immediately determined a file organization habit I did not have before. (It boils down to folders within folders within folders until each file can only really be appropriately housed in one very contained place. My hope is the files get lonely.)
[Insert here: clichéd saying about how change is scary or necessary or exciting or all of the above.] Remember that.
I am once again getting the chance to influence culture at my place of work. I am once again getting the chance to make impressions on new people. I am once again being asked to prove myself and my worth as an advertising professional. It’s great fun, and that’s not sarcasm.
But a lot of it is still a mystery. Will I be able to grow here? Will I continue to find enjoyment in what I do? Will I find some new people to call friends? So far, signs point to yes on all counts.
[Insert here: clichéd saying about how time reveals all.] Remember that.
I learn new things about myself all the time. Some are brand new things, and some are solidifications of what I suspected. In the latter category, I am definitively horrible at wrapping gifts. In the former category, I am hoping this new job helps me along.
The start of something new: a reality Stephen Colbert and I have in common. Protect free speech. See ya later.