No more JWT – a scary personal post

Hello? Sometimes I remember this is a personal blog and it’s fine to write about personal things. Although they never feel interesting or satisfying enough, and more often than not  I get odd pangs of guilt sharing a photo of my food on instagram because I don’t think it’s saying anything to the outside world, even though sometimes it’s just something I think looks pretty and makes me feel grateful for being able to eat in really nice places given the way the world looks now. I feel genuinely privileged and a bit in awe of that I guess.

I was thinking that a lot of lovely people I know in real life sound very scary online, on their blogs or in their twitter feeds and I’ve realised my blog can be all fact, fact, fact without letting any personality shine through.

This is bad, I know, and in trying to make excuses for myself I do make up for craziness when given enough espresso and chocolate. When my dad first presented me with a computer, it became clear to me that it was a ‘what can I do with it‘ tool and evolved into ‘what can I learn from it?‘ way before Facebook, bebo and the likes came along. A rigorous rift had formed in my head: this is a thing to learn with! It’s not a £2,000 Facebook machine.

The blog went in that direction: these are interesting things I’ve seen and my thoughts – please, internet people, talk to me about them!

The internet also altered my sense of humour to ‘wacky’ and made me unable to write  ”business speak” emails given I couldn’t say something like ‘paradigm shift’ or ‘synergistic’ with a straight face. I still can’t and I’ve worked so far without having to do that. I see no wrong with plain english and Einstein’s elegant way of putting it: if you can’t explain it in a sentence, you probably don’t understand it.

This approach has opened up some paths but closed others. It has closed those where the level of (brand communications) abstraction was higher than Fourier analysis that put me to sleep in school but on the other hand nurtured those where genuine honesty was more appreciated: where you don’t speak up to please someone else but can easily say, ‘I don’t think this is right. These are my reasons, but I’m happy to discuss it.’ 

Maybe that’s happened because I’m not in competition with others.

Not for more money, not for more fame or my name in a magazine that no one reads. Not for more ‘followers’ and definitely not for likes or +1′s and eyeballs.

Of course I’m human and it pisses me off big time when someone comes and steals something I’ve made, but I think they’re not doing themselves a huge favour. More often than not, they won’t really understand my thinking and logic and it comes across as phoney or highly unlikely to have originated from them. My ideas aren’t unique, but unlike thieves, I’m pretty calm in knowing they’ve stolen one thought to use but can’t explain it or understand where it comes from, whereas I’ve got plenty more filed away.

Eyeballs, likes, meaningless articles are all very nice I suppose, but those who know me are aware that I miss things and people that likes and recognition won’t ever bring back. Not in a passive-aggressive way or a ‘please pity me’ thing, but a healthy motivating factor that I’m doing them proud.

I’ve opened up my Facebook profile so more people could read interesting things. My personal life really is my work research (that boring) and then being a kind of flaneur: looking at things, observing people, entertaining myself and running when I’m not busy. It’s my quiet way of helping others read something they wouldn’t have stumbled upon otherwise by sneaking it into their facebook feeds.

My belief is that given the right tools, people can do good stuff. Here they are. Have them. Poke the world with a stick. Some of my actual friends have probably hidden me from their feeds while some 200 others subscribed. The number grows and the things shared aren’t always particularly cheerful. It amazes me still.

Given this long preamble, the news from the title is that I’ll no longer be at JWT.

It’s been nearly 2 years now, it has felt like the path of most resistance at times in terms of career starts but I’ve realised I want to do more things from a digital perspective. Various stuff I’ve discovered about myself while there:

• Thank goodness my school started teaching me OOP, now I can easily pick up something like Python and Ruby. Nothing to do with planning but revivals of skills that were rusty and now seem to be all around the place. If I’m going to work with people who make these things, it makes a) my life easier b) their life easier and c) the client and account management’s life easier. Also something I’ve always wanted to do but not had much time for.
• I need to work on my presentation skills and condense my knowledge in a more palatable format. Funnily enough, Facebook posts have helped me do that.
• I can actually understand what makes clients nervous, anxious, what they spend their days doing and how to better approach the subject of ‘internet’ or digital altogether. Becoming aware of what they don’t know, like when you are trying to do really easy homework with your child and you can’t for the life of you figure out where it all becomes a blur. But close that loop and things just work.
• My baking is nice, or at least not poisonous and people like it.

Plus a whole host of other realisations about myself and what I know. But not now.

If I don’t make a career change to become a programmer, I’ll emerge with more details from the advertising world. If you want to talk, for whatever crazy reason, you can always email me.