My heart is filled with gratitude.
I was ready to quit design in 2020. I was tired of the state of design and tech; privileged, ignorant, complacent. I was ready for something new. Then the death of George Floyd changed the world. His death wasn’t the first senseless death of Bla(c)k people, not even in that year. Amid a pandemic, the world shifted, not insignificantly, and simultaneously, not enough. The conversations about race, discrimination, accessibility sometimes seem a bit easier.
Or maybe I was simply lucky to meet new people who are kinder. Maybe I have learned how to say no, ask for what I want, and create healthier boundaries in my work and personal life. Maybe the years of working on myself and my career have finally paid off. Maybe it’s all the above. Maybe some of us realised the world needs to be different from before, and I mean a lot more different than before. So, things are getting better, however incremental — a silver lining perhaps.
Just as the pandemic started to sweep the world, I quit my well-paying job. I got more serious about building a small business while looking for short-term design work to pay the bills while beginning to transition away from full-time work and chasing a lifelong dream. The pandemic, of course, changed all of that. I burned through my savings…
