Letting Go

Nothing in life works out the way we imagine it. The end game might be similar, but the path we take to get there is always different. Unexpected. And quite often, although unknown at the time, better. This post is rather overdue, so I will try and catch you up on my past couple weeks.

Being in school is like living in a bubble. An over-sized, bloated bubble. For four years it protects you, builds up your confidence, and spoon feeds you small doses of reality. But then, the lesson plans end, and you have to find an internship. I have been fantasizing about my internship for ... awhile. I was going to intern at one of the top Toronto shops, be handed a brief none of the other creatives could crack to redesign the back of a forgotten cereal, come up with a genius idea, pitch it to creatives, turn it into an entire award winning campaign, go to Cannes and get picked up by a London agency ... wait, I think that already happened to someone else. I digress.

Leading up the the portfolio show (the show to get you an internship) I had two very solid leads. Now this is a small industry, so name dropping is very inappropriate in this situation, so we will call these leads, Opportunity X and Opportunity Y. Opportunity X made me a casual offer, and Opportunity Y was coming to meet me at the show. Some how, or another, I ended up blowing it with both at the portfolio show. Maybe I was wearing the wrong shoes, or my tracking was a little too tight, but whatever the reason, I lost them both. And after spending 10 hours listening to people scrutinize over every little minute detail in my book, I had a portfolio show hangover.

Now, portfolio show's are definitely good, and will help me meet people in the industry all while improving my book, yadda yadda, but the day after the show I felt like I had been run over. I was exhausted, totally dehydrated from not drinking anything other than coffee, forgotten what home cooked meals tasted like, and generally pissed. So I screamed. Even though I had a headache. Even though I have grumpy neighbours and a nosy landlord. Even though I had gotten lots of positive reviews. I screamed. I am not a screamer. I like to bottle up my feelings and shove them down to some dark place. But it's one of the things to do on my list. So, I screamed until I was no longer angry. And then, like a three year old who just threw a big tantrum, I fell asleep.

A couple days later, I was offered an internship.