Toronto, Here I Come
For the longest time, whenever I’d sit back and think about what a dream job might look like, it always included one thing: attending film festivals. From the moment I stumbled into one in Indianapolis over a decade ago, I was smitten. Lots of movies? In one place? With all kinds of other people who love them too? Sign me up! And over the last few years, I’ve managed to carve out some attendance as part of the various roles I’ve held. Sometimes I was working for the actual festival organizations, and other times I attended as part of an acquisitions or publicity team. It’s not like I’ve been jetting…
A Desk Here, A Desk There
I recently bumped into an intern I used to work with, and she mentioned that she’d since moved on to a job at DeskPass. A new-ish concept in co-working, it’s sort of like the ClassPass for shared work spaces. Instead of a variety of workout classes to choose from, you get access to co-working spaces around the city. I was immediately intrigued. Much as I love working from home, and easy as it may be to jump over to a coffee shop whenever I need a change of scenery, neither of those spaces is ever quite like sitting down to a desk, removing all distractions and knocking out a bunch of…
One Year Into the Big Leap
A year ago last week, I officially hung out my shingle for 11th Street Lot Marketing & Publicity, taking a flying leap into the unknown to go into business for myself. I’d reached a breaking point with bad bosses, poorly managed organizations and generally not getting out of my work what I hoped to. So, when I left my most recent festival job in early 2017, I took stock of my options: track down another job working for someone else in the hopes it’d be a fit (both professionally and otherwise), or give it a go on my own. I am so, so, so glad I chose the latter. So…
A Pomodoro That’s Better Than Sauce
One of the biggest struggles about being self-employed for me (aside from, you know, drumming up income) is looking at a wide open calendar and sorting out how best to use my time. Sure, it sounds like an absolute dream: no meetings, and none of the office bullshit that comes with them. And though I do have meetings on my calendar from time to time, I do not miss the wastes of time that are most office-based check-ins. That said, pulling a complete one-eighty on the grind of the work week can, if you’re not careful, turn into a wasteland of wasted time; a blank calendar becomes the enemy of productivity.…