6 Bits of Career Advice I’d Give To My Scared 21-Year-Old Self

When I was 21 years old, I was a year out from graduating college with what turned out to be a really useless degree — English, with an emphasis in creative writing. I wasn’t a 21-year-old who had the world by the horns. I didn’t have cool internships lined up. I was a 21-year-old who would take almost an entire year to land a job that she really, really hated.

I was so nervous and anxious about the future — anxious about whether the rest of my life would feel labor intensive, unfulfilling, and if I was ever going to make any money oh my God. I constantly wished that it was possible to tear apart the space-time continuum in order to get a quick peek at myself like,10 years later — to just get some assurance that it was going to be okay.

Well, let’s pretend this is possible! This is what I’d tell my 21-year-old self if/when she pops out of a quasar to be like, “Hey, Stacy! I’m really worried about our career! Are we gonna be okay?”

1. Get your mind used to a small, ongoing stream of failure.

Perfection is completely impossible to maintain, and fear of failure is the handcuff that keeps you in a box. It’s a box of amiable conventionality, where everything you design is inoffensive but also unmemorable, and everything you write is dull and says absolutely nothing.

I was unexpectedly dropped from a project because my skill set was no longer what the client needed. When it happened, I was like, “Oh awesome — this is my failure of the day,” and checked it off my to-do list.

You know you are doing things right when you are experiencing a fair number of minor failures, because this means you are taking risks. Just today, I was unexpectedly dropped from a project because my skill set was no longer what the client needed. When it happened, I was like, “Oh awesome — this is my failure of the day,” and checked it off my to-do list.

2. Your career is not going to be a straight line. You are going to get fired.

Gone are the days in which you join a big conglomerate and start climbing the corporate ladder for decades to get to a corner office, before you eventually shutter off to Florida or Arizona to play golf and collect those sweet, sweet social security checks.

I didn’t know that I would go into news. I didn’t anticipate I would leave news for marketing. I didn’t anticipate I would shift from writing to design. I really didn’t predict that I would get laid off and end up going back to news. And never in my wildest dreams did I think that the bulk of my days would be spent braless and makeup-less in front of a computer with my dogs, trying to cobble together shapes in a pleasing manner so people would give me cash money. Life goes in a loop-de-loop — get used to it.

3. Don’t fixate on whether it’s good enough to be published. It’s not. But that’s okay!

The first thing I ever wrote that was published was a pile of trash. The first thing I illustrated that was published was worse than a pile of trash. I went totally nuts before submitting these things because I was afraid they weren’t good enough.

That was a lot of effort to go through after an editor already agreed to publish something I did. It was a complete waste of time and energy.

These days, when someone says they will accept what I create for money, I’m like, “Oh word? Okay.” And then I make it — imperfectly. And then I submit it. And then I take a nap. So much more efficient.

There’s a marked difference between spending time with people who speculate about what it’s like to make cool shit and spending time with people who can tell you what cool shit they have made. There is something subtle — but pivotal — in seeing things demonstrated tangibly.

4. You are the average of who you surround yourself with. So surround yourself with lots of talent and intelligence, not dum-dums.

There’s a marked difference between spending time with people who speculate about what it’s like to make cool shit and spending time with people who can tell you what cool shit they have made. There is something subtle — but pivotal — in seeing things demonstrated tangibly.

It’s like how all the people who are really great with money and own lots of property have these stories about the one time their mom or dad took them to a bank and forced a banker to explain compounding interest to them before opening up a mutual fund.

5. Sweat the small stuff. A lot.

I think a lot of creative people are actually bad at detailed thinking or detailed work because they tend to get mesmerized by big ideas and concepts and then totally write “duck” as “dick” in news headlines.

It is not enough to have great ideas. You also need to be able to execute them efficiently and as promised.

Man, I have gotten enough calls from my boss at 9 p.m. chewing me out for letting something go to print with a huge typo. I know what it feels like when a significant production run has to be rerun and more money has to be ponied up because I wasn’t paying enough attention. It’s so embarrassing when those things happen.

Being more detailed and precise is a lifelong endeavor. It is not enough to have great ideas. You also need to be able to execute them efficiently and as promised.

6. Yeah, that other guy might be more talented than you are, but you can’t wear his skin and absorb his powers, so you need to get over it.

The ability to think critically and creatively is kind of like a muscle that you constantly have to work at strengthening — and jealousy is like, necrotizing fasciitis. It just eats you alive, man. Don’t participate in it.

To this day, my mom and dad still like to tell me about who attended Harvard and who became an astronaut at NASA (not actually the child of a person they know; they just read this in the paper). As a consequence of this kind of upbringing, I used to look at other designers’ and writers’ work and affiliations and just feel down on myself.

Then at some point, I knocked that shit off because it’s just another thing that steals so much time away from what I could be creating. Thinking too much about how other people are better than I am also makes me fearful and scared to try hard. The ability to think critically and creatively is kind of like a muscle that you constantly have to work at strengthening — and jealousy is like, necrotizing fasciitis. It just eats you alive, man. Don’t participate in it.

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