welcome to the working world

Two weeks ago I started working as a graphic designer at a company called Coffey Communications in Walla Walla. We do hospital marketing and I work in CES (Client Editorial Services) laying out newsletters and magazines for different hospitals and healthcare centers, etc.

A big part of me was elated and relieved to have a stable job related to my major, offered to me before I even graduated, in a place that's cheap to live, close to NW cities I love (Portland and Seattle), and where I have some friends around. Also, the demand for health care promotion doesn't waver much unlike American economics. But the dreamer/idealist/quixote in me was reluctant to accept such an un-wild transition to adulthood, working the 8-5 indoors in a cubicle, where I wouldn't be spending each day worrying about how I'd pay for my next meal from inside of my treehouse. And the silly naive fatalist inside felt doomed for un-excitement, devoid fairy tale endings and anxious twitter-pated stories involving danger or stress or adventure.

But the longer I work here, the more I find the people warm, professional, and hardworking. And the more I find the publications I work on to be meaningful, sensitive, and purposeful. My friend Chelsea got a job in Africa where she was hired to write stories for the newsletters for ADRA. Yet, from what I know from ADRA (which has one of the most selfless, wonderful, and respectable mission statements I've ever heard), she was probably overworked and under-resourced, didn't have enough time to make the stories feel in-depth, and while the idea sounds amazing and heartfelt, I'm sure it wasn't without its sacrifices, frustrations and flaws. And while international stories of world poverty are so important, the less glamorous and often overlooked stories of American ghettos, teenage pregnancy, domestic violence, and fetal alcohol syndrome are so prevalent, right in our own cities and neighborhoods, happening to people we know, see, and most-likely interact with on a daily basis.

A magazine we put out called Winning Health was explained to me by its Art Director named Shara. She explained our demographic: teenage mothers from lower income homes, often minorities. So the layout is simple, the models match accordingly, and the stories are written for people with no higher than a 4th grade reading level. While some of our other publications are geared toward higher income doctors, surgeons, or drug reps, etc. And something hit me there, that what we do is purposeful and intentional, and very humane.

At the desk across from me is another designer named Maureen. She's a runner and has a quote cut out from a page of Runner's World Mag tacked up on the bulletin board behind her desk, reading: "Some people follow their dreams, while others hunt theirs down and beat them mercilessly into submission." And this made me smile, and feel okay that I work the 8-5 and life keeps on going, contradicting the idea I read in an article in 07' about M.I.A. in Resonance mag and never could forget. Or that I'm heartbroken and missing someone in a city away, wanting to fall asleep each night thinking I shouldn't have worked a bit harder to make it work, or learn to believe that everything happens for a reason.

Instead it makes me excited to have a stepping stone, and that maybe after a year or two, I could move to New York, open a publishing company with Emily, or work on an organic farm in South America, and look back and say "SUCKAH! I made it on my own! Not everything is perfect, but I'm damn happy, because this is my life and my story, all on my own." And it's not even close to over. No, not yet.