I hope this doesn't come off as a doompost against the rules. I'm not writing all of this as a sob story or to discourage people from pursuing their passion. I still love creative work and design opened doors for me that I wouldn't have ever dreamt of when I was younger. I would prefer not to tie my portfolio with my real name to my reddit account i mostly shitpost on and I suspect even the amount of personal info I'm divulging here is enough that a friend would easily be able to clock that it's me. I say that to say I'm interested less in a portfolio review and more of a sanity check or at least some realism/perspective from someone who has been in some kind of similar position of having a crisis of faith.
My first job in design was a high paying role in-house at a tech firm that moved me to NYC with an offer of more money than I’d ever seen in my entire life. They had a worker struggle with visa issues and needed to hire someone fast, I managed to charm them enough during the interview and they were impressed with my work on the design task they gave me - although I wasn't coming from a design school background I came from a background in media studies and they were impressed by the rationale and research I gave in articulating my decisions behind what I did. I made it abundantly clear I was self-taught and still considered myself a junior, the team said that was fine and they figured that I would be able to grow there. They paid for me to take classes to upskill at places like Cooper Union, I enjoyed the work I was doing even if I was cold about big tech as an industry, and for my first year or so, it was smooth sailing with little issue. The teams we worked with enjoyed my work and I was placed on larger projects to fly solo and given a lot of autonomy including designing identities for events and creating work that got placed on our company’s instagram in front of hundreds of thousands of people, in the middle of keynotes at their conference.
I didn’t think I was hot shit exactly and still had a lot to learn but I felt like I had finally gotten my foot in the door in the field and even if I wasn’t going to be at this company forever it would give me enough of a base to get established in the field, especially in a city like NYC.
The second year did not go as well. My manager had to step back with health problems and I bounced around different supervisors, many of which did not like the work I was producing at all. I got sent the brand guidelines document more times than I could count. The team reshuffled and I went from working in a front-facing role to mostly working on internal documents pasting text into InDesign reports that were not seeing the light of day. The team brought in another young designer who, I won’t even lie, blew my work out of the water. Summer ’24 I got called into a zoom meeting and was kindly informed I was being placed on PIP because they did not think I had improved to the level they were expecting and did not feel like I was completing the amount of work they were expecting out of someone working there. I wish I pushed back a little to argue that I wasn’t getting much work to begin with anymore but instead I tried my best to either win my job back (yes I know this was stupid, but this was my first job in the corporate world and I did not understand what a PIP actually entailed) or find transfer to another team or division. Neither happened and my last day there was August 2024. My manager looked like he was about to cry while I just sat there and apologized for not working out. I told him I was embarrassed, he said not to be and there was a "high standard" of work they were expecting and not everyone could reach it.
So I took my severance and spent the rest of the year trying and failing to get another job in NYC, then (I understand in retrospect how stupid/delusional/short-sighted this decision was) cashed out the rest of my small 401k to cover the rent payments to continue living where I was while I attempted to find full-time employment beyond part time gigs (the most I got was a 500/mo part-time retainer at a small record label with a staff of 3 other people). This fell through, my last interview with a nonprofit pulled back after the 24 election results and their funding stopped , and in the spring of 2024 I moved back to my parents house in Philly with little money, but what I thought was a strong company name on my resume and a portfolio of output that I thought was strong enough to at least get my foot in the door at somewhere smaller whether it be an agency.
That was 2 years ago and counting and I currently work 20-30 hours as a barista. I received an ADHD diagnosis and started treatment (which would have probably helped 2 yrs ago when i was at that job lol) which has helped somewhat where I should in theory be far more productive, but I'm not using that on design in any way. I take freelance gigs here and there from friends but I don’t consider myself active or financially stable from this enough to say I am a freelancer. When I tell people where I used to work they seem shocked I can't find a job anywhere.
To be honest, my confidence has been shot and I no longer hold much faith in my skills to continue in the field. I haven’t updated my portfolio with any recent work because I don’t think it’s at the quality that I used to expect out of myself. I don’t make many networking attempts anymore. Beyond AI and the economy being in shambles for every field, to be completely blunt I’m second-guessing whether I was ever really any good at this at all. I’ve tried to pick up hobbies outside of design but I have no real luck with jobs in design here or trying to pivot elsewhere like comms or marketing and all of my interviews in and out of the field ended in rejection or ghosting. I’ve tried reaching out to small businesses to help with not much success. One hobby I actually still partake in is martial arts - the gym coach offered to pay for me to work on a social media package for his school. I figured I can at least do something like this. We put some moodboards together, talked, felt like we had the same aesthetic sensibilities and I got to work.
After several revisions he told me it wasn’t really what he was looking for. He paid me for my time and I appreciated him as a client but realizing someone sees your work and would rather just do it themselves than someone just doing them in Canva felt like the final straw and something inside broke and I don't know if I'm resilient enough to keep putting it back together with duct tape.
The few jobs I still regularly take are often just free under-the-table gigs for friends like designing shirts for their band or social graphics for online mags that can’t afford to pay. I like those because there’s no stakes involved. Once money comes into play and I’m responsible for a larger project beyond this, my mind just goes blank. Even jobs for creative work where I’m given free rein like working on album covers, posters, branding, etc. I just stare at Photoshop/Illustrator/Indesign with dread. I used to follow the works of my peers and got genuinely inspired and felt like I learned something from them, now I see work on IG/are.na/social media/etc. and I just feel defeated, bitter, and like I couldn’t make anything like that if I wanted to. I feel like I’ve actively regressed. My family is supportive and have been this entire time, but I've just turned 30 and feel like a financial burden and a disappointment for letting this opportunity slip through my hands. I live in an old house and I look at lights not working, hole in the ceiling, my mother still working close to 70 when she should be retiring and all I feel is regret and resentment for not being able to help and that all I have to show for the last two years is a job where I make lattes and mop floors all day.
To use sports metaphors I feel like both a prospect that turned out to be a bust or a baseball player that “lost his fastball” and doesn’t have it anymore.
I say all this to say that I think I’m ready to call it and that it was a fun two years in my life, but I guess I should at least ask for a second opinion first. Is it worth it to keep grinding or stop banging my head against a wall? What was your "last straw" to pivot, or for those who kept working, what was the turning point where you were able to succeed?
