The Yaye Manifesto

My rather brief last job, as Marketing Specialist with Hitchcock Fine Home Furnishings, came to an end in December when the venerable New England institution opted to liquidate. Since then, I have predictably been engaged in the ages old struggle to decide what I want to be when I grow up. We all go through it. Again and again.

It's just that I've spent the better part of the past 20 years engaged in a profession that has mostly frustrated and stressed me and, in more recent years, robbed me of anything resembling a personal life. Maybe 10% of the time my work brought me some degree of creative satisfaction -- on a good day with a tail wind.

Stuff I've enjoyed: graphic design; copywriting; creating campaigns and slogans; putting together media plans, running promotional events, working with community groups

Stuff I've hated: pointless meetings; meetings with committees; meetings with non-profit board members; managing tight budgets (even an annual budget of $600,000 is tight depending on what you need to do with it); re-designing, re-writing, re-creating campaigns and slogans at the directive of a non-design, non-marketing, non-creative, micromanaging "superior"; loooooooong hours and days and weeks and weekends of relentless, deadline-driven work to run whole departments single-handedly.

Even though I'd only been with the company for 7 months, I was relieved* when Hitchcock decided to fold. It saved me the trouble of quitting, because I was and I am done with marketing. It is a thankless profession. When the market is strong, it's attributed to outside economic and social influences; when the market tanks, it's all your fault. Head, meet Wall.

So.....what now?

School. I'm going back to school.

1. Complete long overdue degree in English and Education.

2. Become Secondary Education English Teacher.

3. The World.

In that order.

* At the same time that I was deeply saddened by the greater loss of a 18o-year-old legacy company that had been grossly mismanaged into oblivion.