Consult
Change Location – been in London for a while – perhaps it’s time to move
Try and find another straight digital agency job:
By this I mean something with a title like Creative or Strategy Director type deal.
So I really don’t know what I am going to do next. On one side I’m terrified, with the whole wife, 1.9 kids, mortage deal. On the other I haven’t felt this excited and inspired in over a decade. But right now I have a smallish window prior to the birth of Kid 2.0 to take a step back, think and find some new collaborators. I would like to invite anyone and everyone, friends, family, clients, cohorts to help me work it all out. Basically I intend to crowd source my future.
So – ways you can help:
1. Check out the Blog (www.jonbains.com) and please don’t slag off my shoddy word press skills – i’ve only had a couple of days to pull this together.
2. Most of the posts are some of the options I’ve come up with so far, some of them commercial, some more creative, some geographic and some probably just plain stupid. At the moment they are just big broad brush strokes but over the coming weeks – with your input – I’ll start fleshing them all out – what I’d like is yes / no / maybe’s additional pro’s & con’s, other ways to look at things. If your interested in ‘playing’ with me in trying to build ‘summat’ please let me know.
3. I’m also totally up for meeting up to discuss “stuff” i.e thoughts, projects, avatar, w’ever – although I’m fairly limited at the moment to day-time hours due to family and all that. My brand new google calendar is here
3. I’d also really appreciate any recommendations you feel like putting on my linked in profile. (http://www.linkedin.com/in/jonbains), follow me on twitter (jonbains) as I’m probably going to decouple twitter from facebook updates soon, and feel free to harass me on aim (contact me for details)
All comments welcome! I have only one tiny request – please don’t ask questions about my exit from Tangent – I legally simply can’t answer them – suffice to say that I was made redundant.
Family.
Family is a powerful thing. They help each other, support each other, fight but then make up, offer advice and provide the shoulder to cry on, they inspire, they build, and hopefully together they succeed. They make mistakes but in time are forgiven. They don’t do each other favours, they simply ‘do’.
It is often said that you don’t choose your family, usually in the negative, but the execution of this is simply not true – we choose all the time, whether to engage, whether to help, whether to call – the relationships which we choose are the hardest to break even if the frequency of contact is limited. I see this as the most wonderful thing.
I may only have been a biological father for the last couple of years and I definitely don’t speak to the rest of my biological family enough – but for the last 15 years I’ve been a dad, a brother, an uncle and even occasionally a mom. I believe I am one of the most fortunate people alive because I have not one but two families.
I have no idea what the future holds, what I am going to do, where I am going to go, but what I do know is that my family, both new and old will be there to help.
Jon Bains
Family Man
Today I am mostly thinking about leaving drinks hangovers, potty training and word press. Thinking is probably too grand a word. Lets try muddling since muddled is how I feel.
Much to do over the next few days. Going to be interesting.
Up in the Atmosphere 