Recent Life and Career Changes

Eight months ago my personal life got flipped upside down. Four months ago my professional career took a drastic turn. And a few weeks from now every waking second of my existence will forever be altered.

You can probably guess one of the changes already — my wife and I are pregnant. Our son will be here before we know it. Man, I’m nervous and excited and every other emotion in between.

The other twist of fate life threw at me was a career change. I traded in the edit bay for another role. In February I started transitioning off of editing projects and over to the producing / project management side of things. I’m with the same company and working on the same product but in a completely different role. As of mid-March I moved over to this full-time and started growing a team under me.

My day-to-day work is so much different. More different than I was expecting to be honest. 90% of my day my head is buried in emails or Word or I’m leading conference calls and meetings (something wayyy outside my comfort zone). The other 10% of my day I’m managing a brand new team. Well, kinda brand new. One of the three people under me that I was able to bring aboard was one of my previous (and favorite) assistant editors who was looking to move into producing.

I would classify myself as a fast-working individual. I like to pick out a task, tackle it, then move onto the next. Boom, boom, boom. However, I’m learning that having fast-working individuals under me isn’t as easy as I thought. It’s almost a full-time job just keeping track of the amount of work they do. This has put me in a position where I’m finding myself delegating tasks I normally wouldn’t and I’m still trying to find a mental foothold of the situation and figure out how I feel about it.

Side note: It’s been three years since I’ve gotten to manage anyone and I’ve really missed it. Being a freelancer you don’t get to manage anyone and when I went back to full-time last fall I was only editing. So now that I’m managing again, I realize how much I missed it.

Something I’ve really enjoyed being able to do in my new role is fix a lot of the speedbumps the editors on the product ran into. This is because I know from first hand experience when I see something that could be a potential issue. I’m able to triage it right then and there so it doesn’t escalate later on. However, the product I work on is bigger than just video. There’s an educational element to it and a technical piece that requires development and graphic asset creation that I’m not yet 100% familiar with. But I’m learning as I go and am continuing to try to wrap my head around issues in these areas and improve upon them as we do more projects.

Up until this week I’ve still been working in an edit bay — there wasn’t an office available for me. So it kinda felt like I was still an editor because I was sitting in this dark room on my familiar system with “Avid 3” written across the door.

Now though, I’m in an office that’s about 6x the size of my edit bay with two huge windows. It’s definitely real now. Really real.

Life at home is getting really real too. I’m 3-3.5ish weeks away from BEING A FATHER. My internal panic meter is off the charts. I actually developed a weird under-the-eye muscle twitch from all the chaos and stress I’ve been feeling. It’s been on and off for about two months now and it stresses me out just thinking about it. Calm has helped though.

The nursery is all ready to go. I put up crown molding and installed a ceiling fan. Built a crib. Painted a changing table. Hung some pictures. Made a tiny library. Moved a zillion pound dresser to his room on the third floor of the house. Hospital bags zipped up. Now we just wait…

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With all of this going on, I’ve also still been freelancing and coaching at night and on the weekends. I’ve had an editing gig here or there and a new coaching client but mostly it’s been paid writing work from a handful of my usual clients. But for the first time in the decade or so I’ve been hustling in the video/creative field, I’m taking a break from all extra work and anything else that isn’t related to the immediate needs of my family.

No more late nights trying to fix a bad green screen from a client or Sunday morning spent spitting out a new article. It’s time to buckle in and focus all of my attention on what’s right in front of me for at least the next few months until I get my bearings.

I take great pride in responding to just about every email that comes into my inbox or comment I receive on my YouTube channel. But, to be completely open with you, my priorities are changing. My priorities have changed. When my wife showed me the stick that said we’re pregnant, everything in my life changed. That means I’m much more willing to let a random question or comment go without responding. I hope you’re able to understand if I don’t get back to you.

The one thing that I thought that was rock solid for me, being an editor, has somehow changed too. I forgot to mention earlier that I’m super excited for this new challenge and it was something that wasn’t planned but felt like a really good fit and growth opportunity so I jumped at it.

Am I still an editor? Heck yeah. I just don’t do it 40+ hours a week anymore. Will it affect this site? Somewhat, sure. Not being in Premiere or Media Composer or After Effects all the time will be and is weird. However I’m trying my hardest to stay in the loop on industry trends and finding the best tips, hacks, and workflows for video projects. I’m still “in video”… just not “in the edit bay” as much. But it’s important for me to stay on top of things and as I do I’ll continue to share them with you.

Expanding beyond the edit bay for me does open myself up to more content I’d like to share. These are topics on project managing, working with clients, managing creatives, producing videos, working with editors instead of working as an editor, etc. I expect to write or talk about some of these topics in the coming months.

If you’d like to stick around and make sure you get the latest updates make sure to go here.

I think that about wraps it up. It’s been awhile since I’ve written a post like this so excuse me while I knock the rust off. I hope that if you’re going through similar life or career changes that you know you aren’t alone. This stuff is stressful. My weird eye twitch thing is a perfect example.

Hope you’re doing well wherever you’re reading this from.

Until next time,
Josh