The Line Between Work & Everything Else

The first time I worked for myself, it was an accident. But the appeal was obvious: the flexibility, the variety of the work, and no two days looking the same.

But finding enough of that work was a challenge. And fresh out of college, I didn't have any experience. So my approach to finding my next client — to the extent that I had an approach — was mostly hope.

If we're being honest, I was grasping at straws.

Looking back, I think I enjoyed working for myself more than I understood how to build a business around it. I could do the work someone put in front of me, but figuring out who needed that work, how to reach them, and conveying why they should contract me was another matter.

Eventually, I went back to the W2 life. And looking back, that was what I needed: more experience, more time inside good teams, and a chance to work with and for some rock stars.

Learning what good looks like

I've had a few stops since then, but my time at Forter felt like it really gave me that opportunity.

My time there shaped what I believe about marketing and who I am in my career. The people around me changed my standards for work. I learned how they thought, how they made decisions, and how the work could be fun.

And I got better because I was constantly surrounded by people who were incredible at their jobs.

In recent years, I've learned how much the environment around the work I do matters, too. Talented people can make each other sharper, and clearer direction gives everyone the room to do better (and more ambitious) work. But confusion, politics, and decisions — usually made far away from the actual work itself — have the opposite effect.

The years in corporate environments have given me clarity about what I value and what I can tolerate. Every job comes with compromises — some feel like a reasonable exchange for the people, the work, or the opportunity. Others take more from you than you realized you were agreeing to give.

That distinction can be hard to see early in a career. And I needed enough good experiences to recognize when something was off.

Making the work add up

In storytelling, a throughline is the thread connecting parts of a story. The scenes change, new characters appear, and the story takes twists and turns. But the throughline gives those changes a sense of connection from start to finish.

Good marketing needs that, too.

I've spent enough time in content marketing to know how easy it is to get lost in publishing volumes and miss the point. Teams can stay busy for months producing work that has little-to-no connection to what came before or what comes next — creating but aimless "noise."

The individual pieces and shiny objects are fine, but ultimately, they're not building on or toward anything.

A throughline gives the work somewhere to go. It connects what a company believes with the ideas it wants to become known for. And the connection helps a team decide what deserves more attention, what should be repeated, and what can be skipped.

This is the work I want to do with Throughline: help companies find that storytelling thread and pull on it to decide what comes next.

What follows you home

The name also resonates for another reason that has less to do with marketing.

Work rarely stays at work. If you hate your job, it's easy to allow it to bleed into the rest of your life. And it changes how much energy you have, and how much patience is left for the people that have nothing to do with whatever happened from 9-to-5.

But work you love can follow you home, too. When you love what you do, and who you're doing it with and for, you have more energy and positivity. You don't hate rolling out of bed because you don't have to dread logging on to 187 Slack and text messages.

Of course, there are boundaries worth protecting. I don't want my career to become my entire identity. But I can't spend that much of my life working and pretend there's no throughline to the person I am during the rest of it.

My career has shaped my confidence, my expectations, and the choices I've made outside of work. Burning out faster and harder than I thought was possible this summer forced me to take a hard look what I'm willing to trade for a paycheck, how much my time and energy are worth, and how I need my day-to-day work to leave room for my most important job: being Sophie and Jaxon’s dad.

Trying again

The flexibility and variety that drew me to self-employment the first time are still enticing. But what's changed is what I'm bringing with me. I have more experience in the industry. I've worked alongside people who raised my standards. And I have a clearer sense of the work I do well, and more importantly, the conditions that help me do it.

I'm sure there will still be uncertainty. The experience helps, but it doesn't make any of this automatic. And I am sure I'll even find myself grasping at straws again from time to time. But at least now I know how to recognize it.

The first time I worked for myself, it was an accident. This time around, I'm building it intentionally. Throughline reflects what I’ve learned since then about what I love to do, what I'm good at, and what I need work to leave room for. And I'm excited about this next chapter.

Looking to bring better storytelling to your content marketing? Let's talk.