The University of Pivoting

A mid-career dispatch

It’s been exactly 4 years since my contract with Anonymous Content ended. That was my last “jobby job” as I like to call it before things changed for me.

4 years is a life cycle I’ve had ingrained in my head since high school and then college, this incubation period where we as developing adults go in looking one way and come out totally different. I’ve had similar lifecycles in my career but I think none as metamorphtastic as this last one.

In 2020 I was legitimately at a career peak, working at a place that I frankly fantasized about since I graduated from college inspired to work in film. Working for and alongside the late great Steve Golin and getting to share an on-screen credit with him is a memory I’ll take with me forever.

But I was also deeply unhappy and frustrated. I’d lost a lot of the joy of the career I’d opted for instead of pursuing a law degree so many years ago. This beloved unscripted industry I stumbled into, within which I got to witness the incredible parabola of a booming industry. I loved it as a creative endeavor, a genuinely strong community, a truly robust setting to pursue as an occupation.

But whether it’s the real stresses that come with being a senior exec vs the fun of the junior ranks, or perhaps the early symptoms of an industry soon to be in a major evolution, a painful and surprising one for many currently… for whichever reason (my shortcomings or my junior varsity clairvoyance) I wasn’t in a good place.

COVID accelerated things across the board including my own journey. I was struggling with an inertia of sorts career-wise and instead that slow journey into the fog transformed into a bungee jump.

I was able to keep busy as a freelancer, consulting, going independent… still doing some of my proudest work delivering films to Sundance, Tribeca, Hulu and HBO. But in these 4 years I’ve also gone through a cycle: first grieving for the career I had to now radically rehaul, then the treadmill of reinvention taking Career Design courses, perusing all those mid-career shift books, staring down the abyss of the online job applications hustle, revised resumes and bios, examining transferable skills and translating them.

On the other side of this process I’m landing in a position that both inspires and scares me, which i think might be the right cocktail for a mid career pivot.

I’m returning to a student byline: this week I start a Masters Degree program in Narrative and Emergent Media at Arizona State University’s Downtown LA campus. Many thanks to my new amazing friend Virginia Galloway for pointing the way here. Of all the choices to invest in education, this felt like a sweet spot for me in terms of new vocational level skills (XR / VR / AR media tech) as well as a continuation of my career path of pushing the business envelope for storytelling.

I’m also wearing a bit of a Professor hat, doing some teaching for Curious Refuge teaching their AI for Documentaries course this Fall. On this AI front, me and my business partner Minh Do have been building momentum with our community/ events/ education endeavor Machine Cinema. What started as a two guys on a vlog chit chatting about AI movies has us flying to Korea and Toronto in the coming weeks to stage our “Gen Battles”.

I confess that I’ve got a thing for these speculative laboratories of creativity. I feel at home in my Gen AI parties. I’m thankful for the new age misfits I’ve been gathering with that remind of previous cohorts in my career when creative-minded entrepreneurs let their giddy-ness drive their business sense.

And believe it or not, I have a strong vision for how those of us coming from the unscripted community are going to build into these new technologies.

I am thankful for the community of past partners and collaborators that I was able to work with during this time of introspection, consult with, co-build, co-evolve: EST/ Op3n, Red Bull Media House, A&E Networks, Stick Figure Productions, XTR and other fellow travelers. I’m thankful for the dinner clubs and the digital coffees. I’m grateful to my alumni network of A&E and Vice, to the LinkedIn community that’s evolved into a daily university / newsroom/ open floor at SXSW where I can hop from one panel to the next to keep gobbling up the brain candy that is inspiring my new chapter.

So here I am graduating from the University of Pivoting after 4 years. There seems to be as much to still figure out as at the previous commencements. And somehow I feel this school is more of a continuing education thing. But we’re all doing it. Wear that sunscreen.

For anyone else on this journey, if I can be of any help, connection, or collaboration please gimme a shout. More soon :)