Let’s call this a reset. My last update was… [checks notes] mid-2019. Oof. I’d started writing a few that I never got around to publishing, and then March 2020 hit, and [gestures broadly] and then June 2020 and [gestures broadly] and then… [gestures broadly] and then… and then. Updating this bit of internet with the now of my little world, just didn’t seem to be a relevant exercise for me, or (presumably) you, the reader.
But in the long run, I still believe in the exercise, so here we are. Reset. Start anew.
And maybe a reset is good? For much of my adult life this little spot on the internet has been the main gateway into my professional world, my work world. I briefly had a standalone “agency” website under the name “gb Studio” (original, I know), but quickly realized people were hiring me for, well, me. And the internet and working world changed in ways that made it less weird to hire someone directly as a consultant, so grantblakeman.com—the site you’re reading right now—became the place I’d direct people who potentially wanted to hire me on a contract basis. So, what’s changed? Two major things have happened:
I wanted a way to create a dividing line between the consulting work I would do and the person I am… There was a growing cognitive load in my life parsing between “Grant” the business entity and “Grant” the person.
Thing 1
I got to the point where my working identity and my personal identity needed space from each other. If this is all in my head and only for my benefit, I’ll allow for that, but whatever the reasons I wanted a way to create a dividing line between the consulting work I would do and the person I am. A lot of people use a work moniker—a stage name, if you will. I wanted something similar. And not simply for the internet, but for me. There was a growing cognitive load in my life parsing between “Grant” the business entity and “Grant” the person. Even as I stopped going to an office because of a global pandemic, I craved a mental way to shut the door on work when not working and separate myself from it.
I’d been thinking about and planning this change for awhile—as far back as 2018. I already had a name and had asked friend and excellent designer, Justin McKinley to help me with some branding before the pandemic. And so, Interdiscipline, was born.
Going forward Interdiscipline is the home for my professional work on the internet. It’s not an agency or studio, per se (though it kind of is?), but rather a way for me to say, “work life is over there, under that name; life life is over here.” I’ll have more to say about this reorganization at some point, but internally (mentally/emotionally), I’m already very glad I did it.
However, before Interdiscipline was even properly launched into the world, I put the consulting side of my life on hiatus, leading me to “major thing two”:
I took a job.
I’m now spending my days designing and building productivity tools for other designers.
Thing 2
After 15 years working independently, largely as a consultant, an opportunity opened up to transition a contract consulting role at LinkedIn into a full-time role.
I’m now spending my days designing and building productivity tools for other designers. I’d hinted at this work in earlier updates without naming the company and when I’d first started as a contractor I hadn’t even considered the idea of taking a full time role. But over time, as I worked with some simply amazing people and asked myself where I wanted my own career to go, the possibility of working at a company with such a clear mission: touching work/hiring and education at a global scale, seemed like something I would regret not trying.
And uniquely, for myself, to be able to work at a large company in a position where I could do both product design and engineering work made the role enticing. Even in most of my consulting work, I usually had to pick one discipline or the other.
And so…
And so, those are two things that transpired in my life over the years since my last update. And they’re both, in their own ways, the reason that I expect the nature of my (hopefully more frequent) updates to this space will evolve into something different, possibly reflecting my life more broadly.
This piece was originally a /now update on a previous iteration of this site. It appears here with some minor edits.