Looking back from 2025

Hi there! I haven't posted in a while and figured it would be good to re-introduce myself, especially since I'm still on the look out for a new job.

My name's Liss Outwater, I'm a designer and artist living in Philadelphia, PA who is trying to fall back in love with design. I love quilting—when I started redesigning my portfolio I thought, “how can I get more quilting into this?”—printmaking, animation, and the power of great storytelling 

I guess I'm going to try to tell a story here, mostly of my own career so far, and where I hope it goes from here.

2018-2019

I got my first “grown up” job from a cold email looking for an internship in 2018. My professor suggested I name-drop her in the email, so I did, and I whipped up a reason why I thought this particular studio would be a good fit. The next two years were truly the best in my career (so far, hopefully), full of growth and excitement and a love for my team and design. Starting in this small team environment spoiled me with true connections with my coworkers, a sense of community between us and the other small teams we worked with, and a commute that was not only achievable but pleasant on foot.

2020-2021

Then, we reached 2020. Saying “a lot of things changed for a lot of people” feels like the understatement of the century, and I'm fortunate enough to have made it through the year with my life and my loved ones, let alone the job I enjoyed so much. But that year was still hard, and my team went through a lot. By the end of it, the gritty little studio I had fallen in love with didn't seem like it could keep going. It was sold by the end of 2021 to a larger agency, and while I was glad to see it wouldn't be dropping its clientele or any employees (of the group who had made it this far), I felt the change in culture and the baggage I would be carrying from “the old days” would be too heavy, so I amicably left “my dream job” at the end of 2021.

2022-2023

The next month or two was a little scary, but I was prepared. I had saved up a lot, and I was willing to work wherever would take me while I tried to find my feet again. I applied to a grocery store a few blocks over and got an interview by what feels like, looking back, the next day. Even in the moment it felt more like a formality before ushering me through the door than an actual interview. I started the next week and enjoyed training—I liked getting the behind-the-scenes view of the store, liked the person training me and trusted him, and got to do a lot of Amazon returns which felt like something I could do for a long time.

While I was training at the grocery store, I'd come home and apply to design jobs. I got an interview within the same month I started, but I kept going to my part-time job just in case it fell through. By the time I was in the last round of interviews (of only three!) I decided I'd leave the grocery store job. Although I was grateful to be getting a paycheck, I was very grateful to be leaving retail, having left the training phase and starting to only work the register my whole shift. The repetitive nature was fine, but the pressure put on cashiers to meet what felt like impossible quotas while also dealing with customers who were annoyed to have to wait for the newbie to remember any produce code other than “4011” (love you, bananas) was too much for me when I knew I had gone through four years of school and gotten into debt in hopes of being somewhere else.

So I left that retail job, hopped on my last interview call, and moved into a new, more affordable apartment with my partner while I waited for the news. Thank goodness I got the job, but having been through three interviews I figured that was a given (insert pointed look at the imaginary camera here). Still, I was excited to start a new chapter in my new office in my new apartment and meet my new team.

And it was exciting! I started work a few weeks after we moved, and I worked. I sped through all my onboarding and felt like a tiger was chasing me when I wasn't working on anything, so I'd reach out to my manager and see if there was anything else I could do. He had to remind me multiple times to relax and enjoy the chance to breathe after working in the fast-paced studio I had left, and I tried, but I felt like if I wasn't making myself useful I didn't deserve my paycheck. (This Puritanical work ethic would eventually fade a bit when I got paid even when there wasn't a mountain of work in my “finished” column on Azure.)

But I tried to relax, and I tried to enjoy the work. I liked my team a lot, but coming from a job where we joked about our bonds being forged in fire after 2020 meant they had big shoes to fill, and it was impossible for anything to feel the same right after leaving that first job. I talked to my senior designer a lot about this feeling, and about the feeling of not having mourned my last job properly. He mentioned a quote from The Office about not knowing you're in the “good old days” when you're in them.

I guess this whole post might be looking back on things like they were the good old days. I stayed at that new job for two years, setting that as my goal post for a check-in with myself to see if it was a good fit. After the first year I unfortunately knew I couldn't stay there long-term, and the fact that I knew that even though I was working from home and making enough money to save for a house and live comfortably really tore me up, so I went through another year hoping something would change in me.

2024

During the last few months there, I started teaching Web Design at my alma mater, which was great for a few reasons. First, it got me out of my house and got me around creative people. College students, especially art students (though I may be biased), are full of contagious creativity and a zeal for the work that kept me going for a bit at the other job. But I found myself saying things in class and then mentally wondering where that fit into my own work, or coming home at the end of the day and hanging my figurative “(adjunct) professor coat” up and being shocked and scared to notice my love of design went up on the hook with it.

I'm not sure what caused that change to happen in me. It might have been burnout—part of it definitely was. A lot of it could have been unprocessed grief. I know a big part of it was looking at the design industry and feeling like the parts I had fallen in love with were changing faster than I could keep up with, especially if I was still mentally stuck in my past job.

So, after a lot of deliberating, and venting a lot of feelings to my patient and supportive partner, I quit my job. (If only we knew the good old days were the good old days when we were in them!) Like a lot of people, I didn't really expect to be looking for a job almost a year later. I was in the fortunate position of knowing I'd be without a job, at least, so I made sure I had at least a year's worth of savings and started applying to jobs before I left for a head start.

I got an interview pretty early on that ended with next steps and “you're a great fit!” but no follow up email. Then I had another; same thing. This repeated multiple times, but maybe only once every 50 applications (which, in this job search climate, seems pretty good, un/fortunately). At a certain point I started jokingly asking my family if maybe there was a curse on me I didn't know about? Do we know anyone who might curse me? Coming on LinkedIn and seeing so many clearly talented and experienced people going through the same thing is simultaneously encouraging and so, so disappointing.

There is one silver lining: the last year has held so much learning and creativity for me. Looking back on it almost makes me cry! To see myself come from the edge of thinking I had lost my creative spark entirely means the world, and I owe a lot of it to the really wonderful live classes I took, namely Animating by Hand from Dogbotic taught by Japhy Riddle and Art Quilt at Fleisher Art Memorial taught by Marie Elcin. Being in those creative spaces filled my cup so quickly and consistently that I knew I had to let myself mourn them when they were over. But I'm still making so many things by hand! And quilting has become a refuge in a year that's been tough to say the least.

2025

I guess the point of all this is to say: I have no idea where my path is taking me next (does anyone?) and I'm trying to find that exciting. I know I would love to work in a team making things, whether that's websites or books or… napkins! Whatever the job, I feel like this last year has taught me to appreciate the quiet, the calm, and the handmade, and I really hope to bring this appreciation and my creativity to a job that won't just use them but help them grow. I'll end with a section of writing I found in an old document titled “things I would tell myself in 2015,” written a few weeks before I was graduating in 2019.

I’d tell myself that I’m in exactly the right place. Design will offer so many different things to learn about myself, others, and the world we’re all in. It’ll also offer me opportunities to teach and implement things that might not be in the world yet. I’ll realize that the industry I’ve chosen to work in is filled with all sorts of amazing people, many of them so similar to me it’ll be kind of funny. There will be so many people to look up to, and I’ll have a chance to learn from more than I’d ever imagine.