I got cut from a team this month.

A client I'd wanted to work with for years (and years) finally brought me on. A few weeks in, they let me go. Honestly, I was okay with it. More than okay.

Which is a weird thing to say.

Had pursued this one for a while, and when the call finally came, I told Megan this was going to be the big one. But when we got in the door, within a few weeks I could feel it was not my game.

Getting cut is supposed to sting. This one mostly brought relief.

The game I'm actually good at

I think my visual work lives in the tension.

Many times, I'm hired to stand in the gap between what a group wishes were true and what is actually happening, and then put that gap on paper where everyone can see it.

The drawing works because something in it is unresolved. A little friction. A person in the picture who is not quite comfortable yet.

This team did not need that.

They had done months of careful work and had their story exactly the way they wanted it. They needed and wanted it polished.

My instinct is to find the part that is not resolved yet. Those are two different jobs, and theirs was a real one. It just was not mine.

It also did not help that I came in near the very end. Picture showing up at eleven forty-five for something due at noon. The story was finished, the deadlines were tight, and there was no room left for the messy, human part I am actually good at.

Sometimes the best work happens while things are still being figured out.

Wanting to make the team

I wanted this one for years. Manifested it and told everyone it was coming. But wanting it wasn’t at all informative about whether the work would fit the way I work.

That is a potential trap with anything you have chased for a long time.

Wanting it starts to feel like belonging, and you stop asking whether you actually fit. You can pursue something for years and never once check whether it was built for you.

There are times when the only way to answer that question is getting told no. A cut is clarifying in a way that wanting never is. It hands you an answer you were too invested to reach on your own.

Megan and I both felt it when the news came. Relief, mostly.

Have you ever had an experience like that? When the action that makes some people uncomfortable actually results in a sigh of relief?

This experience has taught me something (and I firmly believe we are never too old to learn life lessons!).

Getting cut from something you wanted is supposed to feel like failure. Most of the time it is just information about where you belong. And that’s a trade worth making.

Grateful you are here,

Wade