In my mid-20s, I lived in Fort Lauderdale for about two years.
To say I stuck out would be generous.
I was a pale, sweaty Midwesterner with a full head of curly hair, driving around South Florida like somebody dropped the wrong extra onto the set of Miami Vice. I never really adjusted to the heat. Or the culture. Or honestly… any of it.
Pretty early on, I knew Florida and I were probably not long-term compatible.
Somewhere in the middle of that experiment, I interviewed for a design job in Miami. They offered me a week-long trial run before making a decision.
Looking back, it was one of the most useful failures of my career.
The office looked exactly how you’d imagine a South Florida design office looked in the late 90s. Beach-themed everything. Pastel colors. Fake palm tree energy. More Tubbs than Crockett.
They sat me at a temporary folding table between two designers and pointed me toward a tired little Mac.
Then the critiques started.
Every ten minutes.
– “This blue should be 8%, not 10%.”
– – “Move the image four picas left.”
– – – “You should’ve made a new layer for that.”
None of the feedback was technically wrong. That was the weird part. But after a while, it stopped feeling like collaboration and started feeling like death by a thousand microscopic adjustments.
My head was spinning before lunch.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, I realized something important:
This was not going to work.
– Not because I couldn’t do the job. I could.
– – But because I could already feel myself disappearing inside their process.
I remember sitting there and thinking about baseball.
One phrase popped into my head immediately:
Always go down swinging.
So that’s what I did.
I stopped trying to survive every critique perfectly. I listened. I adjusted some things. Ignored others. I started designing the project the way I honestly thought it should be designed.
– Not recklessly.
– – Not arrogantly.
– – – Just honestly.
By the end of the day, they loved the work.
I never went back.
But I kept the lesson.
Over the years, that phrase has followed me into creative reviews, leadership roles, photography, presentations, hard conversations, big swings, and uncertain seasons.
Always go down swinging.
Do the work the best way you know how.
– Take the shot.
– – Trust your eye.
– – – Commit to the idea.
If it fails, fine.
If it succeeds, even better.
But don’t let the fastball go by because you were too afraid to move.