People Giving a Fuck

I’ve been doing this for twelve years. That’s a sentence I used to hear other people say. It always sounded so solid, so adult. “I’ve been doing this for twelve years.” The kind of thing someone says when they’re too tired to argue about button spacing but still care enough to say something. And now, it’s me. Somehow, through a decade and then some of deadlines, launch dates, bad briefs, brilliant ones, and enough coffee to irrigate a mid-sized nation, I am the one who’s been doing this for twelve years.

When I started, I wasn’t a professional. Not really. I was enthusiastic. I had taste but no method, ambition but no map. What I had was a folder full of half-finished mockups, a document with ten thousand typos, and friends who were way better than me at things I barely understood. They had the tools. I had vibes. I’d say things like “Wouldn’t it be cool if?” and they’d say “Well, here’s what we’d need to do.” There was magic in that. I showed up with ideas held together by duct tape and optimism. They brought the welders.

Back then, professionalism wasn’t my job. It was theirs. I got to be scrappy. I got to throw the spaghetti. Someone else decided which strands stuck. Someone else made the sketch file not horrifying. Someone else remembered to proofread and send the email. My contribution was mostly energy. I could bring the mood up. I could write a sentence that almost worked. I could say “trust me” in a way that occasionally paid off.

And then, slowly—so slowly I barely noticed—I became the person who remembered the file structure. The person who knew the difference between a hunch and a strategy. The person who said, “We’re behind, but not really broken,” and actually knew what that meant.

I’m still not sure when it happened. There wasn’t a party. No banner dropped from the ceiling with “Congrats!” written in beautiful Avenir. It was just... one day I was asking all the questions, and the next, people were asking me. And I had answers. Not always perfect ones, but answers with some context. With caveats. Just enough calm to keep things moving.

I miss the part where someone else was the grownup.

I really do.

There was something delicious about being the wildcard. About throwing in a concept three hours before the meeting and watching it actually work. Something beautiful about not knowing what was impossible yet. I miss being surprised when someone else saved the day. I miss the part where all I had to do was care a lot and somehow the rest came together.

But I also love who I’ve become.

I love that now I get to be the person who steadies the room. That I know how to spot the moment the project is about to wobble and I can reach in. I love that I can still be enthusiastic, still throw weird ideas at smart people, but now I also know what it takes to carry the thing home.

The collaboration has changed. It used to feel like a playground. Now it's a dance floor. Everyone with their own rhythm, their own learned moves, and somehow, we don’t step on each other. Much. Or when we do, we laugh, apologize, and keep going.

The people I work with now aren’t always friends first. Sometimes they’re clients. Sometimes they’re vendors. Sometimes they’re names in a shared doc. But the ones I keep—the ones I trust and go back to and light up when I see on the calendar—they all give a fuck.

They show up. They read between the lines. They say “good enough for now” when it’s true, and “let’s keep going” when it’s not. They send a cleaner version of the thing you thought was already fine. They ask questions that make your work better. They get the tone. They care.

And because they care, I care more too.

Doing professional stuff now is less about fancy office desks, walking around with open laptops in your hand and getting to the nespresso machine every other hour.

Collaboration now is messier and more beautiful. There’s more at stake. More trust. More stories under the surface. You learn how someone works not just from what they make, but from how they send it. The 2am edit with a note that says “not sure if this is anything.” The voice memo that sounds like it was recorded in a wind tunnel but contains gold. The shared understanding that this thing we’re building isn’t just a thing. It’s ours.

That’s the good stuff.

Twelve years in, I still don’t always know where it’s going. But I’ve learned how to pack. I’ve learned how to pace myself. And I’ve learned that caring is a skill you can get better at. That giving a fuck is something you practice and earn.

I’ve watched myself become the adult in the room and still be playful. I’ve watched collaborators turn into mentors, and then into equals. I’ve watched projects fall apart and watched others rise up out of nowhere, out of dust and shared purpose and a Dropbox folder named something truly dumb.

It’s all changed. And it hasn’t. There’s still that moment where someone sends a version of something, and you open it, and your eyes do that thing where they go wide and quiet. There’s still that moment where a sentence lands and everyone in the room (or the call, or the thread) gets a little goosebumpy. There’s still the sudden laugh. The silent nod. The “Yes. This.”

Twelve years ago, I didn’t know what I was doing. But I knew I cared. Twelve years later, I still don’t always know what I’m doing. But now I know how to care.

And I have a pretty good feeling about where this is all going.