{"id":878,"date":"2020-08-31T11:25:36","date_gmt":"2020-08-31T16:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/capertongillett.com\/blog\/?p=878"},"modified":"2020-08-31T11:25:36","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T16:25:36","slug":"on-mastery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capertongillett.com\/blog\/on-mastery\/","title":{"rendered":"On mastery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Like, how<\/em>? How? It’s… You’re… I mean.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not jealous of mastery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay, I am a little bit. (Who wouldn\u2019t be?) But I\u2019m more impressed with it. And fascinated. I love watching people who are masters at something I just don\u2019t have the skills and\/or chops for. That\u2019s one reason I love working in advertising \u2014 it\u2019s collaborative, and I\u2019ve gotten to work with some absurdly talented art directors who leave me in awe. I watch them click around and make art out of advertising and make it look effortless, and concept with them as they pull visual solves seemingly out of midair as I sit in amazement. Some of them have come from fancy-pants, big-city agencies, and others are simply, as far as I\u2019m concerned, professionally underappreciated. Copywriters, too \u2014 I\u2019ve had the opportunity to work alongside and see work from colleagues that made me wonder where those ideas could possibly come from and how they could be so perfectly conveyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Y\u2019all know who you are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s not just creative work. My boyfriend is a super-polymath who is, professionally, a DevOps wizard (more on that word later) but can also do fairly high-level home repair and Tetris a trunk like nobody\u2019s business, and watching him rapid-fire his keyboard until computering happens or visually scan an empty car trunk like if he was in a movie, numbers and angles would be floating around on the screen is kind of amazing. My mom can pick up anything and play it by ear on the piano and, like, how<\/em>? And I\u2019m so awed and impressed that I don\u2019t even think to be bitter about their comparative superiority (which y\u2019all have seen is kind of my default mood).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel a little bit silly coming out with this so publicly \u2014 there isn\u2019t a ton of dignity in the amount of fawning I have to stop myself from doing, and which I guess I\u2019m actually doing here. But never let it be said that I\u2019m not honest with y\u2019all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Okay, the next part includes a little of a really<\/em> unbecoming Unappreciative Whine Alert, so feel free to skip to the paragraph after if you don\u2019t want to think less of me. Hey, at least I\u2019m self-aware.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wizardry<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of it, I think, is because I have received and inwardly rolled my eyes at the \u201cwizard\u201d thing. I know people mean well when they tell me to \u201cdo my magic,\u201d because it indicates they\u2019re impressed with what I\u2019ve done and want me to do it for them, so I give them a break about it, but\u2026 y\u2019all, I\u2019ve worked my ass off for almost twenty years to get to this point. Hagrid never showed up at my door to tell me I\u2019m a thumpin\u2019 good wizard \u2014 I\u2019ve been busting my ass continuously since I started my ad major, and side note, do you know how much sleep is involved in being an ad major? None. None sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So despite the fact that that kind of excellence legitimately does look like wizardry \u2014 seriously, I\u2019ve used Illustrator, but there you are with your Wacom just blooping things around and turning them into something awesome \u2014 I know how much ass-busting was probably involved. If I thought it really was akin to magic, I might be jealous that they were touched by the wand of the Art Director Fairy Godmother and I wasn\u2019t. But no, they\u2019re innately talented but also dedicated and focused, so all I can say is, good on you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where this is all coming from<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, Nike (via AOR Wieden+Kennedy) came out with a jaw-dropping wonder of video editing colloquially known as a \u201ccommercial.\u201d (If you follow me on social media, you\u2019ve seen it, and if not\u2026 why not?) It defies description \u2014 the footage so precisely lined up and moving together so fluidly as to almost, but not quite, be disconcerting. Like\u2026 holy crap, y\u2019all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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