Week 1: Beginning

For my first week, I figured it would be helpful to explain what I'm doing and why. I'd call it a manifesto but then I'd have to admit that I'm taking myself way too seriously.

My name is Aaron Johnson. I graduated with a degree in advertising in December, 2015, and have since been working as an entry-level strategy planner at MRM//McCann West in Salt Lake City. As a junior planner, my goal is to stop being a junior planner-- I love my job and my position, but the point of any job (I believe) is to learn and grow and prepare yourself to move beyond it. I started this blog with that goal in mind.

I'm a firm believer that the quickest way to improvement is to measure it, and that's what I plan to do here. I plan to sit down once a week and reflect on the experiences of the week that are relevant to my job. My posts won't mention any clients or specific projects in detail (because a lawsuit sounds like a terrible idea), but will be general reflections on anything that I thought was an important lesson from the week. Something like, "I did a creative briefing this week. I tried to make it more engaging by doing A, B, and C; but looking back I think B and C would have been better if I did X and Y instead," and so forth. It will likely cover a broad range of topics and ideas, but the variety is what makes this career-path so exciting.

Over the course of this blog I hope that:

1. I will accelerate my learning and growth as a planner,
2. I will be able to refer to this blog as evidence of my continued growth and ability when the time comes for me to move on, and
3. I will create something that can inspire and assist other junior planners on their own journey.

So that's me, and that's what you can expect from my blog. I still can't believe how fortunate I have been in pursuing this career as far as I have, and I hope this blog will help me to make the most of it.

-Aaron