HIGH APPETITE

Irina Caia ©

S01 "The filler job conversation"

Getting a non-design job in order to be able to pursue design

@irinacaia

@high.appetite.sessions

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After this conversation, I think I came to realise that maybe a filler job is not the enemy and it should be seen kind of like your friend who helps you sometimes, a stable place that you have if things go south. Maybe the job can give you motivation in order to pursue your dream. At some point you will get tired and say it’s time to restart the motor.

You need to have that little crumb of a hope that you are doing something that you like, that you are passionate about and at the same time, doing something that provides you money. Maybe this is the perfect recipe. Maybe we are gonna be a generation that knows balance because of having to take filler jobs.

Maybe a little advice for people who are looking for a filler job is to not take it very seriously. Don’t take it to a point where everything becomes trauma. Try to not overthink it, try to be good at it but don’t push yourself too much. It needs to be enjoyable and to get what you want in the end.

I totally agree here. Maybe that's the main perk of it. You can be a designer, a creative person, even if you are working as a baker, a hairdresser, a florist and it’s just beautiful. Maybe, I wish I thought about this, earlier in my life. I guess I needed to go through a certain path, mature and try new stuff in order to come to such a conclusion. For me, this brings hope for the future.

Would you like to say something in the end?

I wish we will pursue our dreams further and smoothly and we will overcome any bad situation that might come our way. We should be positive that at the end of the day, when you want something you will find a way to achieve it.

Also it’s good to take some breaks and to not be too hard on yourself, this applies to everyone in every domain.

Taking a job that is not so serious helped me with my graphic design practice.

It is interesting that as creative people, we always chose not to work a crappy job in our domain as a filler job.

I just know that will drain me.

I would never put my goal through a difficult situation. I cherish it very much. Sometimes you collaborate with people that don’t match with your ideas. I went through that recently and it damaged me. I was working for this 1 person, but it felt like there was a whole corporation. All the toxic traits you see on memes about corporations were there.

The ratio between our filler jobs and our creative pursuits: How does your filler job help you, or not, to get creative? What do you do after/during work and how do you try and still keep in touch with the creative world?

The place I work in is a bit creative, it’s not your regular bar, it has something. Everytime I want to go somewhere else, I still end up here, even on my free day. They have concerts and events there. My colleagues are really creative, most of them are doing music, skateboarding, taking care of snakes and doing photography. The DJ there even asked me to make the poster for their event.

I’m always online, keeping up with the design world. I follow my friends very closely, I love to see all the projects, and this is my motivation right now in order to have ideas. It is like a mechanism: following up close the domain, doing and seeing projects. Creativeness is a mechanism. You need to keep it running, otherwise you will forget how to do it, how to approach an idea, how to make it real. It may feel forced and not real, but I think this is the closest I have been to something that I like. I’m so passionate about design, this is a thing that fulfills me. I’m just this kind of person that can find joy in everything, but I lose it as fast as I get it. With design, I never lost interest, it just became more and more important to me, year by year.

I used to be like this, now I try to find inspiration in things that are not related to what I do. If you keep looking in the same field, at some point, everything will start looking the same. Recently, every design kind of looks the same even though they are from different artists. I feel like this is because of trends that move really fast nowadays. Everything is moving too fast. People don't have passions anymore, everyone wants everything right now.

Irina Caia ©

Irina Caia is a Visual Artist and Graphic Designer born in Romania, currently living in Poland. At the moment, she works as a freelance graphic designer, creative director & bartender, on the side.

Her system revolves around experimental typography, as she loves textures, mixed media and working with motion graphics. Apart from these, she has a strong voice that sometimes manifests through photography & video art pieces.

Irina loves to collaborate with people from the art industry, for example: gallerists, creators, curators, and of course, other visual artists.

Hiii! It's such a pleasure to have you here today, thank you for accepting my invitation.

Hello, hello! It is truly a pleasure and thank you for inviting meee.

Diving right in: What do you think a filler job is? How could you define it ?

Maybe it is like an escape, a side quest (if you want to make it fun) to your goal. I guess we all have dreams and we want to achieve something. Life it’s not always easy and we need something to get us through our everyday life, financial situations or maybe even

emotional situations.

From my side, I always thought that “filler” can also mean something that is bonding, like a glue that is missing from your life, depending on what kind of sentimental or mental situation you are in towards your biggest dream.

I never tried to romanticize filler jobs at all, quite the opposite. I’m also finding myself in a similar situation, where I have a filler job and before choosing it, and accepting the fact that I have to take it, I thought about it like it’s meaningless, get the sh*ttiest job that you can find that creates a little bit of revenue and get over with it, all of this, just to have time to work after hours.

Is the “filler job” situation different for you? What kind of filler job do you have right now?

It is completely different because I finished university and I moved to Poland, where I live now. Once Erasmus+ was over, I was left in a country which I barely understood how it works. I was lucky I knew some people, but it was like searching for belonging in a way. Besides being a graphic designer for my own pleasure, I took a job as a bartender and barista. Actually, I offered myself to clean the dishes because I don’t need to interact with people. I can stay in the back, listen to some music and clean dishes and that was amazing for me. Then, they asked if I can work on Monday, Tuesday in the morning at the bar? All of a sudden I was like “yeah”. I never really thought about it. I really like it there and now I know how to do latte art.

Did you think about your job from a creative person’s perspective? Did you realise that this is just a filler job taken in order to get more money?

Definitely, I already started working as a graphic designer when this was happening, but I realised I’m getting really lonely and kind of always on my screen, alone, doing research. I went to cafes to work, but I was still alone at the end of the day. I needed this so I can completely get out of what I was doing. In a bar you don’t need to think that much, it’s just muscle memory.

This week I opened After Effects and I did a marketing reel just for fun. I'm so happy that I forgot shortcuts because it’s like taking the program from scratch and finding other ways to create and use the tools I already have.

It was also really helpful for my perfectionism and at some point I tried to put all the Pepsi bottles facing the logo upfront. I was so proud of it.

transcript by daria iusan

5 MINUTE READ

Experimental spiralling session on the subject of filler jobs and our dreams:

"What is a filler job?

How does a filler job integrate in a creative person's life and how do we deal with it? How do we maintain a certain balance?"

on-dial w/ irina caia