I remember that morning far too clearly — the kind of morning that tricks you into believing life is finally aligning for you. I’d finished my coffee, checked my reflection one last time even though I was working from home, and sat down at my desk feeling ready. Ready to prove myself. Ready to show a company I admired exactly what I was capable of.
A week earlier, a marketing firm I’d dreamed of working with had emailed me with what they called a “small test project.” They said it would help them understand how I think, how I create, how I solve problems. They emphasized it wasn’t paid. “Just part of the process,” they said. Like so many early-career creatives, I accepted that without complaint because I wanted the opportunity more than the paycheck.
So I poured myself into it. The entire weekend disappeared into brainstorming sessions, sketching visuals, rewriting taglines, revising the color palette again and again until the concept finally snapped together in a way that felt right. My desk looked like a battlefield of sticky notes and draft prints. I went to sleep each night replaying ideas like scenes in a movie. By Sunday night, I had a campaign I felt genuinely proud of — clean, bold, strategic, something that could actually run in the real world.
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