Cooking up a career bigos

Bigos in a pot

Bigos, a lovely stew

I had a recent conversation with a friend about working in UX. As we all do, he’s aiming to find a balance of work that is rewarding, provides room for growth, and pays the bills. He has a range of important creative activities that he’s engaged in and he wants to ensure that none of them are being neglected.

Our conversation resonated with my own thinking about my career. Metaphorically, I have a soup of ingredients that are all important to my UX work and that I aim to have aligned with each other. Boltmade is the major ingredient, while Fluxible and uxWaterloo are two other obvious ingredients in that soup. Other ingredients like attending other events, having conversations with various folks in the community, and ongoing readings all go into the mix as well. I’m delighted that these all complement each other as well as they do.

As I talked about this with my friend, he got it right away and declared it to be more of a stew. What immediately popped into my mind was a wonderful kind of stew called bigos.

My mom taught me how to make bigos, and it’s a dish that my whole family loves. One of the great things about it is how it improves on subsequent days as it cooks. Moreover, adding new ingredients on those day renews it and extends it over more meals.

My UX career bigos evolves, and the ingredients that I add over time ensure that it keeps getting better.