Editor's Note

Lean In: Plan for the Future While Embracing the Unknown

Published

4 years ago

March 3, 2020

Adrienne Palmer Screen Printing February-March 2020

WHEN WE LAST met, here in Editorial Insights, I wrote about my love for planning. Knowing what I’m doing today, tomorrow, and the next allows me to be my best self. My full calendar sparks joy.

When my fiancé and I decided to move out West in September 2018, I got right into planning mode. Flights were booked, meetings with property managers were made, and bags were packed. We left beds, kitchen appliances, and that one missing sock in our four-bedroom home in Louisville, Kentucky, and moved into a fully furnished studio apartment in San Francisco.

My fear of the unknown was softened due to my busy schedule and the joy of checking things off my to-do list, but the concern was still there. Will this work? Will I be too homesick? How do you make friends as an adult?

A little over a year later – after exploring all the city has to offer; hosting countless tours of the Golden Gate Bridge and wine country; and making lifelong pals — we’re asking ourselves a new set of questions: Is the tech world really just burnout culture? Probably. Is SF sustainable? Barely. Can we even raise a family when the cheapest home is a studio for a million bucks? Absolutely not. So, where do we go and what do we do now?

Our feature story highlighting Max Hellmann and Alex Meiners, founders of the LA-based screen printing business Family Industries, hits fear of the unknown right on the head. The two lost their jobs within a week. Talk about “what’s next?” But, instead of leaning into distress, they leaned into what they knew: screen printing. More than a decade later, they have a booming shop that has completed 3500-plus live screen printing events for major corporations around the world.

While I’m not sure how long we’ll be in the City by the Bay, just like Max and Alex I’ve learned if you lean into the unknown, you never know where it will take you.

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Adrienne Palmer

Adrienne Palmer is the editor-in-chief of Big Picture and Screen Printing magazines. She joined Big Picture magazine in 2012 after graduating from Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism with a BA in magazine journalism. During her time with Big Picture, she has held the roles of assistant editor, associate editor, and managing editor; she added sister publication Screen Printing magazine to her resume in 2019. She is a 2019 Folio: Top Woman in Media; spearheads Big Picture's annual Women in Wide Format Awards and Best of Wide Format Awards as well as Screen Printing's annual Women in Screen Printing Awards; is on the board of Printing United Alliance's Women in Print Alliance and the U.N.I.T.E. Together diversity and inclusion program; hosts the Screen Saver podcast; and represents the Big Picture and Screen Printing teams at numerous industry events year-round as a speaker, moderator, and panelist.

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