What's a file that you've lost before you had Dropbox, that you wish you could get back?
I have lost a lot of files over the years because my career has spanned many changes in [the] realm of digital art making.
I started doing design on a computer nearly right when they were being widely adopted for creative production. I recently transferred a ton of my digital archive to Dropbox. These were DVD and CD backups that I used to backup zips and SyQuests that were previously on tape drives and old computers. Graphic files were always overloading hard drives so you were throwing out or doing these overnight backups of files to make room to work.
I don’t feel any regret for lost digital files over the ages really. That feeling is saved for long emails that get deleted or forgetting to save something. Those regrets are really in the moment.
You're someone who does many things very well. What advice would you give to someone who feels overwhelmed by the thought of being a multi-hyphenate creator?
I love a compliment wrapped in a question. Thank you.
Obviously any one of us is happy to be good at one thing. My trick has really just been applying that one thing, that one highly articulate part of myself, to other stuff. What that other stuff is can be really interesting: wildlife tracking, sewing, parenting. Getting an A in logo design is made more interesting by your C in treehouse building.
You don’t have to be really good at everything you do, but being three dimensional as a human and having that as part of your creative practice… I think that is the stuff.
Maybe that gives someone anxiety too though. Hopefully not. My point is just value yourself, value things that maybe the world does not value in you. Being a creative person is often about self-assigning value to those things—those traits and interests.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.