CM I guess it really has been that long, which is kind of wild. It doesn’t feel like that long.

MW I was actually listening back to the podcast we did and you were talking about how you had just moved to London and you were in your flat and—yeah, that was like a year and a half ago. So what are you doing now?

CM Now I’m in Portland. I’m not working at Apple, which was my choice. Apple asked us to stay in London for another three years, and they kind of wanted a three year commitment in exchange for a work visa, which is understandable. We were on my wife’s student visa so we kind of needed to make a decision. I just don’t think we saw ourselves there for three years as much as I loved Apple, which I really did. I loved my team there a lot. Had it been another year, maybe two, I would have been pretty prime. But, uh, three was just a lot.

MW Now you’re in Portland, working where?

CM I work at Instrument now, which is really fun. I’ve long admired Instrument and the work that they do—especially pushing brands forward digitally in their design. But also, they’re just good people. I’m pretty pumped to be there. It’s also my first agency experience—I’ve always been client-side up until now. So that’s new for me, but it’s fun to work across so many different projects and have input into so many different aspects of client’s workstreams. It’s nice to not have such a deep level of commitment all the way through to the end sometimes. At other times, I do miss that ability to be with the client from the beginning.

MW Yeah, I feel like that’s something…I’ve always been on the agency side and I feel like there’s only a percentage of the project that I touch and then I don’t even know where it goes after it leaves my hands, which is interesting. I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to be on the brand side. Do you feel like you prefer one over the other?

CM I have an appreciation for aspects of both. I miss really being able to hone in, from the brand side, what the long-term vision is and really being able to see it out in the wild. And sometimes, from the agency side, you do get that experience. Sometimes you want to be involved in all of that, but there’s a freedom in knowing that you can come in, be an expert on something then dip out, and not feel the pressure of it all being on your shoulders for success.

MW I totally get that man. Going back to what you were talking about earlier…You’ve kind of moved around a lot recently. A few new jobs in different cities. One of the larger topics of conversation that we had on our podcast was this idea of community. You were at VSCO for nearly five years and investing in those people. I’m curious about what your thoughts are on community now, through the lens of transience. Does community get harder when you get older? Is it something you desire more often?

CM That’s a good question. Community, from a work sense and life sense, are somewhat the same. We plan on being in Portland for quite a while, and it’s nice to see that we’ll be invested in it, naturally, over the course of a long period of time. Granted, so much can change. Five years ago, I never would have thought the trajectory would have gone the way it has. In London, we really invested in the people around us and I don’t think we realized how much of an impact they had on us until we left. I don’t know if settling down is something everyone wants. I have a hard time feeling like I can be fully invested everywhere—like, I told my wife that I really need a sense of permanence in my life. I feel like I’ve moved around so much geographically that the relationships are hard to maintain if you continue to uproot them. But I’m excited for this season of where we’re at—in this season of permanence, whatever that means.

MW Do you think, as far as what you’ve talked about already, you’ve found the things you desire in community in Portland already?

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