Productive Side Quest Activated
Flowers have a way of communicating new things. When they start to bloom, you know spring has finally arrived.
I’ve been working through What Color Is Your Parachute? in between job hunting. I first borrowed it from the Richmond library after losing a job three years ago, but the two-week library deadline made it hard to really work through the exercises. So I bought my own copy from Indigo, intending to take my time with it.
Then life happened. The book ended up in a moving box.
Now, after losing another survival job and finally unpacking my home, I’ve found my way back to it. This time, something is different. While working through the Flower Exercise, I’m finding a spark I thought might not be there anymore.
The Career Map Is Starting to Bloom
The flower exercise is proving to be interesting. I’m also using my recent learning about various A.I. platforms to assist me in this process, and am finding it quite helpful. ChatGPT and Claude in particular are of great help.
The way this exercise works is you basically do an inventory of yourself. It touches on seven different petals, all designed to understand what it is you do best. What kind of people do you like to work with? What’s your ideal workplace look and feel like? And so on.
So far, I’m on the third petal and I’m finding the whole experience very energizing. I’ll definitely have something to discuss with my career counsellor next week.
The Ideal People Petal: Who I Actually Want Around Me
My Holland code is ACS — Artistic, Conventional, Social
From this exercise, I have learned that these are the types of people I like to work with:
- Helpful
- Fun to be around
- Tolerant
- Low supervision
- Kind
Note: I’m treating the AI responses as reflection tools, not final verdicts — useful mirrors that help me notice patterns, but not replacements for my own judgment.
ChatGPT’s Reflection
The insight ChatGPT provided me with as a result of this information is as follows:
“I work best with people who are kind, helpful, tolerant, and enjoyable to be around, in environments where expectations are clear but I’m trusted to work independently without heavy supervision.”
Claude’s Reflection
“The artistic side means I likely crave creative freedom, self-expression, and work that isn’t rigidly structured. Conventional adds a layer of wanting some order, systems, and attention to detail — I’m creative but not chaotically so. Social rounds it out, showing I genuinely care about people and meaningful human connection in my work.
What my people preferences reveal — Low supervision appears on my list alongside tolerant. This suggests I have a strong independent streak and work best when given autonomy and trust. I likely find micromanagement draining or even demoralizing. Helpful, kind, and fun to be around point to someone who values warmth and psychological safety in my environment. I’m not just looking for competent colleagues — I want good people who make the day better.
Tolerant is particularly telling. It suggests I may be someone who thinks or works differently myself, and I deeply value spaces where that’s accepted rather than pushed back on.
I seem to thrive in environments that are human-centred, low on hierarchy, and high on trust and creativity. Rigid, competitive, or highly corporate cultures would likely feel suffocating to me.”
It turns out “good people” is too vague. I’m starting to notice the specific qualities that make work feel safer, clearer, and more enjoyable.
The Ideal Workplace Petal: The Environment Matters More Than I Thought
From working on this exercise, these are the top five working conditions that matter to me the most:
- Quiet space
- Separate office
- Scent-free workplace
- Indoors
- Desk work
ChatGPT’s Reflection
This points toward a work environment where my brain can actually settle, focus, and do quality work without constant sensory interference.
Job Fit:
- I likely do better with focused work than noisy, high interruption environments.
- I may need physical boundaries to concentrate and regulate energy.
- Sensory comfort matters, and workplace smells may become a real distraction or stressor.
- I prefer controlled environments over outdoor/variable conditions.
- My ideal work is probably computer-based, design-based, planning-based, writing-based, or coordination-based.
I work best in a quiet, scent-free indoor environment, preferably with a separate office or defined workspace, where I can focus on desk-based work with minimal interruption.
A vision board of what this would look like:
Claude’s Reflection
My working conditions preferences add a really rich layer to what’s emerging. Here’s what stands out:
I need an environment that respects my senses.
Quiet space, separate office, and scent-free paint a picture of someone who is likely sensitive to sensory input. Noise, smells, and the general chaos of open-plan offices can genuinely affect my ability to think and perform — this isn’t a preference so much as a need for my best work to happen.
I value boundaries and control over my space.
A separate office isn’t just about quiet — it’s about having a defined, personal space that I can control. This connects back to petal one’s “low supervision.” I want autonomy not just over my work, but over my physical environment too.
I’m an inward-focused worker.
Desk work and indoors suggests I do my best thinking in a contained, stable setting rather than on the move or out in the field. My energy likely goes into my work rather than being fuelled by external stimulation.
This connects to my ACS code because my artistic side might have suggested a more dynamic, studio-like environment, but my conditions list is actually quite calm and structured. This reflects that conventional strand in my Holland code. I’m a creative who needs order and calm to actually create.
The emerging portrait – I’m someone who does deep, focused work best when protected from sensory and social interruption. The ideal workplace for me likely looks less like a buzzing open office and more like a calm, private, well-controlled space.
The Transferable Skills Petal: Stories Instead of Buzzwords
This part is a little intimidating. The step suggests I need to write seven stories about some sort of thing I accomplished or obstacle I overcame. I’m using ChatGPT to brainstorm stories, and Claude to write them. So far, I have completed three out of the seven stories. This is where I decided to take a break from writing to write about this. Ha-ha!
A list can tell me what skills I think I have. A story shows me what I’ve actually done.
I’m including the first three stories here because they are doing more than filling out a workbook. They are helping me gather evidence. Each one points to a different kind of strength: organizing chaos, building a creative system, and managing production details under real-world pressure.
Finding My Place
When I moved into my new apartment, I had a dream: to finally become a neat and tidy person, living in a calm and organized home. But standing in the middle of a sea of boxes, that dream felt impossibly far away. I didn’t know where to begin, and with ADHD, the sheer size of the task made my brain shut down before I even started. It felt like it would never end.
So I did what my brain needed — I made it smaller.
I sat down and made a list of everything that needed to happen in each room, then broke those tasks into six phases, starting with the essentials and working outward. Phase one was just the bathroom and some clothes. That was it. From there, the kitchen, and living room essentials. Then the less-used items in the kitchen, living room and bedroom. Then the spare room — the one that held the most boxes and the most mystery. Cleaning came next, and finally the papers and pictures.
I gave myself one rule: only work in microbursts of no more than an hour, and only when I actually felt like it. If I was tired, I stopped. No guilt, no pushing through.
It took three months. I did all of it while working full-time night shifts and sleeping from noon to 8:00 p.m. every day. Some of those boxes had been sealed for over 3 years.
By the end of phase 5, something unexpected had happened. The spare bedroom — once a graveyard of cardboard — had found its identity. I started calling it my Creative Studio. It wasn’t just a room anymore. It had a purpose, and so did everything in it.
Everything in my home now has a place. And for the first time in a long time, so do I.
Creating a Convention From Scratch
It started with a simple idea: build a portfolio project that would actually mean something.
I wanted to create something that felt real — not a collection of disconnected samples, but a complete creative world that a hiring manager or client could walk through and understand. So I invented FanVerse, a fictional pop-culture convention, and decided to build it from the ground up.
What began as a spark quickly grew into something much larger than I expected. I wasn’t just designing a logo. I was building an entire identity — one that had to feel cohesive across posters, signage, a website concept, maps, and an 18-page program guide. Every piece had to look like it belonged to the same world. Every font choice, colour decision, and layout had to serve the same vision.
That meant I had to think in several directions at once. I approached the project from multiple angles: visual design, attendee experience, and production planning. Each piece had to look cohesive, communicate clearly, and work as something that could realistically be printed or displayed.
Nobody assigned me any of this. I mapped it out myself, set my own deadlines, made my own decisions, and caught my own mistakes. When something wasn’t working visually, I reworked it. When a piece felt incomplete, I added to it until it felt finished.
The result was a portfolio project that looked and functioned like a real convention brand — consistent, polished, and purposeful from the first poster to the last page of the program guide.
This project showed me that one of my strongest transferable skills is turning a loose creative idea into a structured, polished, multi-piece visual system. I can hold the big picture and the fine details at the same time — and I can do it entirely on my own initiative.
From Deliveries to Deadlines
In packaging, a mistake doesn’t just look bad. It costs money, delays launches, and can end up on a shelf — or worse, never make it there at all.
At SpiceBox, I learned quickly that the space between a beautiful design and a producible product is where the real work happens. My job wasn’t just to make things look good. It was to make sure that what looked good on screen could actually be built, printed, folded, and finished in the real world.
That meant living in the details. Checking dielines to confirm that cutlines, fold lines, and bleed areas were correct before anything went to a vendor. Reviewing files for the kinds of errors that are easy to miss and expensive to fix — wrong colour profiles, missing fonts, low-resolution images, unclear finishes, or technical details that had not been specified. Every file that moved forward had to be right, because once it left our hands, the clock was running and the costs were real.
It also meant communicating clearly across different teams and vendors who each had their own language, timelines, and expectations. A question answered quickly could save days. A detail caught early could save a reprint. I learned to ask the right questions, flag concerns without creating panic, and keep things moving without letting anything slip through.
There was no single dramatic moment. The work was a repeated pattern of vigilance — checking, confirming, following up, and catching the small things before they became large problems. That consistency was the job.
My strength was not only making things look good, but helping make sure they could be produced accurately, consistently, and on time.
Three Stories In, Four To Go
These first three stories were shaped with Claude’s writing assistance and ChatGPT’s pattern-spotting. Since I’ve worked with ChatGPT for much longer, it often has more context for how I think, while Claude has been useful for turning raw material into polished story form. I’m not asking AI to choose my future. I’m using it like a mirror, a sorting tray, and occasionally a very patient career counsellor with no coffee breaks.
If you are intrigued by this flower exercise process, I’ll write follow-up posts for the remaining stories, insights for the third petal, and the other petals I work on, so watch for it.
The flower isn’t fully filled in yet, but it has started whispering coordinates.
When Career Homework Becomes Career Signal
I felt the need to take a pause in-between writing these stories. I found that I was actually enjoying this process but needed to rest my hands, as I’m writing it all down by hand. The creative spark has been ignited. It’s incredible how much detail this process asks for — and how much clarity it might eventually lead to. I’m genuinely excited to see the results of this process.
Knowing who you are and how to communicate what works best for you is a very important thing. I’ve already learned some interesting things about myself, so it’ll be interesting to see each petal completed, and what the whole flower picture means for me.
What the Flower Seems to Be Saying
What exactly is this flower saying about me so far? This is what I’m learning about myself:
- I need creative work.
- I need structure, but not micromanagement.
- I thrive around curious, kind, competent people.
- I want work that uses both my visual brain and my organizing brain.
- I’m not starting from nothing; I’m gathering evidence.
- I can turn chaos into systems.
Diana is Curious
While her human has been busy with a book, a notebook, and several trusty AI apps, Diana has been curious about what exactly is going on. She shows this by constantly coming up to me, chirping a curious question, and wanting to get my attention. She wants me to relax and pay attention to her.
Sometimes one of the simple pleasures of working at home is having a cat who informs you, loudly and repeatedly, when it is time to take a break.
Final Thought: Current Coordinates
Current status: ideal people mapped, ideal workplace explored, three transferable skills stories drafted, four still waiting in the wings. The job search is still uncertain, but the flower is no longer just sitting quietly on the page. It’s starting to talk back.
Have you ever had a career worksheet get a little too accurate? Let me read about it in the comments.