Stella Hayes Facebook ad: “This IS WHAT you need to do”

About this ad

Meta Ad Library ID

2786352881731506

Platforms

Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, Messenger and Threads

Relaunches

0

EU reach

14

How we count

Ad text

I want to tell you two things at the same time. What I know now and what it felt like then. I need to tell them together because alone, neither one is the whole truth. _ NOW — I lost my job to AI in November. A restructuring, they called it. Eleven designers let go in one afternoon. I was one of them. I'm telling you this at the beginning because the ending isn't the point. The point is what I found out about myself in the six months before it happened. THEN — I was good at my job. I want to say that clearly, as a fact, because what comes next could make it sound like I wasn't. I was. I had been a designer for nine years. I had a sensibility that was mine — a way of solving problems that came from somewhere specific, from how I saw things, from what I cared about. When I was twenty-six and starting out, the work felt like an extension of thinking. Like making something visible that had been invisible. _ NOW — Six months before the restructuring, my manager said something in a one-on-one that I filed under "probably fine" and have been thinking about ever since. He said: "Your work has been consistent." He meant it as a positive. I heard it as a positive. I went home and told my partner it was a good check-in. Consistent. THEN — I used to get feedback like: surprising, unexpected, makes me think differently about this. Not always. But sometimes. The feedback that meant something had happened in the work that came from me specifically — from the part that wasn't just executing a brief but was actually thinking, actually present, actually bringing something. The last time I got feedback like that was about two years before I was let go. I didn't notice when it stopped. That's the thing I keep returning to. I didn't notice because I was busy. Because the work kept getting done. Because "consistent" looked, from the outside, like professional maturity. _ NOW — After the restructuring I had six weeks of severance and nothing to do. No deliverables, no briefs, no Slack notifications pulling me into someone else's urgency. Just time. And I did something I hadn't done in years: I sat with a blank page and tried to make something with no brief. I couldn't. Not because I'd forgotten how to use the tools. Because I couldn't locate what I thought about anything. I'd open a file and sit there and feel — nothing. No pull toward any direction. No opinion forming about what would be interesting. Just a blank page reflecting a blank back. THEN — I remember being twenty-eight and having opinions about everything visual. Strong ones, sometimes embarrassingly strong. A typeface would bother me. A color combination would feel wrong in a way I could argue for. I had taste in the active sense — not just recognizing good work but having reactions, having responses, having something that pushed back against what I saw and toward what I preferred. I used to know what I liked. At thirty-four, sitting with the blank page, I realized I'd stopped knowing. Not recently. Gradually. Over two years of executing briefs efficiently, of being consistent, of doing the work without being in it. _ NOW — Here's what I think happened. Not the AI part — that came at the end and is almost beside the point. The years before the AI part. I'd been burning out in the specific way that looks like competence from the outside. The nervous system running at chronic high-demand, the creative mode progressively less available, the work getting done from pattern-matching rather than actual thinking. I was executing. I was reliable. I was consistent. The part of me that made the work mine — the opinionated, interested, has-something-to-say part — had gone quiet because the conditions required to generate it weren't available. Not because I'd become a worse designer. Because I'd been running in a state that was incompatible with the kind of presence the work required. THEN — I remember a project from three years ago. A rebrand for a small company, not a big budget, the kind of work that doesn't make a portfolio. I worked on it for two weeks and at the end I loved it — not because it was perfect, because it was mine. Something in it came from me specifically. I knew where every decision had come from. I can't tell you when that stopped being true. It stopped being true before I noticed it had stopped. _ NOW — The AI came and the AI did what it did and I was one of eleven designers let go on a Tuesday afternoon. And I want to be clear: I don't think the AI replaced me. I think the AI replaced the version of me that had been showing up for the last two years. The consistent, reliable, pattern-matching version. That version, yes — AI can do that, often better and always faster. The version from three years ago, the one who loved the small rebrand, the one who had opinions about typefaces — I'm not sure AI can do that. I'm not sure because I hadn't been doing it either, and so there was no evidence either way. THEN — I used to walk to work and notice things. Buildings, signage, the way light hit something. I'd be somewhere and think: that's interesting, I want to remember that. My phone is full of photos of things I found visually interesting. The most recent one is from two years ago. Two years ago. _ NOW — I found Liven three months into my severance, reading about burnout and creative work and the relationship between nervous system state and generative capacity. The quiz — I took it on a Wednesday morning with no particular expectations. It asked about things I recognized in a way I hadn't expected: the blank page that reflected blank back. The opinions that had gone quiet. The work that had become execution. The point at which presence had left the room before I noticed it leaving. What it gave me wasn't a creativity protocol. It gave me a map of why the creative part had gone quiet — in the specific, physiological sense. Not a motivation problem. Not a talent problem. A state problem. The state I'd been running in was not compatible with the kind of presence the work required, and the work had been showing me this for two years, and I'd been reading the signal as "consistent" and filing it under fine. THEN — The blank page used to be exciting. That's what I keep coming back to. Not comfortable — exciting. The uncertainty of it. Not knowing where it would go. Being willing to follow it. _ NOW — I'm doing something I haven't done in three years. I'm making work with no brief. Slowly, badly at first — the opinions took a while to come back, like feeling returning to a limb that had been asleep. But they're coming back. Something is forming about what I think is interesting, what I want to look at, what I want to make. Last week I took a photo of something on my way to a coffee shop. Just something I found visually interesting. I didn't plan to. I just looked at a thing and had a response. It was the first one in two years. I'm not sure what I'll do next professionally. The industry has changed and I'm not naive about that. But I know that whoever I bring to the next thing, I want it to be the version that has opinions. The version that knows what she likes. The version whose work is consistent because it comes from somewhere real, not because she learned to execute reliably on someone else's terms. The AI didn't take that version. I'd already put her somewhere I couldn't find. I'm finding her again. That's where I am. If you're a designer — or anyone whose work is supposed to come from somewhere — and the somewhere has gone quiet, this might be worth understanding before the restructuring makes it visible. The Liven quiz is below. It asks about the state that the blank page reflects. Four minutes. It might name something you've been filing under consistent.

Where the ad sends people

quiz.theliven.com

This IS WHAT you need to do