Hello, my name is Tara O’Shea, and I like to use my ADHD for Good instead of Evil whenever I can.
So far, I’ve done all sorts of things. Some things I’ve learnt to do really, really well. Some I’ve learnt to do but rarely have a chance to put the skill to use, so I’m a bit rusty. And some things I can do practically in my sleep, because I’ve been doing them for so long.
I’ve been a supermarket checker, a comic book shop employee, sold hand-made, old-fashioned, and unique toys to people who didn’t want their kids to play with action figures or fashion dolls (though I personally play with both action figures and fashion dolls and I think I turned out OK), worked as an admin assistant for an entrepreneur in the travel industry and typed personal correspondence from dictation (on a dictation machine with a foot pedal, into a 286 laptop that weighed about 20 pounds), wrote and edited short stories, helped put together a business plan and proforma financials for an airline, worked as the admin for the Operations department of a small carrier during the pre-operating period, and edited (and rewrote) the maintenance manuals for a small carrier that operated (briefly) in the US flying exclusively Boeing 737-200s that carried about 122 passengers, give or take. (I know things about what de-icing/anti-icing fluids can do to human flesh that no sane person would want to know.)
All of that was before I was 20.
I worked an assistant art buyer at a major advertising industry for several months, then I mostly shelved used books that were stacked waist-high in piles at an indie SF/F bookshop for a sum total of 14 days spread out over 3 months. I once was hired to work in a law office for a week solely because I had used WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, and they hadn’t upgraded to Microsoft Word yet. I spent weeks and months at a regional advertising office for a major publisher, putting together media kits, answering phones, and trying (and failing) to teach ad execs how to properly use PowerPoint.
I taught myself HTML back when Netscape 1.0 was around, and designed and hand-coded websites for over a decade back when some agencies had one person for design, and someone else entirely for HTML and CSS. I optimised websites for multiple browsers, updated existing ones, and made new ones for fun and profit.
I was the lead designer for an in-house agency of a global insurance company, where we spent about three years trying to build a web-based application that salespeople could use in the field to sell insurance where the data would be sent as a PDF, doing away with the need for every single application to be entered manually into databases by data entry people.
(About a month after the launch party, the entire project was cancelled.)
For almost 15 years, I worked as a designer in an agency environment that specialised in event production. Which meant I’ve created art for print, web, mobile, promotional materials, laid out souvenir booklets and gala menus, large format printing for twenty foot banners that hung from glass ceilings, to looped keynote animations that were projected onto walls and floors.
I’ve taken hand-drawn logos and re-created them as vector art for small businesses. I’ve also taken 18kb .gif logos and recreated them as vector art for incredibly large businesses.
I designed a Jem & The Holograms tee-shirt as a SDCC exclusive for Hasbro and Welovefine that never went into production, but would have been insanely cool if it had.
I illustrated and designed book covers, promotional materials, and other collateral for authors, agents, and publishers.
But here’s the thing…
What I love most is the challenge of finding things. Sometimes, a specific thing. Other times, the perfect thing. In rare instances, finding lost things.
Need someone to ID a typeface? I can do that. Not only that, I can track down the designer of a free typeface originally posted to the internet in 1997 and now, 20 years later, works in a completely unrelated field, to purchase a license for commercial use for that typeface for your series of novels.
Have a low-resolution image your wife found on Pinterest that you want to hang in your brand new office space, but have no idea who painted it or if prints are even available? I tracked down the name of the piece, the name of the artist, found her website, and began negotiations to purchase a full-sized print (even playing translator when necessary, using schoolgirl French and Spanish).
I’ve been asked to find artists to create a 1:6 scale Louis XVI baroque bed for a photoshoot, sourced the exact gold metallic heat-embossed spiral pattern that Kenner used for a Darci Cover Girl fashion from 1978 for a replica (it was being sold as luxury wallpaper in China, and yes, I still have 10 yards of it left over). I researched the school leaving age of a lower middle class male child in the early 1900s London with reference books that just so happened to be in my living room. I can tell you how much a ham steak dinner cost in an American diner in 1945, and just about anything anyone could ever need or want to know about World War II-era espionage.
And what I don’t already know? I can learn. Fast.