Flintern Spotlight: Lydia Picotte
By Lydia Picotte, Creative Writing Intern – Flint Group
It did not occur to me that my greatest challenge would be me.
It’s not that “who I am” is such a mystery. I’m not Emily Dickinson or J.D. Salinger, desperate to live a shrouded life of isolation or anonymity. Actually, I would say the opposite.
I write this from my desk at Flint’s downtown office, where I’m the Creative Writing Intern. My books are stacked in one corner, and three tiny NBA action figures (Shaq, Jamal Murray and Damian Lillard as a Milwaukee Buck) sit in the other. The cubicle wall is pinned with my multicolored doodles, and my tiny trash can has nothing in it but chocolate wrappers. Most of my spaces look like this – coated with an eclectic layer of personal odds and ends that easily reveal who I am.
But when I was told I’d also have to include something about myself in this series of intern profiles, it made me pause. Despite my expressiveness, and despite my ironic affinity for reading personal essays and memoirs, I’ve never entered the genre myself. I’ve always been more interested in everyone else. This is my best first effort to change that – a reflection of how I got here, where I’m going next and the communicator I hope to become.
Official or not, my earliest title was “Reader.” I was the child with a perpetually tall stack of library books and a flashlight stashed under my pillow. I like to think that if I was living in Disney’s Inside Out, my brain would have a “Book Island,” a place forged when I was very young, where Dr. Suess and Dr. Watson inquisitively read the Margaret Atwood poems nailed to trees.
When I started inventing my own tales, writing was the obvious first vehicle. Retrospectively, I think the brief period of time in elementary school when I dreamed of being an NFL broadcaster (because “Dad, why doesn’t everyone want to get paid to just sit around and watch football?”), was an early sign that I’d pick up any medium, as long as I could keep telling stories.
This hyperfocus has followed me into adulthood. I’m a rising junior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison earning my BA in Journalism. I’ve written news articles, magazine spreads, essays and poems; created advertisements; scripted podcast episodes; conducted interviews and even briefly fulfilled my early dreams of broadcasting.
I’ve explored storytelling through every channel I could find, and this summer, Flint introduced me to a new one: copywriting.
I’ve spent the last few months writing advertisements, proofreading captions, and contributing strategic insight to various projects. I’ve learned how to share the messages of not just individuals, but entire companies. It has altered the way I understand brand voice and given me deeper technical understanding of what brands, media groups and marketers are looking for.
Looking ahead, I hope to keep telling passionate, people-centered stories. Right now, my favorite of these are centered around sports, entertainment and the arts. Performing under the lights, running the final play, while the music plays and when the crowd roars – those are the moments I’ve felt the strongest and heaviest bonds between crafts, people and passions.
This hunt for the kernel of passion is the common denominator of all my stories, no matter the theme.
I’ve spent my entire life being told about my standout enthusiasm. People are often surprised by the energy and curiosity with which I will approach just about any project. Above all else, I am passionate about passion.
I have found it buried in scientific papers after speaking with researchers who dedicated years to their question. I have found it layered into advertisements for products I’d never previously heard of.
For me, there is magic in learning why someone gets out of bed in the morning and in understanding just how much strength, grit and joy is layered into every part of our world.
I am dedicated to telling the stories of what makes people run, toward greatness, toward progress, toward each other. It’s part of the reason I started this series in the first place – so that I might learn a little more about the coworkers I’d now consider friends. And it’s the reason I continue to run myself, into my curiosities, my career and my future.
