Meet: Amy Caracappa-Qubeck
Humorist • Designer • WordPress Wrangler
“CapeSpace gives me a place to stay focused and be productive”
1. What is your current occupation?
Currently, I have a several irons in the fire. (It’s my nature.) Part of my time I spend as a solo freelancer focusing on WordPress design, development, and digital strategy. Another part of my time is spent pursuing a new path as a humorist, writing and cartooning around dealing with death through humor. And yet another part of my time is spent serving as President of Cape Cod Roller Derby.
2. What do you love most about your job & why?
After being an employee for decades, I love the freedom that being an independent maker gives me. Freedom of my time for sure, but also freedom to work with clients from Australia to Hong Kong to New York City to Cape Cod!
3. What has changed in your industry in the past five years?
The design industry has definitely changed in the past 5-10 years. It came from being mostly print driven, to designers having to learn code and other technologies. Which left some happy to see that change, and others not so much. But for me, having a background serving in Fixed and Combat Communications in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, I welcomed the techie learning curve into the creative design world.
4. How has CapeSpace improved your work life?
I GET SO MUCH DONE HERE! I mainly work from a home office, but that can be distracting at times—i.e. I have two attention seeking cats. CapeSpace gives me a place to stay focused and be productive, be around other humans during the day, and reminds me to eat lunch—something no one told me I’d forget to do when I started working on my own 5 years ago!
5. What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
You might have already guessed my answer to this, but I skate with the Cape Cod Roller Derby league and am a rostered player on the team. That takes up the majority of my free time, but the rest is spent watching the latest (and greatest) Sci-Fi movies with my husband, baking (pretending to be on the Great British Bake Off), and procrastinating the organizing of my art supply closet.
6. What is your favorite place on Cape Cod?
The first thing that comes to mind is our house! That’s probably not the kind of answer you were looking for, but we are very proud to have been able to purchase our first home here. Being that my husband and I are both usually very busy, being able to have a little slice of the Cape to call home and relax means a lot to us. (Cheesy answer, yes…truthful one, absolutely.)
7. If you could invite any three people living or dead to a dinner party who would they be and why?
1. Tim Burton (director, producer, artist, writer, and animator)
2. Elizabeth Gilbert (author, Big Magic and oh yeah, that Eat, Pray, Love one too)
3. Bill Watterson (cartoonist and the author of Calvin and Hobbes)
I admire that they all have kept their childlike wonder, creativity, and imagination into their adulthood and careers—and were wildly successful while doing it. Plus their sense of humor is a lot like mine: a little immature and a lot dark, somewhat twisted, and a hint of innocence.
8. What is your superpower?
Recognizing the question under the question. Many times the real question we are asking (or seeking an answer to) is hiding underneath our big people words and feelings.
And apparently when I’m using this superpower, my closest friends tell me I get a certain “look” on my face and that’s how they know a truth bomb is about to go off.