Think before you ink: a treatise on decision-making

I get asked ques­tions about my tat­toos a lot. It some­times strikes me as strange—I have seven of them, which I sup­pose is quite a few, but they’re all really tiny black symbols—so it’s hardly as though they’re at all surprising.

A few years ago, before I quit my job to launch a busi­ness, I had my logo tat­tooed to my shoulder blade. (And actu­ally, I haven’t been tat­tooed since—I’ve run out of strategic body space!) People thought I was insane. “What hap­pens if your busi­ness tanks?” was the pop­ular question.

Of all the tat­toos I’ve had done, I’m fur­thest from regret­ting this one. Admit­tedly, my busi­ness didn’t tank, but I don’t think it would have made much dif­fer­ence if it had. It’s impos­sible to start a busi­ness without having it become a major event in your life—to me, tat­tooing my logo to my shoulder was no cra­zier than the people who tattoo their kids’ names to them­selves. (And it’s cer­tainly less crazy than those who tattoo their lovers’ names on them­selves. As far as I can tell, my busi­ness will never leave me for a younger woman or run away with all my money. I hope.)

I’m con­vinced that having my busi­ness logo tat­tooed to my shoulder makes me more rock & roll. Also, it totally counts as adver­tising and I should have thought to have written off the cost as such.

And actu­ally, of all my tat­toos, there isn’t a single one I regret. Some of them have dec­o­rated my body for nearly ten years, and I still love them as much today as I did when I first had them done. I think that I am, to a cer­tain degree, lucky in that respect—where a tattoo is such a per­ma­nent deci­sion, I can’t imagine how hor­rible it must be to regret such a choice.

There are very few deci­sions in life that have sim­ilar per­ma­nence, and as a gen­eral rule I try to avoid making those deci­sions. I’m kind of a commito-phobe simply for that reason—I absolutely abhor regret, and I work best when I feel that I have the flex­i­bility to move halfway across the earth, change my name to “Ginger”, and start a banana farm if that’s what needs to happen for what­ever reason.

How­ever, most people don’t work this way. Most people make deci­sions that have sim­ilar grav­itas as get­ting tat­tooed: they get mar­ried, buy houses, sign cell phone con­tracts. While none of these things are nec­es­sarily per­ma­nent (and nei­ther are tat­toos, in the same sense), reversing the deci­sion after it’s been made is almost always a painful, arduous process.

It strikes me that, given the number of people run­ning around these days get­ting divorced and get­ting laser surgery, these decisions-of-some-permanence simply aren’t being given the con­sid­er­a­tion they demand. It sur­prises me how often people go into a tattoo par­lour and pick some­thing off the wall. Or they sit in the chair and tell the tattoo artist to do “what­ever he feels like”. As far as I’m con­cerned, that’s a per­ma­nent part of your skin now, for the rest of your life, and wher­ever you are, people will ask you ques­tions about it. Doesn’t that require more forethought?

My little sister and her chaos star, designed by me. She also had me design another tattoo that the artist screwed up by using the wrong fonts AND mis­spelling “Fahren­heit”, but we don’t like to dis­cuss it.

Every time I want a new tattoo, I spend ages sketching out the shapes first. When I’ve got that right, I put it into Illus­trator and trace it, smoothing out the lines until everything’s just so. Then I print it out in about thirty dif­ferent sizes, just to see which one I like best. Finally—and this may seem like overkill—I take the printout and glue the damned thing to my body, just where I want it, and leave it there for a few days, just to be sure I like it. A little anal-retentive? Prob­ably. Effec­tive? Hell yes. I’ve got no regrets, and I’m a hap­pier woman for it.

So for everyone out there con­sid­ering a but­terfly tattoo, or a flaming skull, please, please, think twice. Design some­thing your­self, or ask your most idle-seeming designer friend to design you some­thing won­derful. (Oh, and to the two people in my life to whom I still owe tattoo designs—I swear I’m on it!) This double for mar­riage and mort­gage, and any other deci­sion that implies an ink-on-skin level of per­ma­nence, like starting a busi­ness. Regrets are for the birds. Do without.

(Oh, and if you’re curious, you can see my tattoo designs on Flickr! Being a designer is a way cool job, I know. I’m a lucky lady.)

Tags: design, life, misc