Posts Tagged ‘balance’

I have sent out so many estim­ates in the past couple of months, it would make your head spin. This week alone, I have three open estim­ates floating about, and another couple of leads to follow up on. I hate writing estim­ates. It takes a lot longer than invoicing and feels much less rewarding. It’s always a tiny little bit nerve-wracking waiting for the response back: will we be making beau­tiful things together?

I don’t know if it’s some­thing I’m doing wrong, but I haven’t heard a single yes in all this time. I’ve been doing my reg­ular client work, and I’ve been taking on little main­ten­ance or exten­sion pro­jects for old cli­ents here and there, but I just haven’t picked up an exciting new pro­ject for ages. I am going through a brutal busi­ness dry spell.

I’d love to say I’m totally cool about it—but that would be a lie. I’m freaking out a little. It doesn’t help, of course, that I recently gave the taxman a metric ton of cash, or that I’m still adjusting to being back in a country where wine costs triple what I think it should, and that I keep doing asinine things like racking up expensive speeding tickets. I’m nat­ur­ally pretty para­noid about money, which is great in some respects—I have no debt and money stored away that I refuse to touch until I actu­ally am desperate—but lousy in the respect that it means that I feel like I’m “broke”, even though I’m really not.

Is it crazy to worry that your busi­ness might be barren? (Probably.)

1. Keep calm and carry on.

When my dry spell started (what feels like a mil­lion years ago) I totally freaked out. I was con­vinced that I’d finally done in my busi­ness and was destined to spend the rest of my days living in a card­board box (full of shoes) under the over­pass. I debated moving to Costa Rica and becoming a banana farmer.

Then I took a deep breath and remembered that it’s summer—or, at least, Canada’s variant of the theme—and that busi­ness is always slow this time of year. There’s a summer slow­down every year, and every year I’ve had this exact same panic attack. Per­haps there’s a pat­tern there, given how I’m not presently eating out of dumpsters.

2. It’s not me, it’s you.

Most of the responses to my estim­ates haven’t been straight-up “no”s. Most have been vari­ants of “we don’t have the budget right now”, or “the client changed their mind”, or “we’ll revisit this later in the year”. There’s a good chance that a lot of these leads will turn into actual pro­jects in the future—I’ve had some leads turn into great work years down the line. It’s not really a com­forting thought when I’m looking for work now, but it at least helps my self-esteem to realize it’s not just because I suck that the work isn’t coming in as enthu­si­ast­ic­ally as I’d like it to be.

It’s easy to let this sort of thing get you down, which is a dan­gerous place to be. I’m at my hap­piest when I feel like I’m being pro­ductive and I’m pro­du­cing great work for my cli­ents. This feeling of idle­ness, coupled with the sting of rejec­tion, can easily derail motiv­a­tion. I’ll admit I’m in a bit of a slump, and it hasn’t helped that I’m still suf­fering from the wan­der­lust and a sort of exist­en­tialist what-does-it-all-mean life-evaluation syn­drome induced by my return to Canada.

I posted a list of pos­itive reminders on my fridge, where I can look at it every day, and told myself to get it together. You can’t take any­thing per­son­ally when you’re run­ning a business.

3.  Don’t get desperate.

Don’t take on pro­jects you’ll hate (unless they’ll pay a ton). Don’t do stuff for a lot cheaper than you would oth­er­wise. It’s so tempting to take on lousy pro­jects when it feels as though nothing is coming through, but in the long run, doing so is devaluing both to your own busi­ness and to the industry as a whole. I’d rather spend my time finally sorting out all my accounting (ugh) than par­ti­cip­ating in spec work, or entering lame-o design con­tests where my logo could win $100 if I happen to be the lucky chosen one. (Actu­ally, there’s a whole slew of revolting things I’d rather do than that.) Ulti­mately, devaluing your work just because things happen to be slow will con­tribute to the sense of neg­ative self-worth brought about by the slump, and it’s dif­fi­cult to recover once things start run­ning smoothly again.

4. Focus on other stuff.

I’ve got a list as long as my arm of summer projects—some design related, some not—and I have no time to do any of it. It’s driving me bonkers, actu­ally. I’m in a dry spell! Shouldn’t I have gads of time to fritter away? Appar­ently, it doesn’t quite work this way, since I’m spending a lot of time sending out emails and going to meet­ings for pro­jects that don’t pan out. It’s frus­trating, but a neces­sary part of the process.

I’ve been doing a little, though. I’m social­izing more. I’ve actu­ally read a whole entire book all the way though to the end. I’ve been going on little short-jaunt in-country trips to appease my wan­der­lust. I keep buying wine bottles with ugly labels, with the inten­tion of doing my own personal-project redesigns. (Admit­tedly pro­gress on this front tends to be sul­lied by my drinking the bottle as “research” before get­ting down to work.) I’m plan­ning for my next series of travels, and learning to ride a motor­cycle so I don’t kill myself touring Thai­land. I bought vin­tage roller-skates and am learning how not to fall on my tail­bone. I’ve got a whole list of business-y admin type things to do, and another list of per­sonal pro­jects and fun things. I’m cer­tainly not bored.

I have wanted a pair of roller­skates since I was a little kid, and now I’m a little ter­ri­fied of them. Appar­ently breaking both your wrists in one summer makes you paranoid.

Keeping busy dis­tracts from the fact that you aren’t, in fact, busy at all.

5. Think happy thoughts!

Ulti­mately, in order to get through a slump, I think you need to stay men­tally afloat. For me, it’s too easy to get dragged down by a slump, which only mag­ni­fies the problem. My busi­ness is the only stable, con­stant thing in my life, really, and I’d be lost if I felt that I’d lost it.

So instead, I’m focusing on all the good things that are going on. For starters, all these people are coming to me asking about work, which is a great sign. I’m still not doing any active mar­keting, and I’m still get­ting leads. For every client who drives me up the wall and tempts me to use Let me Google that for you, I have two great cli­ents who I adore and whose emails make me smile. I’m still making enough money to keep me in sand­wiches, diet Coke, and shoes for the fore­see­able future. My life is never boring and I basic­ally get to make up my own rules for everything. I have won­derful cli­ents, great friends, and I can travel the world while run­ning my business.

And if I can just remember how lucky I am, I’ll stop feeling so defeated when things aren’t perfect.

Every year, I have the best inten­tions to cel­eb­rate my busi­ness’ birthday in some fashion. Every year, I remember two weeks too late. Trig­gers & Sparks is basic­ally my neg­lected child. I sup­pose that might explain why every now and again, it throws temper tantrums.

There are a number of anniversaries I could celebrate—the day I left my full-time job, or the day I was first paid for work, but this one falls nicely in the middle and is simple enough to remember: by sheer coin­cid­ence, the date on my offi­cial busi­ness regis­tra­tion is 06.06.06. While I’m neither reli­gious or satan­istic, I do believe in serendipity, and thought a pat­tern of num­bers that has such impact on people could only be a good sign. Next year will mark my offi­cial six-year anniversary. Maybe if I set an alarm for it now, I’ll actu­ally remember to break out the cham­pagne and fire­works when it rolls around.

Alright, so I did throw a birthday party in early June, but I must have been so dis­tracted with cel­eb­rating human birth­days that I totally forgot about my poor little business.

I’ve learned a lot since I built my first “pro­fes­sional” website—obviously—in trade for a beau­tiful bicycle that was stolen about ten minutes after I got it. Here are the most important things.

1. Never say no. Instead, say “expensive”.

This flies in the face of everything that everyone says about being a freel­ancer, but I stick by it, and it’s worked quite nicely for me. If someone comes to me with a pro­ject that sounds boring, tedious, or gen­er­ally awful, I won’t say “no, I won’t do that” unless I know I’m not cap­able of seeing the pro­ject through to its com­ple­tion well. I’ll just say “sure, I can do that” and quote a nice high figure. That way, if the client balks at the price and tells me they can’t afford it, nobody’s lost out—it’s basic­ally like I’ve said no. How­ever, if they say yes, I’ll pro­ceed with the pro­ject and be well-compensated for whatever addi­tional frus­tra­tions or tediums come along with the project.

This approach may sound mean, but it works. It also means that some­times I can charge less for the pro­jects that are going to be more fun, but may not have as large a budget. Of course, this only works so well because I aban­doned hourly billing for almost all pro­jects and switched to a flat-rate, which has been a major blessing. And switching to flat-rate only worked once I’d been doing this for long enough to be able to tell how long cer­tain tasks take, which took at least a year.

2. Stop working 18 hour days.

This is a con­stant pro­cess for me. My five months in South America helped me enorm­ously with my work­aholi­cism. I actu­ally find it chal­len­ging to work week­ends now, and I usu­ally only work around ten hours a day—sometimes even less!

For years, I’d to work every single day, from the moment I woke in the morning until the wee hours of the night. This felt normal, after all—when I was in school, I was always working as well, and even when I was working, I was doing freel­ance work after get­ting home. I’ve always been like this—I have a lot of energy and I feel better when I’m pro­ductive. But run­ning a busi­ness is so unstruc­tured (at least the way that I do it) that Extreme Work­aholic Beha­viours simply aren’t sus­tain­able long-term.

I spent the first few years of busi­ness con­stantly burnt out, and even­tu­ally it really started to get to me. I was let­ting things slip. I’d have little mental break­downs in which I’d burst into tears, bab­bling about “the jug­gling balls break when I drop them!”, and then would refuse to leave my bed­room for a few days until I’d recovered. My work was suf­fering, and my brain would prob­ably have even­tu­ally imploded on itself.

These days, I work less. I socialize more, and I try to do healthy things I never had time for before like eat and exer­cise on a daily basis. I’m hap­pier, I’m doing better work, and my cli­ents are hap­pier. Everyone wins!

3. Talk to everyone and their dog.

I will take a meeting with anyone. Anyone! Since coming back to Canada I’ve actu­ally been having lots of in-person meet­ings and I’ve real­ized I really miss it. (That may just be because I don’t usu­ally drink coffee unless I’m going to meet­ings, and it makes me very excitable.)

Often­times these meet­ings won’t lead to busi­ness at all, so they’re a time invest­ment that may not pay off. I’ve actu­ally been tricked into “meet­ings” that turned out to be more like “dates” more than once, which can be a little awk­ward when you realize what’s happened.

Meeting people and talking to them is never an effi­cient use of my time. How­ever, it allows me human inter­ac­tion that I often lack sit­ting in front of a screen all day, and I often learn things I wouldn’t oth­er­wise from an email con­ver­sa­tion. There’s some­thing to be said for sit­ting down with a stranger for an hour. Everyone—generally speaking—can teach me some­thing, whether it’s of rel­ev­ance to my work or not, and I’ve learned so many things for all these mil­lions of meet­ings over the years. They’ve also helped me become expo­nen­tially more sure of myself. Some­times just hearing your­self talk and real­izing that—surprise!—you know what you’re talking about can do just that.

4. Con­stant work is worth its weight in platinum.

Cash flow issues can really make or break a busi­ness. (Canada Post employees, this is why I give you dirty looks when I pass you milling about in front of the dead post office that con­tains my cheques.) I have a line of credit that covers me when I’m waiting for invoices to be paid, but it’s not an ideal situ­ation as it becomes very easy to acci­dent­ally end up in over your head when you can’t really budget effectively.

Years ago, I started doing reg­ular weekly work for a local cli­ents. It’s often not the most wildly exciting work, and it doesn’t pay nearly as well as the one-off pro­ject I do, but it’s been a life­line for me. The fact that I don’t have to write up estim­ates, go to meet­ings, send end­less emails, nego­tiate or wait for the work, means that I can offer a lower (hourly) rate than I usu­ally would, and get­ting paid every two weeks means I don’t worry so much about my cash flow any­more. Basic­ally, it gives me the bits that I liked about having a “real job”—stability—without cramping my vagabonding-unscheduled-flower-child sort of style of business.

5. Work less, charge more.

I charged all of $300 for one of my very first web­sites. It was such a bad idea, and the incred­ibly low rates I started off char­ging def­in­itely explain why it took me a few years to actu­ally be making any money at all. My rates increased fairly dra­mat­ic­ally for a little while until they reached some­thing of a plateau. I’ve hit the bal­ance point where I feel that what I charge is fair, indic­ative of my ability, and allows me to buy shoes every now and again (okay, some­times more often than that, but don’t tell).

Char­ging more means that I can spend more time on pro­jects, which I like to do. I’m kind of on the anal-retentive super-detail-oriented side anyway, and char­ging $300 for a web­site simply doesn’t allow me to do the kind of quality work that I like to. From time to time, people still email me looking for the cheapest option, and I explain that I’m no longer com­peting on price. I don’t want to be the IKEA of graphic design. I want my design work to stand up, and I’d rather my cli­ents not have to build everything them­selves from incom­pre­hens­ible dia­grams. My cli­ents pay more now than they used to, but the work they get is infin­itely better. They get my full atten­tion, they get sup­port whenever they need it, and the end result is always much, much better than it would have been had I been char­ging bargain-basement prices.

And again, my cli­ents are hap­pier. More and more, I’m working with cli­ents I love, who respect my work and my sug­ges­tions, and who really are a delight to work for. I’m hap­pier working for these people, and they in turn refer other awe­some cli­ents over to me. It’s a lovely cycle.

Just one part of world I’ve seen—the beau­tiful, com­plic­ated Bud­apest. Summer 2009.

All told, I’m so lucky to have come this far and still be run­ning my busi­ness. I have the kind of freedom I’ve always wanted—I can travel the world, I can sit out­side and work on sunny days, and I’m con­stantly chal­lenged and excited by new pro­jects. I’m never bored, I get to meet some great people, I make my own rules, and I very rarely have to wake up at 8am.

I never intended to start a busi­ness, and every now and again, I con­sider going back to a real-live job. How­ever, the longer I do this, the less and less likely that becomes. I really do love my job.

I was sup­posed to be home by now. Instead, I changed my ticket and delayed my return home by two months. Even then, five months just isn’t enough time. It’s sur­prising how much I haven’t got around to doing. Last week, we finally went to Chile—that trip was sup­posed to happen in December, when we first got here! I’d like to make it down (fur­ther) south to explore Patagonia a little; I’m dying to visit Bolivia’s salt flats and Peru’s high-altitude Incan cities; and I still haven’t made it to Rio, although I think I’m glad I skipped Carnaval. I haven’t taken a tango lesson yet, and while I feel like my Spanish has improved a great deal, that’s sort of like saying my suntan has developed—that is, I’m now “slightly ecru-ish” instead of “ghostly white”.

But, to be quite blithe: whatever. I’ve felt this way my whole life—like I’m not achieving enough—and I’ll prob­ably forever feel like this. No matter what I manage to achieve, I will always feel that I’m failing on some other front. As long as I can remember, I’ve always felt over­whelmed, and I’ve always been spurred by a fear of Failure. In the past, what this has meant is that I work like a demon at some­thing, let­ting other things slide, until the whole thing mani­fests itself into a giant mental break­down, and I dis­ap­pear for two days until I recover from it all.

I’ve finally changed this beha­viour. Instead of focusing on my fail­ures, I’m trying to turn that energy into pos­itive dir­ec­tion. In theory, if I focus my ener­gies instead on a pos­itive dir­ec­tion, at least I’m making efforts against the almighty Failure, no?

More on Feel­ings of Failure and a rant about body image in Argentina

Hard to believe I’ve been here for over a month already. It feels as though it’s been no time and all, and before I know it I’ll be heading back to the Land of Ice and Snow. This trip was very much intended as a litmus test for my vag­a­bond way of life—I’ve been looking for a way to com­bine work and travel for some time now, and I think I may have hit on a com­bin­a­tion that works.

I’ve come to realize a few important things, though.

1. I need more time. Way more time.

This week, I am taking three hours of Spanish class a day, in what will most likely turn out to be a rather in-vain attempt to get my Castallano up to “ser­vice­able”. How­ever, given the fact that I tend to work roughly six hun­dred hours a day, it’s a bit of a chal­lenge doing all the other stuff I need to do, like “sleeping” and “eating stuff that isn’t dulce de leche”. (Ser­i­ously, I’m not sure what sort of magic makes Argen­tines so skinny when their diet appears to con­sist primarily of ham and cheese emapanadas to start, then pasta, fol­lowed up by sixty tons of cow. Is it the mate or the fernet they’re always drinking?)

But South America is a big place, and I want to see more of it. As it is, I’ve only had time to go to Brazil thus far, and a quick weekend trip to the Tigre delta, and some explor­atory jaunts here in BsAs—which admit­tedly is such a huge and sprawling com­plex city, with its own lan­guage and pecu­li­ar­ities, that it’d take me years to really get a feel for the place.

Last time I traveled, I went to Europe for five weeks and didn’t stay in one place longer than a week. I couldn’t work my usual sort of schedule, so it was sort of like a hol­iday for me. If I want my travel to be sus­tain­able, I need to do it slowly enough that it doesn’t inter­fere with the day-to-day aspects of my life. That means three months isn’t nearly long enough for a place.

2. I can sur­vive without con­stantly checking my email.

This is a tough one, but having my iPhone, I got quite accus­tomed to being con­stantly able to check (and send) emails. Problem was, this meant there was no off switch at all on my brain. I’ve been known to check emails in bed. It’s (still) usu­ally the first thing I do upon waking up, and I was always sending emails and tex­ting while out with friends, which I think is ter­ribly rude.

Yes, some­times it sucks not having access to my email when I’m idle at a bar. But for the most part, it means that I can go out for dinner, or go for a walk, without being per­petu­ally dis­tracted by work. If I leave the house, I leave work behind, and that’s a healthy habit to get into.

(more…)

Argen­tina is most def­in­itely still in holiday-mode: it’s summer vaca­tion here, a good number of the shops still have their shut­ters closed, and everyone who can afford to is off on the beaches of Uruguay. I’ve been working a lot more than I’d like to admit the last two weeks. Tech­nic­ally I still have a suntan, but I think it’s fading.

Bal­an­cing work and life has always been trouble­some for me. I tend towards work­aholi­cism on my best days, and it’s cer­tainly not uncommon for me to put in a sixty-hour work week. I’ve gotten better: I almost always take most of the weekend off now, and I’m trying as much as pos­sible to go out and about at least a little bit every day. I’ve real­ized that I’m simply not going to see as much of this con­tinent as I’d like to while I’m here.

With all the shut­ters closed, you really get to see the lovely graf­fiti that covers the build­ings here.

But I’ve got new pro­jects coming in all the time, and work is (for the most part) going well. I wish I were doing more per­sonal pro­jects, but that isn’t any­thing new. I had signed up for the Sketch­book Pro­ject some time ago, and now the deadline’s looming. I’ve given up on get­ting mine done, in part because I totally lack art sup­plies and they’re on the expensive side here, and in part because I simply lack time. I’d rather spend my free time exploring this massive city or trying to pick back up on my Spanish, which is just ter­rible. (Porteños speak the most insane ver­sion of Spanish I’ve ever heard, com­plete with its own spe­cial pro­noun and verb con­jug­a­tion, strange pro­noun­ci­ations, and some kind of crazy pig-latin. I’m totally lost.)

(more…)

In the middle of the Amazon jungle, seven hours by boat from the closest hos­pital, I cut off my fin­gertip with a machete.

This is how I spent my Christmas: I flew to Manaus, a big ugly port city on the Amazon river, where the warm, slow, black Rio Negro and the cooler, faster, sandy Rio Solimões meet up and run side-by-side for some dis­tance, looking rather neat. Manaus was not the world’s nicest intro­duc­tion to Brazil—the city echoes the sur­rounding jungle with its sprawling messi­ness. Once one of Brazil’s richest cities, it still con­tains the opu­lent (and rather tacky-looking) pastel-coloured palaces built during the rubber boom, but everything else is either a giant ugly factory or struck with urban blight.

But it’s a jumping-off point for rain­forest excur­sions, and that’s what I was there for after all. It took two flights, one taxi ride, a speed­boat, a bus through one of the most poorly-maintained roads I’ve seen yet, and another, much smaller, wooden boat to get to the jungle lodge we’d be spending a good por­tion of the next five days. Early Boxing Day morning, I was on my way to the jungle, excited for what lay ahead of me.

I’ll be honest: it wasn’t any­thing like what I expected. I was ready for a trip that would be phys­ic­ally and men­tally taxing; I got this, but not in the way I’d expected. I’d thought I’d be tired from phys­ical exer­tion, but instead I was just cold and wet. (Or, other times, hot and mosquito-bitten.) Worse yet—I was almost bored.

(more…)

In five days, I’ll be on my way to South America. I’m wildly excited, of course. People keep asking me if I’m ready, though, and I’m never quite sure how to answer. I mean, I have a suit­case that will hold 25 pairs of shoes and still have enough room for a couple weeks’ worth of out­fits. I’ve got an apart­ment in Buenos Aires all lined up. I’m finally cast-free and I’m working on my physio so that I’ll be strong by the time we hit the Amazon rain­forests. I have a supply of sleeping pills for insanely-long flights and bus rides across the con­tinent. I have my busi­ness here sorted out and ready for the trans­ition. I know how to say “Where is the nearest shoe store?” and “I have broken my wrist!” in Spanish. I don’t have any kind of proof that I’m a Cana­dian cit­izen, but that’ll only present me with trouble when I’m attempting to return to the country, after all. I love trav­eling, I love adven­tures, what the hell is wrong with me, after all?

I recently real­ized that I hate change. This rev­el­a­tion came as rather a sur­prise to me: I’d always con­sidered myself some­thing of a chaotic free-spirit creature. Shouldn’t I hap­pily embrace change? Why does uncer­tainty make me feel so queasy?

When I was in school, they told us that, as graphic designers, we had two choices, career­wise. We could get agency jobs, where we’d basic­ally work 18 hour days for an 8 hour salary, or we could go it alone as freel­an­cers and pray that our cli­ents would actu­ally pay their bills. (I’ve since real­ized that this advice is faulted on many levels, not­ably for failing to take into account Mys­ter­ious Option C, which is you real­izing that Hal­ifax is bursting with bril­liant unem­ployed designers, and going back to school to study accounting.) I was quite cer­tain, right then and there, that I could never handle the uncer­tainty of owning a busi­ness. I’ve always been a little para­noid about money, which, while I sup­pose is much healthier than being a little cava­lier about money, means that I’ve been overly cau­tious at times in my life, espe­cially when it comes to going into debt.

I figured I’d never be able to hack it as a self-employed type, mostly because I wouldn’t be able to manage the stress and uncer­tainty of it all. I ended up run­ning a busi­ness mostly by acci­dent; I was working at a video game devel­op­ment studio and doing freel­ance work on the side, when the freel­ance work took off and I was forced to choose between the two. Quit­ting my job was, of course, utterly ter­ri­fying for me, and every now and then, I really do miss the sta­bility of a steady job.

(more…)

It’s offi­cial: in a little under a month, I’ll have my things all packed away in storage, and I’ll be on my way to gor­geous Buenos Aires, nearly 9000 km from home, and quite lit­er­ally the other side of the world. I’ll be staying for three months, which offi­cially makes it my longest trip ever.

I’ve had my tickets booked for some time, which is about as close as I come to long-term com­mit­ments these days, and I’ve been slowly pre­paring for the trip—by which I basic­ally mean “talking along to my Spanish tapes as I walk down the street” (no, that crazy girl isn’t talking to her­self!) and “con­tem­plating how many shoes I can fit into a jumbo-size suit­case” (the answer, by the by, is “nowhere nearly enough”).

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Thanks mostly to a potent mix of stu­pidity, tequila, and my own inter­min­able love of over-enthusiastic wrest­ling matches, I’ve man­aged to break a bone. (I did tempt fate that night by saying I’d never broken one before, so I sup­pose I shouldn’t have been sur­prised by the out­come, really.)

Not being one to ever do any­thing the half-assed way, I of course man­aged a really nasty, painful break in my right wrist. After seven hours in the ER, three dif­ferent sets of x-rays, and numerous doc­tors drop­ping by to poke me about, stick needles in me, and ask me quite ser­i­ously if I’d been assaulted, they sent me home in a cast that runs from my fin­ger­tips to my bicep, with a handful of paink­illers and no assur­ances that I wouldn’t need to be back for sur­gery in a week.

The ensuing week has been a bit of a mess, but it’s taught me all sorts of valu­able les­sons already.

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Last summer, I ran away from home. 5 weeks, 7 coun­tries, 6 cur­ren­cies, 6 lan­guages, 9 dif­ferent beds, 4 planes, 7 buses, 9 trains, 5 fer­ries, 3 cars, and innu­mer­able rides on the buses, trams, and metros of dif­ferent cities later, I returned: blisters on my feet, forever altered.

My busi­ness weathered the exper­i­ment better than my feet. One of the things that most excites me about design is that, in theory, I can do it from any­where in the world–all I really need is my Mac­book, an internet con­nec­tion, and the con­tents of my head. The idea of being free to come and go as I please–of being truly mobile–is intox­ic­ating, espe­cially when I’ve become such a travel junkie. Not only does travel make me stronger and more inde­pendent, but the exposure to new con­cepts and cul­tures is cer­tain to shape me as a designer. How could it not be bene­fi­cial to my career–wandering through strange streets, finding new museums, con­stantly pho­to­graphing the new visual land­scape? (Note to the taxman: I will here­in­after be claiming all air tickets as busi­ness expenses, okay?)

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For a girl who never wears a watch and doesn’t care much for num­bers, I’m obsessed with time. When you bill an hourly rate, of course, this is only to be expected—after all, the time = money equa­tion becomes far more self-evident when you know exactly what an hour is worth.

In theory, this focus on time should engender the ability to del­egate. If it takes you two hours to do some­thing that you could bill, say, $120 for, but you can pay someone $60 instead to do (regard­less of how long it may take them, and assuming that they’ll do it just as well, if you happen to be a con­trol freak like I am), it should make sense to start passing off tasks.

The problem is, when you have a pre­cise idea of how much that extra hour you spent sleeping cost you, you sud­denly start to believe that sleep is anthema to your busi­ness and well-being. Three years of run­ning a busi­ness full time have taught me, finally, that this is just a blatant lie.
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So if you’ve been any­where within a ten-mile radius of me any­time in the last week and a half, you’re prob­ably well aware of The Big Card Pro­ject. I took it upon myself to design a set of six macabre Valentines, thinking it’d be a a fun little pro­ject that’d get me away from the com­puter, make me feel more cre­ative, and force me to relax a touch.

Thumb­nail sketches. This is how things started. I hate showing people my sketch­book because things invari­ably look like they were drawn by a blind five-year-old. Basic­ally, I’m just trying to get the com­pos­i­tion right.

Of course, I forgot to factor in the fact that I’m a crazy work­aholic per­fec­tionist with an insom­niac streak a mile wide whenever I get really pas­sionate about a pro­ject. My little lark of a pro­ject kept me up late, made an utter war­zone of my apart­ment, and still took far longer than I’d anticipated.

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