As some of you may know, I'm a website/graphic designer in real life. This has been my
career for over 10 years and I've developed quite a
huge portfolio because of it. I was always super busy with my company and had jobs
lined up for months.
Things change, and I've
slowed down quite a bit. I've realized that so much of my company was
consuming my life, and sometimes it felt like doing what I loved was a
chore. Your passion should
never feel like a chore. The whole reason I got into this business in the
first place was because I
loved doing it. I could share my artistic and technical skills with the
world and that gave me great pleasure. I never imagined I would have the
opportunity to go as far as I did with it. I went from working in my mother's
basement until 3am (and working other part time jobs the rest of the time) to owning a beautiful house and the
top design company in my niche, working with clients like Lenny Kravitz, Kylie Minogue, and literally
hundreds more.
I had my work
showcased by Myspace Inc. at a freakin' Microsoft conference with
Bill Gates. Never in a
million years would I have thought
that would happen.
Never in a million years did I think that the
president of Myspace would personally contact me
just to get my input on their new system from a design perspective. (By the way, I
completely told him how horrible their new ideas for the profiles were... and if you
used to be on Myspace, well, you know how it turned out when they
actually went through with the changes despite all of their bad ideas. It was the
death of the site just like I predicted.)
However, after so many years of working my
butt off and modestly bringing in big bucks, I am realizing that
that chapter of my life has come to a close. I
no longer have the constant business (read: the death of Myspace as
90% of my business came from there) and sometimes find myself
searching for jobs. Something I fortunately
never had to do before as they always just came to
me.
The paths that led me here led me here for a
reason. I feel indifferent about the whole thing because on
one hand, I miss having clients lined up and the
security of knowing that I have jobs each month. On the other, I like my
simple life now. I like not having to work until 3am. I am ready to settle down and start a
family one day.
I see other people in this industry doing
exactly what I was doing. Working their butts off, buying
expensive things. Talking about themselves so
highly as if they were the first people to have
successful businesses. I laugh because I was there once... and it
doesn't last forever unless you dedicate your
entire life to it. I didn't want to dedicate my entire life to it
anymore. There are so many other things I want to
accomplish now... and while I may be starting at the bottom again, I will always have my
past achievements, and
no one can take those away from me.
Sometimes you just need to take a step back before you can move forward.
So with that said, I'm going to be offering some
custom design services right here on this little blog. I
enjoy doing small projects and I am
excited to be able to work with people on a freelance basis since I never had
time for it before. If you're
interested in checking out the
brand new page I added to this blog,
go here.
xo Dana
