All kinds of work including (but not limited to): paper work, actual work, side work, busy work, boring work. This year has blurred by me. I haven’t accomplished any important personal goals since the year began, nor have I had the time to. I’ve just made excuses - turned my face from reality - and let life go by me. It wasn’t until three weeks ago that I actually stopped to think about what realistically must happen.
I have debts to pay, bills to attend to, places to see, and goals to achieve. One of them is a new portfolio site show casing the work I’ve been doing over the last two years. Another has been to actually improve my writing and provide an insightful blog to the public. This I can say may very well happen in the next couple of days. I came up with a design three weeks ago, converted it into working code last weekend, and now this coming weekend I hope to implement it on this very site.
Still, my ‘killer’ application idea I wanted to launch in January is still festering in my mind and going nowhere as we speak. My little creative outlet Sumo Creations, likewise, is sitting around not doing much. Sure, I can attract work but I’m not attracting worth while work. Not doing cutting edge projects or anything innovative has left me feeling professionally stale and a little burnt out.
I have made it my personal goal the rest of this year to focus much more on mastering some of the design and development skills I’ve been practicing over the many years. I’ve been slinging code for over eight years but it was not until recently that I actually started to pay attention to and discover the theories behind programming. Design is just always something I’ve had a good eye for; it just came natural. But now, as of this year I’m actually actively studying and practicing design theories in my new work. Finally, being out of school for the last six months has given me much more time to think about my world I live in. I feel as though I’ve been caught up in a hectic tight bubble unexposed to the true world out there. In a constant haste from school to job I was not paying attention to what was happening around me. While I’m happy where I’m at now, I’ve gained an unsatisfiable appetite for travel. I hope to write about these things I’m doing and learning on this blog. It will not be focused - in fact it will hopefully feel as if each post belonged on a completely different website. My aim is not to be consistent but to be informative. I like many different things and become fascinated in different fields quite often. I hope this site will become interesting and insightful to some. I hope this site may become more helpful to me.
Brian Says:
7:29 amJun 14Aren’t you a little young for a mid-life crisis?
You’re in an all-too-common situation for someone in this industry, where your potential is above you and you’re at risk of letting it go unrealized.
I’m looking forward to this professional transformation. Good luck building and keeping the momentum!
Jim Says:
9:51 amJun 14Thanks Brian,
Yeah that sums it up quite well.
Chris Says:
7:05 amJun 18My only tip is to start developing the web app that you think is killer. That is the only thing that kept me motivated to do client work about a year ago. I had to just jump into Photoshop and start designing it. It inspired me to keep everything else going, because I knew I could look forward to that.
Jim Says:
9:16 amJun 18Hey Chris,
That’s sound advice and I think that’s just what I’ll be starting over this summer. I’ve only found one ‘Web 2.0′ competitor for what I want to do and it doesn’t look well executed so the time to start is now before someone does it.
Joshua Strebel Says:
8:25 pmJul 09You gotta quit your job dude, it is real easy. I bet you need like $4k a month to cover your nut, with your talent you can make that easy via sumo. Then you would have all time you need for your own projects. Or change your schedule. Ask if you can work 4 10’s, and then you will have one day a week for yourself.
You are not realizing your potential and your soul knows it, thats why you feel so uneasy.