The Intermission

July 20, 2004 | Category: Our Thoughts

Summary: Time for a vacation amongst other things.

Note: Proofreading has not been done as I am sick and my head just hit the keyboard :-) so I will revisit this later tonight to touch it up.

I blame the last 2 months on the web. So many damn good redesigns and new designs popping up that you can't help but get bitten by the redesign bug. But I refrained because I just wasn't a fan of design anymore. Maybe I was still a fan of good design, but I wasn't a fan of doing design myself. Then last week Fried asked the simple question, “...do you still enjoy designing web sites as much as you did a few years ago?”

My answer was quick and to the point. “Hell no!” I had burdened myself to the point of no return it seemed to where if I had a concept for a website I refrained from it not because of time, but because I knew sooner or later I would have to open up Vim and start going at it.

It Used to be Fun

Back in the college days when I wasn't so dependent on money, I could program and design for fun all I wanted. I loved to seek out new challenges and watch myself both fail and succeed without remorse. Then I got a job as a programmer and my passion for solving problems died. It was a stressful job mainly due to bad project management so I turned my back on programming and leaned more towards design.

I used to spend hours upon hours with sketches and experimenting with different layouts and colors. Then my last job I encountered the “unrealistic boss” and after that “the crazy clients.” Of course I don't blame them completely for killing my passion for design either as both the programming and designing situations had periods where I could have prevented disaster, but failed to take action. In any case the damage was done. I just didn't want to do any design or coding.

I am sure you can tell from the entries over the last couple of months as they have ventured away from design and CSS topics and more towards the business end. With that my writing also suffered (in my perspective). Jon Hicks labeled me the “web's busiest person” some time ago and although I smiled I knew inside that I was probably the world's laziest person.

So many missed opportunities have gone by. I have been looking for a job since March (don't know how I survived this long) and have been helped by many people. However, some weeks I try my best while others I focus on my own sites. I am feel as if I am moving at both 100mph and standing still at the same time.

Business Logs Starts It

Working with a team that has the same passion for success you do is addicting. Trust me. Although the three of us are busy working on other things I can't help but think that in time once we have our full lives dedicated to the business, it will be the best time of our lives. With Rundle's design skills and Oliphant's writing style I have been left wondering what talent I bring to the table. This helped to show that I wasn't even close to working at my full potential and I realized what the problems were: laziness and lack of patience.

I could do better. But that wasn't enough yet to push me back into writing, designing, and coding like I knew I could do.

Then it happened. On July 17, 2004 Dunstan did his writeup on the new redesign. It wasn't the redesign that brought back my passion, it was the actual writeup itself. One sentence was all it took:

I think I've been working on it for more than half the time we've been seeing each other, and its redesign has rather taken over our lives.

Now those who know me personally know that a social life is the last thing I am going to give up, but it's the idea that someone would get so involved in something that it became their love. I missed that feeling. I used to be like that. The geek passion to develop new things, push your own limits and not just settle for what you are capable of doing.

Admittedly there are a ton of sites I put into the Vault and think to myself “Hell I could do that.” That's just the ego of a designer. But then I look at my sites and realize sure I created simple ones that should be easy to use. One or two of them are even kind of pleasing, but looking from the outsider's perspective did I create a site that I would put into the Vault? I didn't think so. Ego--. FireToImprove++.

Business Is No Fun

My problem was that I treated every site like a business, which I am sure many of you think only makes sense if you are trying to make a living from it. However, when I begin to treat things as a business I enter this robotic state of just “doing” without having fun. I do things at my best when they are fun. Doesn't mean that all parts of a business are going to be fun, but once I take all the fun out of it my quality of work and my willingness drop significantly.

Being your toughest critic is only natural. However, when you do so to the extreme measure that you despise your own work and what you do then you have only lost the game. Be hard on yourself, but be realistic. Be willing to take risk and realize the best part of life is learning. I stopped learning and lost the best part of my life. I am happy to say it's back.

So I call this entry Intermission because it's time for a vacation. It's time for a break. The Vault will continue on a daily basis (assuming quality stuff comes in daily) and I will be posting frequently on Forever Geek. Business Logs will get the quality over quantity approach from me and if you haven't read some of the stuff over there I advise you do. It's not bad ;-). Unfortunately, this also means that Version 2 gets a vacation so you have more time to work on those MacEdition entries (last month's winners I am contacting you tonight).

Things to look forward to on my return:

I have to laugh because I think of how many breaks I have taken in the past only to come back to this point. I must be doing something wrong ;-)

In Search Of...

PHP Programmers. I have some ideas for stuff that I would like to do on the different sites. If you have some volunteer time and are interested in a couple of challenges shoot me an email.

Poker Players and Car Fanatics. If you like Poker or Cars and write articles/entries on those topics I might have a project you are interested in. Contact me for details.

For all of these positions, please email me why you would be interested. I get a ton of emails daily so seeing people that are truly interested will make the reading easier.

Before I Leave

Here are some other sites that helped ignite this Renaissance so to speak:

And the only reason I write this is because last time I got a ton of emails asking me when I was going to write again. So I just decided to post this short *cough* entry to give everyone a heads up if you cared.

Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/285

Comments

Keep track of comments to all entries with the Comments Feed