A Turning Point

I’ve been reflecting on my career plenty lately. I’ve come to one conclusion. I need to make changes and make them soon. I’ve been working professionally since 2004 and now have reached a point where I feel stuck. I’m in a junior role, which relegates me to mostly production-type work, with an occasional chance to show an ounce or two of creativity once a month, if that. I’m feeling more and more each day that I need to move forward now. The longer I wait to make a name for myself, the more likely it seems I’ll be doomed to doing my superiors’ dirty work forever. I feel I have a voice and would like more control over my day-to-day projects.

Part of my goal over the next year will be to find my true identity. I’ve made myself very versatile, which more than likely has prevented me from being laid off in the bad economy of the last two years, but has prevented me from being very good at any one discipline. I’m very well versed in print layout and identity work. I know basic Flash, but am not a very good programmer at all. The same goes for HTML coding. I end up taking four times as long to code a project than it would take a knowledgeable person that does that every day. I taught myself After Effects and have created some video projects, yet I’m not super skilled in that regard either. I drew a lot in college, but am surely not a good illustrator. Where does that leave me? My largest interest up to this point has been branding/identity work, but I’m looking to explore other disciplines as well.

To start off my new approach, I redesigned my logo and website. In the past, I’ve limited the amount of pieces I’ve shown to only include my best work. I decided to show more work this time to show some more range to hopefully attract more freelance work. My goal is to use as many avenues as possible to gain more experience. That means doing as much freelance work as I can in addition to the 9 to 5 without burning my retinas in the process.

Secondly, I’ve decided once I have a few extra dollars around I’m going to rejoin my local AIGA chapter. I feel I should start attending some of their events and start networking more. I’d like to also listen to some of their speakers and see if there’s any insight I can gain from them as well.

In addition, I’m going to try to teach myself HTML 5 and CSS3 this summer. I think it’ll be beneficial to learn the latest non-Flash web technologies and try to keep up on them so I don’t feel so overwhelmed when trying to program a simple HTML landing page. That should open up some more freelance opportunities as well with that knowledge. I don’t ever do any freelance programming at the moment because it’d take me way too long to be worth it, so it’s been limiting me somewhat.

To close, I’m going to try to keep focused and have a better attitude in the process. Lots of things have made me bitter and resentful in the past and I’m going to do my best to move forward and work toward the goals I’ve set out for myself. Wish me luck.