Please

Please

Work Work Work

5 April 2004
Filed under Business, Life, Text

The last few weeks have been hell-busy, as I take on loads of work in order to pay for my Big Trip. Add to that the approaching Easter break and a touch of tendonitis in my elbow and you get... me. Stressed. Khoi Vinh over at Subtraction started me thinking about the pressures of self-employment recently, and I've boiled it down to this: you've got to learn to say "no". In a one-man-band, as my office is, it's all the more important, and all the more difficult.

My first "no" has been to a client I've worked with in the past, who seems incapable of following a project through to the end. I must have done five or six things for these guys, and a grand total of NONE of them have been realised. After some soul-searching, I came to the conclusion that if they'd hated my work so much they never wanted to show it, then they wouldn't have continued to commission me.

Sure, I've been paid (promptly, I might add) - and if I were unable to find work, then it would be tempting to walk this path again. But right now, with a relatively new business to build, my priority has to be to produce work that other people can actually SEE (and with any luck, hire me on the basis of).

I'm still waiting to find out what my next "no" will be.

Views from the Floor

Krassy says:

Unfortunately your trip is a month too late and your San Francisco stop an 8-hour drive too far...in May there will be a great design conference (HOW Conference) in San Diego: http://www.howconference.com/

Your trip itinerary sounds like a blast, by the way. Wow! Good for you!

Virginia says:

Mmmm, damn. Anyone else know of a good conference in New York some time between the 20th and 30th of June? Methinks New Yorkers will be on summer holidays around then. I was hoping for some nerdy Macworld action, but unfortunately nothing's happening. No iPod mini-mini for me.

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