It’s me.
I am my own worst client. As a creative, I am plagued with a constant stream of ideas, inspiration, images and layouts that, at the best of times, are difficult to get down on ‘paper’ before the next thought crowds it out or another way of treating the original idea makes me stop and rethink things even before I’ve really gotten to the meat of it.
It’s frustrating when I find sites like LogoFaves and Creattica that are jam-packed full of awesome and I can’t even decide on a font face, let alone an iconographic logo treatment… And what about a website for myself? Do I go WordPress or html? If I go WP, do I buy a theme from Themeforest or Press75 or would that be considered cheating? Do I spend the time modifying a free one or try and build my own?
Just the other day a friend/client of mine asked me for my business card as he had someone who wanted some creative and marketing work done for them and wanted to recommend me (for which I am humbled and very grateful). Embarrassed, I had to laugh and tell him I don’t have any.
“But you have a website I can send him to, right,” he asked.
“Yeah… no, not really. Not at all…”
He was incredulous.
“The thing is, I spend all of my spare time working on other jobs, for other clients, that I honestly haven’t had the time to dedicate to creating my own brand,” I said.
And this is the crux of it for me – with my 9-5 plus working evenings and weekends for side projects, the spare moments I do have left are spent with my kids and scraping the bottom of the creative barrel to smack around my own look and feel.
I know I’m not alone in this turmoil, so if you’ve faced a similar demon please share what you did or didn’t do to help clarify things for you. Where did you draw inspiration from? What was your “Aha!” moment?
With any luck I will be able to continue to pull in referral business despite a gaping void for a portfolio and online presence (save for this blog, a meagre LinkedIn account, and my twittersphere) until I can finally decide on some basic stuff like Prussian Blue or Van Dyke Brown for the mountains…
There you go.