With 2015 well underway, I feel like I can do a general status check without falling into the New-year-new-you cliche.
Initialization
I have over 100GB of photos on my hard drive. This is probably not that much compared to many people, but after an accidental Dropbox sync filled my drive, I decided to run Disk Inventory X and discovered that my iPhoto library was the single biggest block. Much of that is due to my trip to Japan, my son, and my woodworking. Thus, I went on a backup binge prior to purging my files. I may be bad at backups – my process is entirely a cobbled-together mess, even if it is effective.
Realization
Granted, RAW photos can add up, but I have way more photos than I do design work. Now, my day job is very management heavy – I manage my product, I manage my developers, and I manage the process. This leaves very little time for design, even though that is half of my job. In fact, the most “designing” I do is my woodworking, but my abilities there are so limited and I miss the freedom of design. This wouldn’t be a big deal, but when I do get the chance to concept freely, I now tend to feel like I’ve forgotten how to design. I may be bad at design.
Life is not a zen koan (though that phrase should be)
Feeling as if you’ve forgotten a skill is incredibly frustrating. I think the only way to admit it’s lost, and the regain the skills the same way you learned them in the first place: practice. In my case, it’s designing without the constraints of a large ecommerce company. I need to work on small, fast projects each week, and occasionally tackle larger projects.
Some examples then?
- Redesign danielboyle.net
- Learn Swift, so I can work with native apps on iOS
- Splash-of-the-week
- Revitalize my blog
One guess as to which comes first.