Unbelievable.

I had some trouble with my Graphic Design Program back in May of 2004. I wasn't sure where I was going to go, had no self-confidence, and I felt like everything around me was out of my control. I was in the worst physical shape I had ever been, I was consistently broke, and I had no cigarettes left to tide my nicotine addiction. Due to a two-day "allnighter," then slept for most of another day, I hadn't had a smoke in, roughly, a three day period.

In short, I was a wreck. When the mental stress of where I felt I was heading with school, my full-time job, and my general station in life, I almost cracked.

Then, out of the blue, I came to a conclusion.

I was tired of living like this. I wanted to actually be proud of what I had done in my studies, and I wanted to be proud of the work I achieved. I wanted to run my own show - be in business for myself - because I saw a lot of solutions to basic workplace problems in the hospital at which I worked, and realized, as a low man on the totem pole, that my suggestions or points didn't count. I was of the opinion that this would be a regularly occurring phenomena in my professional life, and I didn't want spend my professional working life that frustrated.

But most importantly, I did not want to be out of control of my own destiny. I understood that there are "X" factors that we cannot control, but I did want to control the things I could.

So, I made some changes.

I quit smoking cold turkey. As most of the nicotine had left my system, all I had to really do was resist the psychological urge to pick up a smoke. Nowadays, cigarette smoke makes me feel ill - I feel no need to pick up a pack of Camels, not even if I've been out drinking with friends.

I joined a gym - Gold's Gym in Columbia (though the one in Columbia got bought out and is called something else now). I would go on and off, as I could ( I did have a full load of classes and a fulltime job, so sometimes sacrifices had to be made). Nowadays, I am in a very regular weekly gym routine and have been for a while.

Most importantly, I changed my tune on how I viewed the world and how I acted in it. Things which I knew to be true, like my own responsibility and culpability in my life, I acknowledged. I stopped blaming my genes for my weight, and started blaming myself and my choices for it. If I did poorly in school, I took it as being my fault, instead of the professor's or the school's fault. I started planning out how I wanted my life to be, post-graduation.

One day, while running through a Staples for drafting supplies, I accidentally discovered a book. It was on the bottom shelf of a cardboard drop-bin display in the middle of the aisle, filled with 7 Habits of Highly Successful People-like books. This one, however, took me by surprise.

It was Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life: A Kick-Butt Approach to a Better Life by Larry Winget. A title like that jumps out at you, whether you agree with its sentiment or not.

For the record, I certainly agreed with it. I picked it up without thumbing through it, and bought it on the spot. I read it in about two days. What was most interesting in reading it was that there were a lot of spots where the author writes, after making a point, something along the lines of "I've gone too far, you say?" which puzzled me - because pretty much everything he wrote I agreed with already (except for rap - I'll listen to Wu Tang or the Roots as easily as I'll listen to Buck Owens, Freddie Mercury, Frank Zappa, or John Coltrane. Oh, well. Each to their own).

In any case, the book was read and re-read. I got a couple of books on CD from his website and listened to them to and from work and school, not so much to learn, but to pump myself up psychologically for my day. It got me through school, it made my day job bearable, and gave me the audacity of faith in myself to have the life I wanted after school.

Fast forward to the current day. I am being put out to pasture from my current position (outsourced), to which I can really only say that our separation is mutually agreeable. So, I am going fulltime in my freelance endeavors, and have surprisingly good prospects. I am, two years after getting my sheepskin, independent, through and through.

I'm on my way.

Freelance is the way to go. Period.

One thing that's been bugging me recently is the lack of paying design jobs. I understand that people are hurting in this economy, and many people are taking pay cuts to stay on at places, and that some sacrifices have to be made, but...

Couldn't we at least have a few positions open up that are at least half-assed, when it comes to salary (as opposed to quarter-assed)?

I know many designers who make around half of what the national average is right now. That is an extremely uncomfortable place to be in, financially speaking. Even so, many positions opening now here in KC (at least where salary is posted in job search sites) have compensation listed that is beyond the pale.

Enough of this.

Between a job opening for a Creative Director paying $22,500 in Lee's Summit, and a design job that pays $10-15 per hour in the Crossroads Art District (yet requires five years of experience), I'd rather a.) take my chances in freelance , or b.) work at a Wal-Mart for an hourly rate. Depending on how reliable an employee you have been in the past, you might even make more there.

Personally, I prefer the freelance option. Print has been dying for a while, which means many designers are going to have to branch out to the web (if they haven't already), and they will need to learn a whole new ballgame, much like they did when desktop publishing became the norm. They will have to know coding in as many languages as they can. Computer Science and Graphic Design will become double majors in much greater frequency than even now.

But, if you want to survive in the design field (and are neither juiced in at an agency nor a Design God or Goddess Who Walks Among Us), this will become necessary.

Then again, maybe freelancing is the way to go for all markets, outside of design, as the "traditional" (at least for the past twenty years) means of doing business doesn't seem to offer that much anymore. The one thing regular employment offers is security. But how has that been going so far? Security of job, retirement fund, benefits, etc., have all been challenged and shaken to the core over the past year.

There is no job security. There is no foolproof retirement plan. Benefits aren't all they're cracked up to be, depending on where you work and what kind of health care plan you have.

So, please, tell me again, why should I be clamoring for the chance to earn college-part-time-level income from a company that would cut me before it thought of cutting perks in the executive washroom?

Vote Early. Vote Often.

Don't assume your favorite candidate is destined to win tomorrow (or lose tomorrow). If anything, think of tomorrow's duty as a way to stick it back to all the people who's political ads you can't stand.

And Then There Was...KeenerWorks

Hi there.

This is the first of many postings from me, the founder of KeenerWorks web design.

While a lot of my reasoning for starting this blog is to get the word out re: my services, I've actually been thinking about setting up a blog regardless. So, not to worry: very little forced selling of my web services will be here (unless it's actually relevant to another post), and a lot of other, random stuff. In other words...I am here for your (and my) entertainment.

Just to get the basic info/sales pitch stuff out of the way...

I am the founder and main designer for a web design company. We specialize in websites for small businesses. The big difference between us and other, larger companies, is that we charge $500 (about half or less than half of the going annual rate of larger companies) for the first year, and only $100 a year after that for upkeep. After the first year, each client is given one free re-design, if they so choose to have one. After that, it's $200 per re-design. Even so, there are no contracts and you keep the site if you cancel (although most companies will charge you more for upkeep).

The biggest advantage is that everything we design is from scratch. We pride ourselves in our craft and attention to detail. Most big companies that do all this charge $75-$95 a month, every month, and they put sites together based on a cookie-cutter template. We feel that this is an unnecessary charging for the services being offered. Most companies need a basic homepage, some general info posted, maybe special offers and/or coupons, and a contact page. (The one thing that bothers me are how many people have paid over $5000 over the past five years for something that took a company maybe 30 minutes to do....)

Anyways, in closing, our company gets in personal contact with the client, determines what is needed, and actually plans out the site and takes the same amount of dedication that a big-name advertising firm would give a big-name client. We take payment either by Paypal (Visa, MasterCard, E-Check), personal check, money order, or cashier's check.

And...that's the end of the general info/salespitch.

Right now, I'm off to watch Altered States (never seen it, but it looks interesting, and I haven't been disappointed by Paddy Chayefsky's stuff yet).

'Til tomorrow,
MK