What’s your spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down? Changing your approach...

Very often we can’t change a circumstance that annoys us. We can’t at times make more money, or magically make the washing up disappear. We just want those things to happen, but often there’s not much to be done. 

We can change our feelings and our approach though. Thinking about things from another angle might just change everything. 

Rather than making more money - is there a way to save what you have by cutting spending?

Rather than having a miserable time doing the dishes, or other housework - is there a way to make it less of a chore? Is there anything about the way you do whatever it is, or the time you do it that could change to make the whole experience better? For me - I like a dish liquid that has a pleasant but not strong smell. I like to do the washing up during the day so I’m not as tired. Sometimes music helps if I am tired.

What would help? What’s your spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down?

People say you should take up opportunities when they knock… That’s crap.

If you are bad at doing commissions it’s worse for your business to accept them. If you don't get them done on time, end up giving the item to the person for free or have such a bad time doing them that it derails your own emotional well-being for years, then commissions aren’t for you. Me. Commissions aren’t for me.… Still have one hanging over my head and then never again.

Hoarders are interesting people

After having belonged to a hoarding group for a while, I think you can put hoarders into two groups - those that are overly creative and sensitive and those that have lives that are messed up in every way and their hoarding is just part of the complete and utter chaos.

The second group might be creative and sensitive too of course, but it's hard to tell. Maybe they are just less organised hoarders? I'm not saying the mess is their fault. They probably haven't made good choices, but sometimes that ability is taken away from you by stress or circumstance. Sometimes the only choices are bad choices. Once you get yourself in a hole, it is almost impossible to get out by yourself and if you have no social support then you don't get out.

The second group also seem more caught up in themselves. They don't seem to have much empathy or interest in other people's problems or successes and just want to talk about how awful their lives are. Many seem to have mental health issues too. 

The worry for me is that one group could just be the logical extension of the other.... Which just makes me want to quote Sherlock Holmes, but since I'm unlikely to be in the 'grace of God' I'd better just help myself not go from creative hoarder to 'life in chaos hoarder'.

Anyway, any time I doubt the choices I've made in life, I can think about these other people and know it can be worse. I could have done worse.

No creative control = No job satisfaction

I know it’s silly and unimportant in the big scheme, but I’m having a creative crisis.

I have little creative control in my work at the moment and it is cracking me up from the inside. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself it’s just work and that I have to do it to keep the roof over my head. Once you engage your creativity for a project, it becomes something else.

I keep telling everyone I’m not a real graphic designer and this proves it to me. I am much better at free-form creativity than following a plan. I am much better at following my own plans than working to someone else’s design. I will always resent it when I don’t get to decide where the thing I am engaged creatively on is going.

Graphic Design is where you present a draft based on the clients brief. They then tell you the ten things they forgot to mention. You redraft. They then change their minds and give you the ideas that five other people had. You then attempt to bolt everyone else’s creative ideas to yours and wonder why everyone couldn’t have gotten together and brainstormed in the first place. Brainstorming with other people is so much more acceptable than having to redesign or attempting to amalgamate ideas that don’t mesh.

While I’m whinging – The never-ending job – Where the client gives you changes in dribbles and continues to change even as the resource is deployed, so that you end up with a resource that goes out with different details and you begin to lose track of which version is correct. The client throws in a couple of incorrect details, so you will keep all your old versions, because you may need to go back to them – some versions go out with mistakes because of the client and some because you are confused. Some versions go out with mistakes because there are 5 different permutations of the job for different end uses and not all get updated during the rush to change, fix and meet deadlines.

Jobs just seem to run into each other now with no light at the end of the tunnel – it all seems endlessly wrong.

Next person who says that it must be nice to do ‘Art’ all day, gets it.

(Link is to - Clientcopia : Stupid Client Quotes... Because this is what designers do when they are sick of beating their heads against walls, and even fake designers do this....)