2012

Last month, I started a UI design position at DreamHost. It was awesome having a job I’ve wanted to do for a long time pretty much fall into my lap. I’ve been a customer since 2007 and while I’ve always been happy with my service, I’ve dreamed about reworking their admin panel and marketing site. Redesigning the admin panel has found it’s way to my “side projects” list a couple times, but I never found the time to finish.

Unfortunately, that meant I had to give up the two years I spent dedicated to building my freelance business. It took a lot of thought to get past that. I made a lot of connections and worked with some awesome people along the way. I think the hardest part was having to tell people who relied on me that I’m going to be on very limited availabilty.

What am I doing now? I’m using this time as a retrospective. Like a lot of things I’ve done, I fell into freelancing head-first, which can be both good and bad. It was always a dream of mine to work for myself but I probably wasn’t ready for it. There are a lot of aspects that I feel like I did right, and a lot that I did wrong.

I’m also going to try to write more (Hello blog!). I’ve been taking more and more notes over the last year and the next logic step to take is to start fleshing some of my thoughts out in a little bit of a longer form. I’ve noticed that the more I try to get things out of my head, the clearer and more understandable they become.

To growth, and to learning.