My friend Ricardo left this morning to go back to Peru, and while it was nice seeing him while he was here, I am glad to have my space back. What with the various visitors that I have had in my apartment recently, I really haven’t been as focused on my work as I need to be (especially in generating income). Even when they weren’t here and I tried to work a few hours, a bunch of extra stuff in my small room really cuts my productivity. I find I need a clean empty space with few distractions to really focus on my work.
I am about at my most broke point ever right now, and while some of that is waiting for client payments to come through, some of it is also a lack of billing and work. I really need to get focused on generating more income and billing more regularly, especially given the high cost of living in New York. I am really loathe to take a full time job, but that may be an area to explore soon if I can’t find a more steady stream of contract work. I am going to try to keep to a strict schedule of work hours, winning new business, and monastic life over the next couple of weeks. Let’s see how it goes…
One of the things I have noticed throughout my working career (whenever working on a project basis with client review that is) is the odd distribution of concern over various elements. Time and again, I as the project manager or designer feel certain that some very important and fundamental questions must be answered before we go forward. I present to the client the alternatives and set the table for a particular discussion of central organizing principles. In the case of a web site design, these are things like site structure, organization, and navigation. Secondarily, these important items are also about points of design involving the brand, identity, overall color scheme and the like. Of course along with these decisions, any programming and code must work well across browsers and systems, and work with a consistent interface when clicking through the various choices. These things are fundamental to the structure of a project. The page by page nitty gritty of what extra photo to use here or what subhead wording to use there or whether to link to a particular outside resource are just that – small details that can easily be changed.
So it is with some mirth that I realize that very often clients are much more interested in the nitty gritty than the overarching. The things that speak to them are the small details. I have several theories as to why this may be the case. One is that people inevitably talk about the things they understand. While the big picture elements may very well be important to them, it can be a bit complicated to connect all the dots and make the big decisions, whereas the small ones are easy to make. Another reason is that people’s thought processes are not very often hierarchical, despite what we would like to believe about ourselves, and so every thought about a project is held in the brain with somewhat equal weight, and things are brought up as they occur. A couple of months ago I was working on a project for organizing a photo library, for example, and my client kept bringing up being able to copy resources in a particular way before we had even built the functionality to get those resources into the database in the first place. I kept explaining that there was a hierarchy of importance of functionality, with some things necessarily preceding others, and that we were time limited and could not do everything so it would be necessary to prioritize. I suspected that this did not sit well with him, but we came to agreement. And sometimes, the reasons people focus on the small stuff is that they trust me to take care of the big stuff and really aren’t all that interested in the big picture. This happens more often than you might think, and the challenge for me is to recognize this and not let my ego get in the way. Sometimes I worry that the client (for the lack of feedback I get about the big picture stuff) is unhappy with my work but unable to articulate it. In a situation like this I can sometimes take it personally, but this is pure ego and pride getting in the way of what is actually happening. As long as ample room has been given for the client to express their particular opinions (when they have them), things generally work out well. Sure, there can always be misunderstandings and disappointments. But when I take myself and my pride out of the equation and let the work be the work, things go better and we are all much happier.
The last several days have been a strange period of waiting for things. Waiting on checks to arrive. Waiting on clients to get back to me. Waiting on potential clients to approve a contract that I am not even sure I want. Perhaps because of all this waiting, I have felt a contemporaneous and strange sense of waiting for something else as well. Something unknown and unknowable. Something I can’t put my finger on exactly. I am not at all a fan of this sensation, as it is definitely outside the realm of being in the present. It pulls me somewhere else and makes me immaterial somehow. It places a vague, uneasy cloud over everything, a slight sense of dread. I am not sure exactly what this thing is, except a lack of focus, and a lack of presentness.
Trying to get back into doing something while waiting, I reworked my CV a bit yesterday to add new clients and make the management of the client area easier to change. It is now all stored in a database table, and each client record is now easy to publish or unpublish as well as adding new clients or info without ever having to touch the page design. It gave me a small sense of accomplishment, and luckily today I received some new client information that will allow me to get back to work on their projects.
But this vague sense of waiting remains. What am I waiting for, what are we waiting for?
Things are winding up here in Hamburg. I fly Monday back to Paris for two days and then back to New York. I am pretty happy with the site I have just finished, I think it looks good and works well. There are as always more things that could be done, but overall it is pretty spiffy. I look forward to feedback on it when it launches in a few weeks. Tonight we are going out to a celebratory dinner of sorts in one of the fancier restaurants of Hamburg. Stay tuned for the details, it should be fun.
So, I am headed to San Francisco next Wednesday, and will be there for a week. I was debating whether or not to go out just to set up some computer stuff for my friend Marites, because it just didn’t seem like enough work to justify it. But then Marites sent out a lovely mass email talking up my skills and pointing people to my cv, and voila — I now have 3 solid gigs while I am there and another possible 2. It is always the way that word of mouth works so much better than just about anything else. People are much more likely to hire someone if they are recommended by someone they trust. So, thanks again Marites!
So, what are the rest of you waiting for? Send an email out to all of your friends. You know I would do the same for you…
This is it!
While not perfect (is anything ever?), I have decided it is time to release my new site into the wild, so as of right now I am unofficially launching it at cv.satoristephen.com. I will leave it for the weekend to see if there are any major bugs, and then on Monday send out an official announcement via email. If you notice any bugs or have any comments, please do let me know. And if anyone can think of a better subdomain name than “cv”, I am happy to accept suggestions. For the record, other options were “portfolio”, “folio”, “box” and “arbeit-macht-frei“. Ok, I am kidding about that last one.
At the moment, I am having a little difficulty determining what to do. I am staying in my friend Sivan’s home, and although she has been very gracious and welcoming, I feel like it is not my space. Call me Virginia (if you must), but I feel I need a room of my own. I need a quiet space to be and work with few distractions. Nothing fancy or large, but simple and ordered. The awkwardness of living in someone else’s space is getting to me a little. That said, I feel that I should probably secure at least a modicum of work before committing to a lease or long term renting. It is a big advantage not to be paying rent right now and I am very grateful to my friends for offering me a bed in their homes. Perhaps I should just bite the bullet and get a little defensible space of my own. My job search and writing are both feeling a little scattered. It is funny that in (most) of the time of my traveling, I didn’t feel so much in need of this, as I always knew I would be moving on sooner or later, and never felt too attached to any place or space. Now having decided to make a go of it here in one place, for an open ended length of time, I feel a desire to have a small mooring. Nothing major, but something to tether to as I thrust myself into New York and its life, in the city I hope to call home.
Today was all about the business, what with finishing a site and meeting with clients. And I am pretty happy with how the sites are turning out. Check out this one for example.
Through an odd set of coincidences, I have had quite a bit of work fall in my lap while here in NYC. I have spent the better part of the last week building and setting up two websites, and configuring a home office network and new computer. I wasn’t looking for work at all , but I can sure use the cash. It has been interesting, especially with the website programming, to be cast back into that headspace. It is quite a different place to be than where I have been over the past 2 years. Not completely unpleasant either, there is a small satisfaction in figuring out these types of things and synthesizing a solution. The trick is not to get flustered when stuck, and not to let these things stress you out. More and more, it seems to me that when I do return to the land of the working, I should aim for these types of finite contracts. They will allow me to remain more present and outside of the long term stresses that large office politics can produce. Then again, contracting has its own set of hassles, not the least of which is the administration and money chasing. In any event, if I can make it as breezy and fun as the last couple of weeks, it will definitely be worth it. And it will leave me time to write and blog and work on other projects. And not have to wear a suit or have a fixed schedule or location.
Although ideally, I would still want this job…
The last couple of days have been spent working furiously (well, somewhat) on my book, and rediscovering how much I love this city (and my friends within it). I also suddenly and to my surprise have three small tech contracts to fulfill. Not bad, perhaps I will be able to survive in greater style while in South America, or even have a little bit left over to get me started when I decide to settle somewhere.
And in case anyone should ask, it is no contest. Morandi is a far more comfortable place to work than Doma, which I find to be highly overrated, cramped, and attitudy.