One interesting fact about having varied interests is it becomes easy to get locked into the idea that I have to do everything myself, and so if I don’t know how to do a thing, I learn to do the thing so the thing gets done. When I started my fitness company, I didn’t know the first thing about design, so I acquired a series of books, subscribed to a few newsletters, and took a deep dive into design principles in order to establish some base foundation from which to work. I the immersed myself in the tooling and eventually felt proficient enough to create fliers and posters that weren’t jarring to my own eyeballs.
For a time I was running online programs on FaceBook, but one was inexplicably shut down, so I moved to Discord and figured out I could use bots to help me manage my server and distribute my content. However, I didn’t know the first thing about building bots, so I did a little research, realized I needed to have some knowledge in programming, and thus set out to learn how to code. I took a four month deep dive into JavaScript where I worked through a freely available online program, read a few books, took part in some coding challenges, and eventually built the bot I wanted.
Design and coding are two skills I developed out of necessity. I was in no position to hire designers or developers and this shit needed to get done and so I learned what I needed to learn to do the things that needed to get done.
Problem is, I now have some competency in two different fields that I find fascinating and enjoy working in. This dilutes my focus, as for the past few years I’ve vacillated between writing, fitness, design, and coding as a means of acquiring income, and have made little progress across all fronts excepting the gradual progress in my skills development that comes as part of regular practice. I wrote this in a prior blog post, where I discussed the need to finally pick a damn path and traverse it, and I’m finding I’m struggling hardcore with that decision. I want the time and the energy to do absolutely everything, damn it!
Alas, I cannot. I fuckin’ know better, and yet here I am crying about it.
Anyway, here’s a poster I designed from @walerya’s set Love Me Twice. I’m still playing with blending modes, though I continue to enjoy the style that’s developing in this play. Any other designers out there? What are you working on?
