So here are the things I grossly underestimated back when I was whining about having to work for someone other than myself, day in and day out. Also: apologies to all of the people to who I may at one point have whined; I’m better now.

Thing 1 – Freelancing is Hard

There is a whole bunch of stuff that goes into any given week keeping oneself busy (it’s partly the reason that this is my first post since August: eek). My 25-year-old self imagined her weeks as an idyllic time, half of it spent furiously coding websites in her pajamas, the other portion sipping coffee in a Starbucks while furiously coding websites. This was the thing that I loved to do at the time so of course my fairyland ideal revolved around this. However…this is not how I spend my weeks.

My weeks are at least one-third to one-half meetings. Meetings to see what the next project is. Meetings to check in on the reaction to the last deliverable. Meetings to discuss what someone else needs to do. Meetings to discuss strategy and timing and interoffice politics…MEETINGS. The rest of the time is, absolutely, spent doing something that I enjoy, but the work is much more multifaceted than that one little thing that got me into tech in the first place. More on that in a sec.

Thing 2 – Networking Maketh the Money

I don’t know where 25-year-old me thought she was going to get all her clients. Beating the streets and passing out business cards? Cold-calling? I think she imagined that she would be shopping at some local business and strike up a conversation:

“Oh, you need a website? Well, you’re in luck ’cause I make those!”
“Hello, sir. Did you know that your business name domain is available?”
“Your website is a single page with a rotating ‘EMAIL’ animated .GIF…but it could be so much more!”

Truth is, many of these clients I am working with now are people that I have worked with in the past. I’m hired, as much as half the time, based on existing rapport. That took time to develop and is certainly not something 25-year-old me had working for her: I had had a few jobs, but my previous connections weren’t movers and shakers who knew other movers and shakers who could pass me business. Furthermore, we had just moved to new city and state about which I knew zero. It would not have gone well.

Thing 3 – Street Cred Matters

Back in 2005, I had spent a sizable portion of my nights and weekends for the previous six or seven years working on a fan site for one Tori Amos and this was, mainly, the bulk of my experience to tout. The other portion of it had been spent working on websites for my alma mater in their online education division for a few years. So my portfolio wasn’t really comprised of sexy stuff, or if it was sexy or innovative, people didn’t understand the whole Tori thing and failed to see the value.

Most interviews went something like this:
“Who is this person?”
“Tori Amos.”
“Ah…” the interviewer would said, gaze shifting from the image of my website printed on a sheet of the more expensive paper from Kinkos—depicting a red-haired woman kneeling on a dirty mattress in a field, integrated nicely into the layout of the site’s masthead with some fancy overlayed gradient effects and, if I might add, very nice typography—to the red-haired woman sitting in the chair across the desk.
“You mean you weren’t paid to do this?”
“Well, it’s more of a fan thing so…”
“So…no.”
“No.”

So now, 10 years on, I’ve worked on things that people actually relate to or on brands that people have heard of. Without that credibility I wouldn’t have gotten very far, and, knowing me, might have given up and tried to pursue something entirely different.

Thing 4 – Unknown Unknowns

Ten years ago, I was a web designer full-stop. I was self-taught full-stop. Because in the 1990s, when I went to college, my school (and most schools, I reckon) didn’t really offer courses in User Experience-oriented education. It was my dream to build websites (from scratch, not with Dreamweaver or any of that other crap, scoff scoff) that were beautifully designed and fun to use. I didn’t even realize there were whole other jobs that contributed to get a website over the side: I genuinely believed that it was about being indispensable and being a “one-stop shop” of a person. Designer, Front-end Programmer, Back-end Developer, Project Manager, and Accounts Receivable.

Furthermore, my view of the industry was myopic (in spite of the fact that no one had iPads and their ilk in mind at the time; I certainly did not) and I needed more experience to become a worthwhile investment to a company (as an aside, I also needed to understand that being a “worthwhile investment” wasn’t a personal affront and was, instead, good business). I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, I needed realize that there were lots of means to that end of creating a digital experience that felt perfect. I needed to have opportunities to wear lots of hats. I needed to learn how to involve others in my projects and to ask for help. I needed to learn to defend my ideas with grace and to give way to better ideas without getting more than a little petulant.

In short, I needed to grow the hell up.

…

All this is to say that I really, really love being a consultant. I love having a flexible schedule and a wide variety of clients; I love the challenge of keeping myself busy busy busy. But the 25-year-old me would have caved under this kind of pressure. She wouldn’t be thriving. I can say that because I am me, of course; I couldn’t say that for anyone else. Though she might not have liked it, she needed to suffer in big and small ways so that I can, now, appreciate my current situation.

I am grateful and happy and challenged, day in and day out. But without going through the gauntlet of all those years, I wouldn’t have any ruler by which to measure this happiness.

Then again, maybe the point of them is not to actually use them but to instead be awed by them.

To be continued…

The person I was arguing with (read: okay, talking at) didn’t hold a strong opinion one way or another on what Hollywood chooses to sell as “Dragons.” This is probably because he didn’t realize that this point was even in contention and didn’t have the foresight to realize that this is something on which he should choose a side, like who shot first: Han or Greedo.

It was Han.

The thing is, the large lizards you so often see in feature-length films almost always have two back legs and winged front appendages (similar to bats) instead of four legs and wings on their backs (for a total of six actual appendages). They go around spitting fire all over everything like they own the place. I can only assume that rendering the extra appendages is more difficult and someone is cutting corners somewhere, which wouldn’t surprise me since directors like Ang Lee don’t legitimize the battalions of animators who work their asses off to get them Oscars. Hrmph. Still pissed about that one.

According to Wikipedia, however, I have a tenuous argument about the exact “proper” structural makeup of a Dragon since there are so many types and their mythology hails from so many different countries. What’s more, the real nature of the Wyvern’s leg-to-wing composition isn’t really set in stone: sometimes the Wyvern has fore legs, wings on its back, and a long, serpent-like tail; sometimes the Wyvern has sort of fore-wings, hind legs, and a slightly less-long, serpent-like tail. It could be argued that the “Dragons” being CGI’d by Hollywood are in a Dragon Gray Area.

So as a result of being in a Wyverns Aren’t Dragons Stalemate, I shifted focus to other Wikipediable things. Things like what in the hell was my high school mascot?

I went to high school in Greenville, North Carolina. It’s The Other Greenville people think about in the south…if there is a land where people think of Greenvilles…? Anyway. The school is called “Junius H. Rose High School” and its mascot is, when paired with the truncated “Rose High,” the alliterative “Rampant.” For years I figured that “Rampants” were some kind of cousin of the Griffin but without wings: look at that beaky thing over there: it totally looks like a Griffin, right? I went to high school in a time before Wikipedia, mind you, when people didn’t really question things like this and couldn’t resolve disputes instantaneously with their smartphones. It was a heady time, making shit up as you went along and getting people to buy into it based on your conviction of delivery…like all those times you could be like, “THAT IS TOTALLY A WORD, DAVID,” when playing Scrabble.

So I googled “rampant animal,” like you do, and was bewildered to find that the school’s mascot was not, in fact, a distant cousin of a cool-ass Griffin. “Rampant” is an adjective, not a noun; my school was and is playing fast and loose with heraldic terminology in the name of mellifluousness (which totally is a word, David, I checked). Now I knew that part, really: I knew what “rampant” meant in general, but some part of my brain had told myself the story that the mythological creature “existed” and that was that…kind of like the way I cling to the spelling of Berenstein with an EIN.

So a lion (comma) rampant, is a heraldic “attitude” or feature of the animal’s depiction as a part or a coat of arms or other heraldry (seen at right). And, while I am delighted to have this new chapter added to the Jeopardy Category Holding Area of my brain, I am somewhat disheartened to learn that my school’s mascot was nothing more than a lion.

Well, a lion, freaking out on you, fighting with all of its appendages, I reckon.

Go Rampants!

I think the truth of it is this: it’s flippin’ hot in DC during the day. Tourists come in from all over, but since it’s oppressively toasty all day, they spend their time in some flavor of Smithsonian during daylight hours and then, at night, they can explore the Mall when things are a bit more temperate.

Really beautiful and (mostly) void of crowds.

Enter, one of my favorite things: the open sandwich. These babies apparently have a long and storied history and I like them for a few simple reasons:

1. This time of year, when ingredients are downright beautiful, you get to look at them right before you stuff them in your face (instead of shrouding them in the boring beige additional piece of bread)
2. They are economical as all get out because you use half the bread. Winning.
3. You can usually throw them together out of random stuff you probably have in the kitchen already.

My fave combination lately is some kind of protein salad (egg salad, tuna salad, chicken salad) plus chopped lettuce, some tomato, a drizzle of olive oil and salt and pepper, but you can get crazy with it, if you so choose. Happy nomming.

Shoutout to Icons8 for the snazzy icons.

As you can see, in the low extremes of temperature, you won’t find me outside, but I will go for a run in the high-teens and 20’s, though I am decidedly hampered by time needed to find cold weather accoutrements. Then, somewhere around the mid-40’s dressing is easy and out the door we go quickly. Then comes self-doubt in the high-50’s to low-60’s as cooler temps give way reluctantly to warmer temps, though unpredictably. In the high-60’s to low-70’s it’s another free-for-all with the clothing: can’t go wrong no matter what you pick.

As the temps start to inch up, agonizing over the “right” top to throw on ties me up, followed by certaintyin the low- to mid-80’s that I am wearing the wrong thing and will have to turn around after 10 minutes: just because it feels nice out walking around doesn’t mean the run will go well. Then, in the 90’s (assuming I’m not altogether put off by the heat which usually happens), it takes me forever to find my Camelbak, open it to fill it, find out that it’s got something freaky growing in the resevoir, wash it, rinse it, console self with the probability that anything growing in it was probably in the penicillin family and therefore probably not harmful to me, fill it and seal it, test the water for “soap taste,” don the water-filled backpack and head out the door.

And of course, in the 100’s, the vibe is decidedly, in a word, NOPE.

If you’re not sure what the heck I’m talking about, you should take the alignment quiz to familiarize yourself with the concept.

Edit 7/25/15: after some discussion with my husband, we had to swap the old Lawful/Neutral Evil examples if for no other reason than the drivers, by virtue of their action, are being UNlawful.

I had meant to draw two business men conducting a business transaction (shaking hands) but instead, the scribble looked like two Weeble People in love. And so what else could I do?

“Stop the meeting! I have to Instagram this!”

I like their androgyny. I like their look of love and trust. I am anthropomorphizing stick figures.

Time for bed.

I’m hoping that I can be a similar convert: I love data apps and I’m sure that I, too, will obsessively check my steps and calories burned over the next few weeks—and I wonder if they account for that kind of thing when they estimate battery life…?—as I charge (hah!) toward my goal.

I’ve made this leap for personal reasons, too: I am now solidly in my 30’s and losing weight slash maintaining a healthy weight. is. tough, people. Really tough. I’ve never had a metabolism that was any benefit to me anyway and now it seems that much harder to see results and motivate myself. Maybe with some passive accountability I’ll be able to make a bigger dent in my… yeah. What’s more, if you work in a technology profession as I do, you don’t realize how much time you spend parked in a chair (it’s a lot, as I’m sure I will find out in the next few weeks with my Fitbit on my arm).

So anyway…we’ll see what we find out about me. Can’t wait to see the charts and graphs (oh, my goodness, the charts and graphs!!!!).

I made these, too.

I’m smart—there, I said it: I am—and I use a huge portion of my brain thinking about so many other, more important, possibly billable, gonna-get-asked-this-on-Jeopardy things, that when it comes to figuring out what’s for dinner I just feel…despondent. Or worse, like I need the guy who runs The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows to name the terrible feeling and make an emo video to capture my angst. So Plated helps me with that: they do the food-thinking and food-inspiration for me so I can get back to pondering important things…like the costs and socioeconomic implications of Dyson spheres.

Google it. Very geeky.

Secondly, their photography is gorgeous and aspirational (for cooking AND photography reasons); their photography is probably the reason I went with them over some of the competition. I mean look at this lovely fish-with-salad thing:

vs. this fish-with-salad thing…

Seriously, is Blue Apron taking photos with iPhones? Sure, I’m doing that, but what’s their excuse?

“Nice salad, Roy. Set it down under these studio lights for a half-hour while I get the camera set up.”

Hope you like gastroenteritis, Roy.