Hanging up my hat.

As some of you may know, I'm a website/graphic designer in real life. This has been my career for over 10 years and I've developed quite a huge portfolio because of it. I was always super busy with my company and had jobs lined up for months.

Things change, and I've slowed down quite a bit.  I've realized that so much of my company was consuming my life, and sometimes it felt like doing what I loved was a chore.  Your passion should never feel like a chore.  The whole reason I got into this business in the first place was because I loved doing it.  I could share my artistic and technical skills with the world and that gave me great pleasure. I never imagined I would have the opportunity to go as far as I did with it. I went from working in my mother's basement until 3am (and working other part time jobs the rest of the time) to owning a beautiful house and the top design company in my niche, working with clients like Lenny Kravitz, Kylie Minogue, and literally hundreds more.

I had my work showcased by Myspace Inc. at a freakin' Microsoft conference with Bill Gates.  Never in a million years would I have thought that would happen.  Never in a million years did I think that the president of Myspace would personally contact me just to get my input on their new system from a design perspective. (By the way, I completely told him how horrible their new ideas for the profiles were... and if you used to be on Myspace, well, you know how it turned out when they actually went through with the changes despite all of their bad ideas. It was the death of the site just like I predicted.)

However, after so many years of working my butt off and modestly bringing in big bucks, I am realizing that that chapter of my life has come to a close.  I no longer have the constant business (read: the death of Myspace as 90% of my business came from there) and sometimes find myself searching for jobs. Something I fortunately never had to do before as they always just came to me.

The paths that led me here led me here for a reason.  I feel indifferent about the whole thing because on one hand, I miss having clients lined up and the security of knowing that I have jobs each month. On the other, I like my simple life now. I like not having to work until 3am. I am ready to settle down and start a family one day.

I see other people in this industry doing exactly what I was doing. Working their butts off, buying expensive things.  Talking about themselves so highly as if they were the first people to have successful businesses. I laugh because I was there once... and it doesn't last forever unless you dedicate your entire life to it. I didn't want to dedicate my entire life to it anymore. There are so many other things I want to accomplish now... and while I may be starting at the bottom again, I will always have my past achievements, and no one can take those away from me.

Sometimes you just need to take a step back before you can move forward.

So with that said, I'm going to be offering some custom design services right here on this little blog. I enjoy doing small projects and I am excited to be able to work with people on a freelance basis since I never had time for it before.  If you're interested in checking out the brand new page I added to this blog, go here.

xo Dana