Meh

Today, I worked on doing some layouts for Q101. Took me a long while, and the entire time… I felt under a goodly amount of pressure. This thing needs to be up by Friday morning, bright and early. Ben’s been out of the office, and doesn’t get back until tomorrow.

Usually, I’m not the person who gets handed the design elements – that’s always been Ben. Even at my previous job, I was always fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on how you look at it) to have strong designers who would lay out pages and then let me implement. Over time, I’ve become much, much stronger working with Flash technically, and with ActionScript.

I was able to get a few things down, and it’s a starting point for Ben to review come tomorrow. All day though, I kept feeling rushed, that I needed to get something to Rey for him to review; he came by my desk repeatedly, and often made changes/suggestions. Overall, what I got done was a good start – but there’s a lot left to do. Once the layouts are decided, I’ll have no problems blazing through everything (that’s what I do best). Looks like the next two days are going to be late ones.

The layouts I did were ok, but I couldn’t shake comparing things I did with the work I’ve seen from Ben. Stupid I know, since he’s studied design and I… well… didn’t. But it was there: the fact that I couldn’t create things like him (or like other designers I know) made me frustrated. I mucked around with colors for a while, and created three different sets – but they all didn’t look quite as bold/masculine as Rey wanted. The layouts I made were all rather muted and soft, and I kept trying to make them stronger, to little effect. Like I said – frustrating.

This is stupid, I know. And I’m not saying that some people have some kind of artistic, innate gene that allows them to create better than others. In my mind, it’s all a matter of focus, patience, dedication, time and (above all) practice. For me to want to magically produce work along the same level as others (who have been designing more and longer than me) is ridiculous. But it’s there.

This is a quirk about me, I guess. I always want to be good at everything. Nothing frustrates me more than having someone ask me to do something, and then being unable to deliver. It’s stupid, I know this. I know this. But it’s there. On a good day, this feeling is what drives me to study, to learn, and to double my efforts; on a bad day, this sorta thing gets me down. Today is a bad day it seems, for no good reason at all.

Ah, crap. Little things like this are what start snowballing into bigger shit. If I’m unhappy with how my work day went, I start looking at other areas and begin to see only negatives.