So I was honored to be asked by Tim to design a limited edition poster for one of the shows for their Farewell Tour Artist Series. The poster is available on their site, along with a tee version. Below is my contribution. Also, be sure to check out the various limited edition posters, including art by Invisible Creature, Jordan Butcher, and Steve Hash, to name a few.

Let this post be my year-end rambling. I may have a few things on my mind, and I’d love to get some of them out in this post.

In my freelance career, it has been fun to divide my operation into separate years, and make goals. Many of my records date back to 2002, when I was 19 years old, and first started caring about finding out exactly what I was capable of. At 19, I wasn’t concerned with any annual income. In fact, I was only aware of my annual income when it was substantial enough to be considered a decent year’s pay. Around the age of 22, when I was able to devote most of my time to design, the lightbulb went off, and I realized that “Oh, this is what I’m gonna do for the rest of my life?” So thus, my respectable, full-time operation truly gained momentum.

Each year has been progressively better than the last, and working for myself has never felt better. A few years ago, I stopped caring about reaching any sort of number by the end of the year, and instead nestled myself into the comfort of being immersed in my work, and earning a decent living at it.

But even without stressing out over it, each year continues to top the year prior. I’m beginning to think that this is a result of building a momentum and rapport with my clients, but also due to an overall optimistic attitude towards my work and the future.

I’ve learned that freaking out about the future is extremely counter-productive.

For those of you that are afraid to take the plunge into freelance, I want to assure you that all of your concerns are indeed valid. There are always great reasons to NOT do something. But, I can also assure you that the only way to know if you can swim or not is to jump in. I have a feeling that if you want to survive, you’ll figure it out. Your pessimistic panic, however, will result in failure.

Pessimism is simply how you choose to perceive your world. A true pessimist makes a pessimistic assumption, and then seeks out confirmation for their prediction, blinding themselves to the positives from the experience.

Actually, if you’re on the fence about going freelance, let me lay something out that may make the decision easier for you: If you’re a pessimist, you probably will not be able to make it in freelance. Success in freelance requires you to stay positive. If you can’t stay positive, then you may not be the perfect candidate. However, I would love to be proven wrong on this.

Souls May Decay

I met a few new people this year. One of which is a college senior, with a passion for local startups. I was inspired by his ideas for seeking out local designers, developers, and founders, and finding a way to connect them all, and to start a dialog within our city. I enjoyed his passion, as it reminded me of my own, when I had the time to carry out my big ideas. While I’m quite excited that I’ve immersed myself in freelance, which I love, I do tend to wish that I had more free time to carry out every decent idea that pops in my head.

But, there are people out there who are just as excited for these big ideas as you are. While finding them may be tough, knowing them may give you an outlet to see some of these ideas come to fruition.

In one of these meetings with other local creatives (which I was ridiculously nervous to attend, and horribly out of my element) I was excited to meet other people who were doing big things. It was so encouraging to see other people’s passion for their work. This “fire” is contagious, and I’ve learned to be more intentional about seeking out people with fire and passion for what they do, as they can encourage and enrich our work, and in turn, our lives.

I notice the passion, because I also notice the dread. There are so many designers out there who have no “smile” attached to discussing their work. They discuss their job the same way they would discuss a funeral, no smile, no passion, no pep, it’s just “where they work.”

I feel for these people. I am slightly annoyed by them, but I’m more concerned and interested in what exactly destroyed their soul. It’s not their fault. They went into a design job, wide-eyed, and slowly, without knowing, someone began chipping away at their soul. It didn’t come down like a guillotine, but just a little bit at a time. Their great idea gets shot down. They feel unvalued. They eventually become a part of the machine, a machine that doesn’t smile, a machine that doesn’t speak positively, and a machine that attaches navy blue coveralls to the word “work,” as opposed to the pride that they once had for their own “work” of art.

Your soul may decay. If you let it go for too long, you’ll just find yourself completely out of smiles. You’ll forget how to talk about something that you’re excited about. You’ll become a pessimist, and it won’t necessarily be your fault.

Just decide, someday, to have a major life-change, and to turn that pessimism off.

Up to you.

The Early Bird is a Machine

I’m no stranger to freaking out. I am often sat before a mountain of work, trying to figure out who is to blame. I get annoyed, irritated, frustrated, and grind my teeth, until I simply admit and realize the fact that that day, because I have all of this freelance freedom, had chosen to sleep in.

My annoyance and frustration may have been coupled with a bit of grogginess. What felt like the beginning of my work day was actually the early afternoon, and the rest of the world were responsible enough to be winding their work days down.

I just felt like the lazy slob that woke up at 11:30.

So I decide to do the one thing that never fails to change my complete perspective on stuff. That evening, I get in bed around 9:00, and wake my lazy butt up at 3:00, 4:00, or 5:00 am the next morning.

Seriously. It’s not uncommon for me to wake up at 3:00 am. When I do, it’s like I’ve woke up in the Land of Oz, and everything is in bright colors. My brain just works in the most efficient manner possible, and I get 2-3 days worth of work done in 5-6 hours. By Noon, I’ve conquered the days tasks, and then some, and have the rest of the day (and daylight) to clear my head. I become available for my wife, and for my friends that want to have lunch or coffee. I start breathing in the extra oxygen that I’ve allowed myself, and wonder why I was such a lazy piece of crap yesterday, and vow to never sleep in again.

I then go on to imagine what would be different if I could wake up at 3:00, Monday-Friday for an entire year. Would my entire life get better? Would I double my income? Could I start a new business with my afternoons?

I don’t know yet. But you’ll be the first to know if I can actually pull it off.

But, alas, when the early-bird streak ends, and I sleep in, again, on a busy day, I know that I can always correct this again by waking up early.

So if you’re finding yourself unable to work diligently and efficiently, and in turn, getting frustrated, I would recommend waking up ridiculously early.

It’s worth a shot.

So imagine my delight when I check my twitter mentions, and see that their recent “Snippet” is a discussion about one of my recent blog posts, Fight To Stay Excited.

I want to give a huge thank you to Liz Andrade and Niki Brown for their conversation, and their take my article. I’m honored.

Listen to the podcast here.

If you haven’t discovered Podcasts yet, they have proved to be an amazing way to hear other people’s take on the creative work lifestyle that we all experience. You can obviously find podcasts on iTunes, but I would also recommend the iPhone app, Instacast – which allows you to find and subscribe to nearly any podcast.

I was delighted to have come up with several titles that had a certain “ring” to them, and would probably lend themselves to a worthwhile future blog post. I fully intend on developing many of them into articles, as I realized that my talk is a collection of ideas that I have and will express via this blog.

One of my favorite phrases was:

Fight to stay excited.
The world wants to bum you out.

Plain and simple.

I find myself gravitating towards authors and personalities that realize this fact. Books, podcasts, and websites can all draw my attention if we have this commonality established. We prioritize excitement, and realize that there is a fight to keep it this way.

Art and design is a field that many outsiders do not understand. Some of us are first faced with this reality when we tell our parents that we want to pursue art as a career, and they have no clue how in the world one would be able to generate income with art as an occupation. This is fine. Even most artists have no clue how to generate income with art as an occupation.

In regard to the parents; Many assume the only way to make a living is to simply work a nine-to-five job, doing whatever they tell you to do. Our country is built upon the basic idea that you get any job that will take you, work for eight hours, and you get to leave it at 5:00 every day. However, there was never any promise or guarantee of happiness. I see this as an enormous problem.

The American work force would like us to believe that “happiness” is merely having your bills paid. Now, go to sleep so that you can get up for work tomorrow, and do it all over again. Be happy that you even have a job.

From a certain perspective, all of the above is true. I can step into anyone’s shoes and look at a situation as ideal. A homeless person would kill to have one of those 9-to-5 I-hate-my-life jobs. An entry level employee would kill to be a manager. Et cetera, et cetera.

But personally, I’m out of that realm entirely. From my shoes, the majority, quite often, leaves me scratching my head.

I mean, wasn’t anyone serious when they proclaimed, “When I grow up, I want to be a ______ !” Did everyone assume that the excitement they had for life, for riding their bikes, and having fun as a kid, would eventually die off, as adulthood encroached upon us?

I didn’t.

I imagined myself happy and excited — throughout my entire life. When I told my Mom that “I wanted to be an artist when i grew up!” I was completely serious.

So this isn’t a soapbox to point fingers at the nine-to-fivers. It’s also not an assumption that all nine-to-fivers are unhappy. Some of these nine-to-fivers are doing exactly what they wanted to do with their lives, and I commend them for it.

The point I’m trying to make is for creatives like myself. In a world with everyone wanting to eventually baptize you into the corporate machine, you must dedicate yourself to your own path. You must fight to stay excited. The world wants to bum you out.

Many of us begin as crazy, off-the-wall artists. We then realize that fine art is lovely, but graphic design is a clearer way of having actual, paying work. We later find ourselves doing what can technically be called “graphic design” but in a very boring fashion. We began splattering paint all over the walls, and before we know it, we are laying out images and text in a trading post. So much so, that we don’t really know if we are an artist anymore at all.

The world has a way of putting a suit and tie on us. They don’t know any better, it’s how they were taught to operate. The world has a way of putting the bouncing creativity into a cubicle. Companies assume containment is order, and order is better business practice.

American business is like a little baby that doesn’t know any better – so it’s often pointless to attempt discipline. So I’m not. The corporate world is what is it, and I’ve just chosen to have no part of it.

They don’t rip your soul away all at once. They just chip at it, little by little, so that you don’t notice the change. There’s just a little piece of you dying every day. It’s chipping away at youthful excitement, and it’s chipping away at the guts needed to travel your own path. With every day, you become more fearful of actually being who you promised yourself you would become. With every day, you’re fooled into believing more excuses at why you couldn’t possibly make it on your own.

All this to explain that the alternative is a very undefined path. Being a creative for a living, and in my case, freelance, is a path that has turned down convention time and time again. College degree? I don’t need it, and don’t want the debt. Health insurance? Eh, I can just get my own. Suit and tie? No thanks, it feels like I’m being strangled. Your very own cubicle? Nope, I sing too loud while I work.

The conventional route of occupation has simply never made sense to me, and I’ve always been pretty insistent upon maintain my own soul.

What has made sense to me is this passion that I’ve maintained for making art. It makes sense to me that I can get lost designing graphics, and completely lose track of time. I love that I don’t even know what a time card looks like. I love that ‘working hours’ is a concept that I’ve never had to understand. I love accepting work because it excites me, not because someone told me that I have to do it. I like that my clients feel more like teammates than burdens. I’m excited to be in a field full of creative people, excited about what’s next. I love looking at the portfolio I’ve accumulated over the years, and knowing that it was me who created it all, and that it’s all a result of the my hard work. I love what I do, and the way that I do it.

Now, I could rewrite the previous paragraph with all of the nuts and bolts of how this all actually happens. I could negatively describe ‘working hours’ as the feeling of my eyes burning at 4:30 am, when all I want to do is go to sleep. I could envy punching a time card because it means that I could leave my work on the desk, and walk away. But, the real truth is that the “cons” have never really felt like “cons.”

This whole freelance operation is like a monkey on my back, except the monkey is really awesome, and is like my best friend. I feel way more comfortable and myself when the monkey is there.

See, my work is my life. Most people would view that as a negative statement. But, people’s surnames used to describe their job. Joseph Shoemaker, Bob Miller, etc. Their work was so much a part of them, that is was their name. They took pride in it.

So the truth is that working on your own and following your passion IS the hard way to do it. You don’t get the luxury of turning it off. You don’t leave it. If you follow all the rules, you get your degree, and your job, but you don’t get promised happiness. So following your passion promises nothing, except that you like what you’re doing. Making it financially stable and steady, that depends on whether you love it enough to grind it out for a while, until it begins to work. It depends if you have the energy to always find better ways of making your operation run, and to be dedicated to pursuing what makes you happiest.

Happiness and excitement, those should be the goal. I have a cosmic belief that your love and passion can overcome the basic logistical stresses that many face when trying to get an operation up and running. While a base income is necessary, it cannot be the reason. The goal must be the work, maintaining the excitement behind the work, and evolving naturally. Expecting a specific monetary figure, and deeming yourself a failure if you don’t reach it, is the first step of the decline, and the first cue that you are off on the wrong foot. If you can look back, and be happy with the work, you have to have some higher belief that everything else will fall into place. Good work gets noticed, and if you dedicate yourself to producing quality art, and work harder than anyone else you know at it, then I have to believe that it all leads to bigger and better things.

Sounds quite idealistic to a person who has relied on the system their whole lives. For the other portion of us, who have had little acquaintance with said system, it makes perfect sense. That “adult” brain will always keep us from taking these risks, while our former wide-eyed “child” brain is left increasingly disappointed with the “practical” choices of it’s adult self.

The further we get from the kid who “wants to be an artist when they grow up,” the further we’re going to get from a deeply happy existence.

Get out while you can.

I want to thank VP Matthew Flick for asking me, and The School Of Advertising Art in Kettering, Ohio for having me speak. SAA is an amazing place, and geared to get these students equipped to have great design skills, but to also have great design lives. I only wanted to be added encouragement to an already great situation. I want to thank the students for being attentive, receptive, curious, and enthusiastic. They all had excitement right away, which, very quickly, killed any nerves I may have had when I walked in.

I’m excited to get the ball rolling on more speaking engagements. I have a few lined up, and am quite optimistic about speaking on a more regular basis. I have a more clear and concise point of view, these days, and I’m eager to speak up about it.

I love what I do for a living, and I’m hoping that there’s a way that I can make it rub off on everyone else.

Wish me luck.

-B