“Cause sometimes son, you’ve just gotta get on with it”

At about this time last week, I had pretty much a mountain ahead of me. I may have not been willing to admit it this time last week – I thought I had it all in hand and only had a couple of things left to do after all. I mean, how long could screen designs and finishing off sketches really take? Well, a lot longer than expected actually.

It took me so much longer than expected that I ended up working until about 11.30 one night – after starting at 8. It wasn’t one of those on-off couple of hours either; a bit of TV there and ten minutes of TV here, it was a full on 3 and a half hours. It taught me once again that I don’t know how fast or slow I tend to work, and a harsh lesson at that. Once again I’m sat here saying I’ll learn next week, I won’t be up until half eleven again. I don’t think it’s so much of my fault though, it’s just the fact that I still don’t know how long certain things will take as I’ve never done them before. It’ll get better with time, and I’m already getting a bit better at anticipating how long things will take me to do. I’m finally starting to figure out my work patterns again and what days are best for me to work. It’s slowly but surely coming together. I’m still going to say though: next week I’ve got to try a bit harder to be more disciplined and force myself to work when I say I will.

Slightly linked to the last paragraph is the program we’ve been using to create our designs – Pagemaker. I must admit, after having to actually use it for more serious work it has started to aggravate me a bit using it. I find it to be awkward at times, and I seem to be going the long way around the houses to get things done by using Pagemaker. Having to lay out my text to get it to submission standard has been even worse, and I’ve literally spent 7 hours trying to get it in there today. That has most definitely annoyed me a lot, as I feel I could have spent my time better making changes and completing other bits and bats I had to do.

Something that has helped me a lot this week though, and that was feedback. I’ve been getting a fair bit from other guys on the course this week, and asking other people’s opinions including the feedback group has helped me form my designs into a more complete stage. It’s left me feeling ultimately satisfied with what I’ve come up with, and nice to hear some positive comments to support what I’ve designed.

I’m a long way from being a proper designer, but it’s getting there.