I hate my job!
It’s been coming for a long while, but today it finally hit me. I hate what I do for a living. I know as jobs go sitting at a computer drawing pictures sounds like an easy life, but behind the creative façade I am essentially a lacky. Yes, I get to flex my creative muscles and design beautiful things that people pay for, but the journey to that finished thing is never as easy as it should be
Clients. They are the problem. As professions go, graphic design has to be one of the least respected.
People don’t go to their doctor to be cured and end up telling them they know better and that they don’t have cancer, they actually have a bit of a cold and make them prescribe some Lemsip Max.
People don’t take their car to Kwik Fit and proceed to tell the mechanic exactly what is wrong and how to fix it.
So why do my clients think they know as much or more than I do about something I spent four years studying and ten years practising? It’s a constant uphill struggle to gain any small bit of satisfaction from a project, or to have just one week where a client doesn’t get shirty about the fact that ink takes time to dry and thereby ruin your day.
Don’t get me wrong. This particular employer I am with now is great when put up against some of the other places I have worked, but the job itself is starting to affect my ability to enjoy my life and the time is coming when I need to do something about it.
My ‘other’ profession gives me the freedom to produce the kind of work I want to produce. The clients send me emails telling me how fantastic my work is. I don’t have to sit in a room filled with the ringing of phones for five days a week. Job satisfaction. And I can earn the same amount of mortgage repayment, if not more!
I am about to snap. Watch this space.
Add comment September 13th, 2006
