I have tons and tons of drive. When I get interested in something, I can easily go overboard and spend a lot of time thinking about it. I’m no genius by any means, but if I set to something which I’m passionate about, then I can usually get up to speed relatively well.
My wife used to say that I “whore” myself well. That used to be true, but it’s been a while since I’ve done it. Back in the day, it used to be about photography, which is why I photographed half-a-dozen weddings based on nothing but a Flickr account and some self-belief. I ran a donation-based off-camera-flash photo workshop on the streets of Bern and over fifty attendees turned up.
My self-belief has taken a knock over the past few years because when you’re in a space with millions of others, comparatively few people pay attention. But I have the advantage that I know how good I am at my job. I know how to design. I obsess about whitespace and typefaces. (“Fonts”, to you.) I code, I use existing tools where they make sense. I take part in the open-source WordPress community and I help people where I can.
I’ve taken many leaps of faith over the past twenty-odd years, and they’ve mostly been very successful. When I left the “safety” of my first job in Switzerland after seven years, I was stepping onto a train into the unknown: taking me and what I’d learned into the next adventure. Nervously, I began the next stage with trepidation and uncertainty, but it turned out to be the right move.
Some leaps of faith may have ended up taking me on a different path than the one I’d expected, but all have led me to where I am now. Not just on a personal level, but also in terms of career, and lifestyle, and security, and adventure. I have learned when to take a chance, and when to play it safe. Both routes have worked out for me, and I’ve learned a lot about distinguishing when which of the two paths is the correct one to take.
New things are coming and although they’re scary, I’m really excited about applying my drive to them. To apply the focus—no pun intended—which I’ve applied to programming and design and development and photography since I was at school. Shifting up a gear instead of playing it safe, and taking more active accountability for the years ahead.
As Joe McNally has always written in his blog: more to come…
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