I’ve been attempting to write this short essay since I left my last company in 2023. I was stormed with emotions I couldn’t explain, and I felt traumatized whenever I tried to “design” something. It made me agitated and unhappy.
I’ve had conversations about it for a long time with my wife and some friends, about why I find it so hard to go back to the field as a designer.
Taking my time to understand myself more, the underlying issues surfaced naturally. I was able to pinpoint the struggles I had and the motives that drove me in this career.
It was around 2003 when I was a teenager, spending the evening with my cousin at his family house. We were just chilling in his bedroom. I was flipping through magazine pages while my cousin sat at the computer working on something I never knew even existed.
That was the first time I discovered Photoshop. Watching my cousin compose graphic elements for his school club was mind blowing. The first thing I did when I got back home was boot up my laptop and jump onto a torrent site to download a cracked copy of the software.
I learned the how abouts, and that made me “the guy” in my immediate circle — the one to go to for graphics and shitty logos (they were cool back then). I loved it, and it was all I cared about as I grew up.
Now I’m 40 years old. Looking back, I realize I spent nearly 23 years doing design services. Some jobs were actually cool, some were not, but that’s the ebb and flow of every career.
I grew up in a dysfunctional home and was practically neglected emotionally. That made me starve for approval and attention, and I was willing to do anything to get it.
So basically, you can put one and one together now. I used graphic design as a tool to gain approval and praise. I’m not dismissing the functionality of the job or how much I gained from it, but that was the root of it. I was accepting any form of work just to be loved and accepted. As much as I gained from this career, it practically ruined me. I neglected myself and what really mattered to me. It ruined my creativity. I neglected it in order to be part of the whole, and that actually alienated me the most.
I no longer care about it. I no longer care about working for clients. All I care about now is what I really care about: building stuff even if it’s absurd. Unleashing my creativity and making fun things, sometimes practical, sometimes not.
I’ve learned that creativity is never about money, or gaining popularity, or social acceptance. Creativity is self expression, the voice of the soul, and I’m going to protect it no matter what.
These days I’m happy and content with what I’m doing. Spending time with my parents, my wife, and my in laws. Building fun projects with my wife or playing video games all night.
That enhanced my creativity and allowed me to come up with ideas and projects I’m working on right now.
I’m currently working on multiple projects that I hope will see the light soon. Some of them I’m collaborating on with my amazing wife, which brought most of the fun and joy into those projects.