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And to think I thought everyone had stopped reading cos I have been so crap at posting recently...
Anyway...
The good and exciting news is that I have FINALLY been offered a permanent position at the place I have been freelancing at for the last few months.
It's not huge news in a way. After all, I knew from the start they did want me in permanently and I have been there full time for the last 3 months. And it means a pay cut - not in a bad way, just that freelancers do get very well paid to make up for the uncertainty of their employment, so I will lose a sizeable chunk of income in exchange for security.
But it's also all kinds of wonderful.
It's recognition, after struggling against being undervalued at the magazine. It's not just a case that they've had three months to see what I can do, and want me more than ever. It's having a niche - I am their only real illustrator, and certainly their best. It helps kill the not-good-enough feelings that curse my perfectionist brain - I may not be as fast as someone, or as good at reading a brand, but I have something that I am best at, so it all trades off.
It's security, which is absolutely worth the trade off in income. It is knowing that half the reason I have been waiting so long is that this company take employment seriously, and won't take someone on if they feel there's any risk of letting them go again. (The company originally developed many years back from the management buy-out of a local council department, and you can see it in lots of ways... mainly good ones, like flexitime, full sick pay, good pension scheme, mundane but little-things-matter stuff.) And it helps that the client list is full of big, governmental type organisations - the MOD, the Environment Agency, the DWP, not small companies likely to be floored by a credit crunch - and a lot of the work we produce is financial reports, internal communications, public information schemes, things that are always going to have a slot in the budget.
And considering it's such stuffy-sounding clients and such dry subjects, the job also involves a surprisingly high level of proper, as-good-as-you-can-get design work. These clients want the best design possible - innovative, inventive, solid, proven, thorough, world-beating... all in all, something that works (and "works" means a LOT in this world) and stands alongside the best in the market. IS the best in the market. The work wins awards, in fact, many cliemts now expect it to. And I am now part of that. (It's a little scary too...)
It's also the mundane things. It's finally getting my own key so I can come in and leave when I like, instead of having to leave with the last full-time person, and bash on the door to be let in if it's outside office hours. It's switching from grab-every-hour-you-can to a 37 hour week. (Although there is overtime. Which in itself is a good thing... ALL design jobs involve overtime. If you ever find a job that says "no overtime", it just means they won't be paying you to do it...)
But more simply than that, its... Well, ever since I decided I was going to do whatever I had to to break into a career in design (five years ago, in fact, when I was recovering from my wheelchair-bound spell of Erythema Nodosum) I have always felt like I was on the outside, looking in. I had a fine art degree, and not a design one. I didn't know where you even began designing something. Or rather I did. but I didn't know that I did. I felt like there was some great secret I wasn't privy to. At first I was a database developer as my main job, and doing design work on the side. I'd call myself a designer - and I had serious paying clients - but I always felt like someone was going to pop up and shout "fraud!"
Then I was at the magazine, but was always SO uncertain about my position. For the first year I was part time, dealing with a bad manager, who reviewed the quality of your work and how much "you deserve to be here" not on how good the stuff you produced was, but on how the company cash flow looked that month... if the sales team had a bad month, it was invariably "Well, I'm not sure if we have a place here for you, you're going to have to work harder if you want to be full time," even if I had been getting compliments (and winning us new advertisers) left, right and centre.
Then the big money crunch came, I was let go, the bad manager was fired soon after, and the first thing the new boss did was hire me back again. But even then I was insecure: I was still a part-timer (by choice, by now, I had grown into it) and so people would still walk straight past me to talk to Andy, the nominal Head Designer, even though we pretty much split the work. (To be fair, he acknowledged completely that we were working as equals, and I was never bothered about positions... but when people would completely blank me to wait for ages to ask him the simplest design question that a 2-year-old could have answered, well, that kinds of drags you down after a while.)
When the magazine crumbled and I moved to being a full time freelancer, I did feel more appreciated - people were happy to see me, and thanking me for the smallest thing. (Everyone loves a freelancer, mainly cos when we get called in it's cos everything has gone tits up, and any help is a godsend!) And the last few months I have been full time, in charge of my own projects, responsible to my own clients, but within a large professional company with specialist support when I need it. The only nagging feeling has been "So why don't they want me permanently?" Because as a freelancer you can always be let go. And I have known all the whys and wherefores (mainly that the design department wanted me, they just had to convinve the MD it made good business sense to take on another full-time hire) but there was still that last barrier keeping me as an outsider. Not one of the team. Not quite there yet.
Now I feel like I am officially here. Wherever here is. I'm not sure, but it's MINE.
It has also come at a really good time because my brother left the country last week... possibly for good.
It all began a few months back when he got a call from somebody in Apple inviting him to meet them for breakfast in San Francisco. Someone very high up in Apple. In fact, someone second only to Steve Jobs.
It wasn't completely out of the blue... the company he was with has done a lot of work with Apple in the past, and he headed a great deal of it. In fact, Apple's switch to Intel chips stems directly from his first project with the company. So it wasn't entirely unexpected.
Anyway, the breakfast went well, the next couple of days of meeting everyone imaginable within the company went well, and he is now en route to the USA, by way of Cork, to start his new life doing strangely techie things for Apple. (He has to wait until October for his visa to come through, and Cork is Apple European HQ, so he's located there for now, bunking with the locals but working with the US teams until he can get out there in person.)
The last couple of months he's been packing up and clearing house. I have inherited many mugs, a PS2 and assorted games, a potential waffle-maker (once my Mum gets bored of it) and a fluffy snow tiger called Fred. And last Thursday, he left Manchester for good, and flew out to Cork.
And I miss him.
It's very strange.
Ever since we stopped the cold war of the early/mid-teens, we've been pretty close. But in a lazy kind of way. He was only over in Manchester, and we'd see each other every other month or so. But that was usually at family gatherings. The rest of the time we'd send the odd text or email promising to call and visit... and only actually manage to every six months or so, usually when something came up to force the issue. Not out of any reluctance - I genuinely loved going over to see him - but just because life and time and fuzziness of days got in the way and suddenly next thing you know, it's Christmas again and we're back at parental homestead and promising to meet up soon.
But in the week since he'd been gone, I have REALLY missed him.
It's so strange. If he hadn't left, I doubt I would have talked to him much over the past week. Actually no, unless there was something I needed to ask or some reason for a visit coming up, we probably wouldn't have been in touch at all. Although I might well have though I need to get round to it some time.
I think I just miss the fact of him. H was always just there, the other side of the Pennines. I may not have got round to going over there much, but I always could. you know, next weekend. When I get a chance. Next month, I promise. And now that's gone.
I am already planning a trip out to Cork to see him, and one to San Francisco once he's settled in. But the planning is rubbing it in all the harder. Now the only way we're going to get to see each other will involve taking time off, and air flights, and money, and planning months ahead. Even now, but especially once he's in the US. West coast, that's almost literally half a world away.
And there's the selfish part of me pipes up too. My holiday time is going to be less my own, because I will always need to plan a chunk of it round trips over there to keep in touch. (And no, I don't have to. But ~I~ have to. You know?) From now on, it's going to be me that has to be on call for dog-sitting, for emergencies, for family stuff... the scary important stuff, like if my Dad has a midnight hypo, and the simple, voluntary stuff, like trying to make sure I meet my Mum for lumch. At the most extreme, I always had vague plans to live abroad for a while, but can I leave my parents alone in the UK? I don't know...
But mostly it's just this feeling of things drifting away, moving on, lost in time, changing. It feels very sad, in a dry, grown-up kind of way. I found myself close to tears at random times over the past week, and I feel more embarrassed than anything, a naked in public feeling. It's silly being upset over something that's just the world moving on... after all, death may be an undiscovered foreign country, but a foreign country isn't exactly death. Even the USA. I mean, they have 600 flavours of ice cream there, even if they can't spell flavour.
And changes are good too, yes? And so I get the new job thing to remind me of this. Even if it is the old job, kind of...
Strange weeks indeed.
Anyway...
The good and exciting news is that I have FINALLY been offered a permanent position at the place I have been freelancing at for the last few months.
It's not huge news in a way. After all, I knew from the start they did want me in permanently and I have been there full time for the last 3 months. And it means a pay cut - not in a bad way, just that freelancers do get very well paid to make up for the uncertainty of their employment, so I will lose a sizeable chunk of income in exchange for security.
But it's also all kinds of wonderful.
It's recognition, after struggling against being undervalued at the magazine. It's not just a case that they've had three months to see what I can do, and want me more than ever. It's having a niche - I am their only real illustrator, and certainly their best. It helps kill the not-good-enough feelings that curse my perfectionist brain - I may not be as fast as someone, or as good at reading a brand, but I have something that I am best at, so it all trades off.
It's security, which is absolutely worth the trade off in income. It is knowing that half the reason I have been waiting so long is that this company take employment seriously, and won't take someone on if they feel there's any risk of letting them go again. (The company originally developed many years back from the management buy-out of a local council department, and you can see it in lots of ways... mainly good ones, like flexitime, full sick pay, good pension scheme, mundane but little-things-matter stuff.) And it helps that the client list is full of big, governmental type organisations - the MOD, the Environment Agency, the DWP, not small companies likely to be floored by a credit crunch - and a lot of the work we produce is financial reports, internal communications, public information schemes, things that are always going to have a slot in the budget.
And considering it's such stuffy-sounding clients and such dry subjects, the job also involves a surprisingly high level of proper, as-good-as-you-can-get design work. These clients want the best design possible - innovative, inventive, solid, proven, thorough, world-beating... all in all, something that works (and "works" means a LOT in this world) and stands alongside the best in the market. IS the best in the market. The work wins awards, in fact, many cliemts now expect it to. And I am now part of that. (It's a little scary too...)
It's also the mundane things. It's finally getting my own key so I can come in and leave when I like, instead of having to leave with the last full-time person, and bash on the door to be let in if it's outside office hours. It's switching from grab-every-hour-you-can to a 37 hour week. (Although there is overtime. Which in itself is a good thing... ALL design jobs involve overtime. If you ever find a job that says "no overtime", it just means they won't be paying you to do it...)
But more simply than that, its... Well, ever since I decided I was going to do whatever I had to to break into a career in design (five years ago, in fact, when I was recovering from my wheelchair-bound spell of Erythema Nodosum) I have always felt like I was on the outside, looking in. I had a fine art degree, and not a design one. I didn't know where you even began designing something. Or rather I did. but I didn't know that I did. I felt like there was some great secret I wasn't privy to. At first I was a database developer as my main job, and doing design work on the side. I'd call myself a designer - and I had serious paying clients - but I always felt like someone was going to pop up and shout "fraud!"
Then I was at the magazine, but was always SO uncertain about my position. For the first year I was part time, dealing with a bad manager, who reviewed the quality of your work and how much "you deserve to be here" not on how good the stuff you produced was, but on how the company cash flow looked that month... if the sales team had a bad month, it was invariably "Well, I'm not sure if we have a place here for you, you're going to have to work harder if you want to be full time," even if I had been getting compliments (and winning us new advertisers) left, right and centre.
Then the big money crunch came, I was let go, the bad manager was fired soon after, and the first thing the new boss did was hire me back again. But even then I was insecure: I was still a part-timer (by choice, by now, I had grown into it) and so people would still walk straight past me to talk to Andy, the nominal Head Designer, even though we pretty much split the work. (To be fair, he acknowledged completely that we were working as equals, and I was never bothered about positions... but when people would completely blank me to wait for ages to ask him the simplest design question that a 2-year-old could have answered, well, that kinds of drags you down after a while.)
When the magazine crumbled and I moved to being a full time freelancer, I did feel more appreciated - people were happy to see me, and thanking me for the smallest thing. (Everyone loves a freelancer, mainly cos when we get called in it's cos everything has gone tits up, and any help is a godsend!) And the last few months I have been full time, in charge of my own projects, responsible to my own clients, but within a large professional company with specialist support when I need it. The only nagging feeling has been "So why don't they want me permanently?" Because as a freelancer you can always be let go. And I have known all the whys and wherefores (mainly that the design department wanted me, they just had to convinve the MD it made good business sense to take on another full-time hire) but there was still that last barrier keeping me as an outsider. Not one of the team. Not quite there yet.
Now I feel like I am officially here. Wherever here is. I'm not sure, but it's MINE.
It has also come at a really good time because my brother left the country last week... possibly for good.
It all began a few months back when he got a call from somebody in Apple inviting him to meet them for breakfast in San Francisco. Someone very high up in Apple. In fact, someone second only to Steve Jobs.
It wasn't completely out of the blue... the company he was with has done a lot of work with Apple in the past, and he headed a great deal of it. In fact, Apple's switch to Intel chips stems directly from his first project with the company. So it wasn't entirely unexpected.
Anyway, the breakfast went well, the next couple of days of meeting everyone imaginable within the company went well, and he is now en route to the USA, by way of Cork, to start his new life doing strangely techie things for Apple. (He has to wait until October for his visa to come through, and Cork is Apple European HQ, so he's located there for now, bunking with the locals but working with the US teams until he can get out there in person.)
The last couple of months he's been packing up and clearing house. I have inherited many mugs, a PS2 and assorted games, a potential waffle-maker (once my Mum gets bored of it) and a fluffy snow tiger called Fred. And last Thursday, he left Manchester for good, and flew out to Cork.
And I miss him.
It's very strange.
Ever since we stopped the cold war of the early/mid-teens, we've been pretty close. But in a lazy kind of way. He was only over in Manchester, and we'd see each other every other month or so. But that was usually at family gatherings. The rest of the time we'd send the odd text or email promising to call and visit... and only actually manage to every six months or so, usually when something came up to force the issue. Not out of any reluctance - I genuinely loved going over to see him - but just because life and time and fuzziness of days got in the way and suddenly next thing you know, it's Christmas again and we're back at parental homestead and promising to meet up soon.
But in the week since he'd been gone, I have REALLY missed him.
It's so strange. If he hadn't left, I doubt I would have talked to him much over the past week. Actually no, unless there was something I needed to ask or some reason for a visit coming up, we probably wouldn't have been in touch at all. Although I might well have though I need to get round to it some time.
I think I just miss the fact of him. H was always just there, the other side of the Pennines. I may not have got round to going over there much, but I always could. you know, next weekend. When I get a chance. Next month, I promise. And now that's gone.
I am already planning a trip out to Cork to see him, and one to San Francisco once he's settled in. But the planning is rubbing it in all the harder. Now the only way we're going to get to see each other will involve taking time off, and air flights, and money, and planning months ahead. Even now, but especially once he's in the US. West coast, that's almost literally half a world away.
And there's the selfish part of me pipes up too. My holiday time is going to be less my own, because I will always need to plan a chunk of it round trips over there to keep in touch. (And no, I don't have to. But ~I~ have to. You know?) From now on, it's going to be me that has to be on call for dog-sitting, for emergencies, for family stuff... the scary important stuff, like if my Dad has a midnight hypo, and the simple, voluntary stuff, like trying to make sure I meet my Mum for lumch. At the most extreme, I always had vague plans to live abroad for a while, but can I leave my parents alone in the UK? I don't know...
But mostly it's just this feeling of things drifting away, moving on, lost in time, changing. It feels very sad, in a dry, grown-up kind of way. I found myself close to tears at random times over the past week, and I feel more embarrassed than anything, a naked in public feeling. It's silly being upset over something that's just the world moving on... after all, death may be an undiscovered foreign country, but a foreign country isn't exactly death. Even the USA. I mean, they have 600 flavours of ice cream there, even if they can't spell flavour.
And changes are good too, yes? And so I get the new job thing to remind me of this. Even if it is the old job, kind of...
Strange weeks indeed.
