Finally finished the annual thank you card and ordered from Moo considering giving it a bit of a tweak and uploading for others to use (without the photo)…

Final result looks nothing like original sketch (which I’ve temporarily mislaid). Original idea was a complex vector design, decided halfway through to switch to a simple more textured idea. I think it’s got a bit of character.

I stuck these in my Etsy basket a while back and did nothing about it because I couldn’t afford to spend cash on art, then the other day I tricked myself while half asleep and just bought them, glad I did so as they are awesome.

John Karpinsky’s Guerra de las Galaxias – Star Wars Day of the Dead/El Diade Los Muertos prints

I just need to get some decent frames and stop trying to convince myself to try and make my own frames, it’s not worked out great so far.

As part of my attempt to discover a more pleasant manner of making a living I’ve started trawling through all the design assets I’ve created over the last 15 years, and there’s tons of the stuff.

I’d assumed I’d be able to dig out a handful of textures, patterns and shapes that I may be able to re-use or package up in some manner, I didn’t expect there to be quite so much. It’s all in a terrible mess. I have an awful habit of creating a pattern or template for one job and leaving it in that job’s folder so I’ll never find it again if I need it elsewhere. A couple of times in the past I’ve started trying to categorize items without much success. This time round I’ve created a categorized Dropbox folder to keep everything in (yes, it will be backed up somewhere non-cloud based).

I need to get into the habit of adding any re-usable asset to the library as soon as I’ve created it (rather than assume I’ll get round to it later). The big challenge is going to be going through the 50 Gig of designs I already have and extracting anything of value. To compound the lack of organisation many of the assets only exist within the designs themselves.

It’s quite nostalgic going through old work, especially the bits related to the record label, hopefully I’ll find something of use!

Today I’m making the first steps towards spreading my income streams (careful now). I’ve set up stores on Spreadshirt and Zazzle and created a design and some products using a robot I drew over the Christmas break.

Spreadshirt has so far proved to be the easiest to use with helpful documentation, clearly defined guidlines and flexible setup. Zazzle is a little more confusing at first, but the ability to bulk create a whole bunch of products in one go (and no apparent limits on number of designs) makes it pretty attractive.

The stores are here: Zazzle and Spreadshirt

Here’s the robot:

Who doesn’t need a child’s t-shirt with a slightly worrying robot on the front?

Having become increasingly disgruntled over the last few years with the industry I actively chose to become a part of it’s time to start looking at alternative income streams.

I’m not really in a position to complain too much, I earn a relatively comfortable amount doing a job that imposes no serious health risks, nothing strenuous and is only as stressful as I let it be – which is pretty damn stressful but that’s my problem, not that of the industry. The issue is that as time goes on I’m working longer and longer hours for the same amount of money. I’m spending more and more time and cash ensuring I have the skills and the tools to keep my business in the position it’s in while I’m finding we are being squeezed more and more both creatively and financially.The bulk of the issues are down to how I run my business, mostly with managing expectations and having spent too many years accepting work of a type I should have passed on. While this is something I am addressing I also need to consider the long term implications of an income which is directly tied to the number of hours I can put in.

So, here I am with a big bucket of useful skills – pre-apocalypse anyway, I’ll be useless once the zombies take over – most of which I rarely use to their maximum effect, I have good a work ethic (possibly more ‘workaholic’) and the motivation to get stuff done. I’ve considered a complete career change but the responsibilities of mortgage and small child make this a very difficult choice. I’ve considered giving up on the self-employment lark and getting a proper job with security – as much security as this industry allows anyway – but again I can’t see a huge long term benefit. I have friends who have done as such and are generally no happier, with little more free time for family or personal interests (my real goal) and I just don’t have the lack of ethics or the desire to claw my way to the top and make the big money.

In this modern world of free and easy communication and commerce there are other options. An income methodology which is becoming increasingly alluring is that of the micro-business. Rather than concentrating on one big core business with big clients and big budgets the idea is to split your time amongst many smaller ideas, each of which can bring in a small amount of income so removing the reliance on any one client or business. This (in theory) allows for flexibility and fast evolution, one idea not doing so well? Kill it. Another idea doing better than expected? Feed it.

All fairly obvious for a large corporation but not something I would have considered for a small business or individual until fairly recently. About two years ago friends started telling me it’s what I should be doing. I did agree right away with the idea but have done nothing about it, mostly through fear of failure and because of workload but it’s time to give it a go. I have no expectations of making a massive change in the short term, and long term I fully expect to still be running my business – albeit in a more efficient and effective manner. I’m aiming for a better balance, if I can be in a position where I have income not linked to my primary business I will be more able to pick and choose the more creative or financially beneficial projects. I might also get the occasional guilt free holiday.

I’m not going to set any targets initially, it’s going to be an experimental and fairly organic process, I also don’t plan on buying any of the shonky looking books on the topic because there’s the worrying smell of snake oil self help around most of them. I will however be talking to friends and acquaintances who have already succeeded in getting off the ground. Wish me luck and I’ll try and keep you updated, also let me know if you have any experiences, good or bad with making a living like this.

Looking at facebook or twitter at this time of year you could be led to believe that the next twelve months will include a monumental change for the better in all of mankind. Everyone’s at it, planning to be, healthier, more rounded, generally better people. I am as guilty as anyone else, a few days holiday and I’m ready to turn my life around by the end of the week.

It’s not just New Year, I feel like I spend most of my life trying to make major life changes, at any one time I’m trying to do any and all of the following: finally write an album, become good enough at illustration to produce a book, do something entirely different for a living, exercise more, eat better, spend less money, own less stuff, work more, go out more, spend more time with my family, spend more time with my friends, be more socially aware, be more politically aware, spend more time on my own (in a positive way), be smarter, be more organised, look after my car better, look after my house better, be more polite, sort out the crap in the attic (both metaphorically and literally), be more charitable, write three blog posts a week, spend a few hours a week out with my camera, learn to edit video properly, draw cartoons, accept more work and handle it better, finish/start all of the several thousand personal projects I’ve planned. Plus a host of other crap that bounces round my head on a near-constant basis.

Most of these things are not destined to happen, those that do, do so to such a small degree it’s immeasurable. Ennui may be a minor cause of this ongoing failure but the real root cause is there’s just too much to deal with. These self-defined expectations compounded with the those from external sources (clients, family, society, etc) become so overwhelming that rather than face any of them, my brain switches directly to standby. I’ve tried a handful of self-help books and techniques, all of which have been at best pointless, at worst they have intensified the shouting in my head. Anything promising a complete life change in 9 hours (or similar) do nothing more than add pressure and things to the big list of stuff to sort out.

I’ve been reading Oliver Burkeman’s Help! in which he takes a skeptical and logical look at the self-help industry. I started reading it for entertainment value, but have learned a fair amount in the process. Primarily I have realised something which should be obvious, people (generally) cannot make huge changes to their lives in quick easy (or even hard) steps, it’s just not in our nature. Tiny incremental changes which over time can build up to make a difference are much easier to fathom.

No more big resolutions, no lists of major life changes, just try a little bit here and there as and when the opportunity arises.

Happy New Year.

x

The learning to write music plan is going well. Better than expected in some ways. I’ve so far managed to overcome the self-defeating procrastination fairly well and put in some practice most days. More importantly I’ve managed to get back into it again on those occasions where other things (sleep mostly) prevent me practicing for a while. I’ve got a pretty good balance between time spent studying and time spent improvising and writing tracks.

I had completely forgotten about the ‘cold light of day’ issue that comes with any creative project, where you work hard into the night on the best track/illustration/whatever EVER only to find it’s a bucket of poo when you review it the next day. I’m not finding it too difficult to deal with this time round as I feel I’m making some real progress, I’ve also accepted that it is an important part of the learning process even if it’s a little cringe-inducing at times.

Learning music theory properly is one of the most inspiring experiences, although I’m disappointed I’ve not made the effort previously. The need to understand music theory appears to be fairly subjective, I’ve spoken to some talented musicians who claim to know no theory and in the past I’ve lazily tried to convince myself that I could be one of them. I’ve also realised how much I’ve tried to persuade myself that by writing ‘experimental’ music I could sidestep the effort involved in learning how to do things properly. The acceptance that I need a technical understanding of a subject before I can be creative with it has taken a long time to get to but I’m glad of it. I can’t state strongly enough how much difference a basic understanding of theory has made to me and I really wish I’d done this years ago. Music theory is good yeah!

I’ve been learning through a variety of sources, the best being Michael Hewitt’s Music Theory for Computer Musicians. I was a bit put off by the name expecting something a little reductive but it’s proved a brilliant introduction to theory, the book title could do without the ‘for Computer Musicians’ bit as the computer music side of things is minimal.

So, I’m getting there and hopefully soon will be able to translate the noises in my head into a format that other people can hear. I’ve got a Soundcloud account http://soundcloud.com/anxioussilence which I’m considering uploading some bits and pieces to once I’ve got the hang of structure a bit more. I am very wary of posting anything publicly as don’t really want (at this point) to encourage criticism because I am a delicate flower (who can’t be fucked with arguing with people on the internet). I’m also incredibly wary of any of my friends hearing any of my nonsense as many of them are incredibly talented musicians who may instantly hate me once they become aware of my utter lack of talent, on the other hand they might be astounded and instantly agree to form a world destroying industrial hip-hop band with me.

Self employment, a great way to slowly drive yourself insane with constant nagging doubts, unrealistic deadlines and ridiculous working hours. But on the the other hand you’re your own boss so you can work in your pants.

I’ve been self employed for the majority of my work life – since 1998. There are some benefits to this manner of working, there are also some disadvantages which can over time become hellish burdens if you allow them to, which on occasion I do. The real crux of self-employment is taking responsibility for your situation. It can be easy to allow a problem to recur, grow out of control and leave you blaming clients, suppliers or the industry as a whole – which is not to say that there are not problems caused by clients, suppliers or the industry as a whole, just that many are not or if they are can be solved relatively easily.

The biggest issue I deal with pretty much constantly is that of workload. Most freelancers/studio owners face this, you either have not enough work to cover the bills or so much you don’t know where to start and cannot cover it all. I’ve been consistently fortunate in the respect I’ve never really had a point where I’ve had a lack of work (for more than a day or so anyway). Unfortunately the offset of this is that combined with my slightly obsessive disposition I’ve had very little in the way of time off for the last 14 years. When I started out this was not a massive issue, I was ok to work late nights and most weekends, the last year (since my son was born) this has become more of an issue, I don’t necessarily have the long hours available to fit in and my priorities have changed.

Not enough to pay the bills?

Stating the stunningly obvious, the problem with a lack of work is the lack of income that comes with it. As mentioned above this is not a situation I have been in as yet. Ever aware that I inevitably will be one day I do have a basic plan in place for when this arises (although it does need some work). Regardless of how successful you feel you are right now it’s always sensible to be running some form of low level marketing – to keep in practice as much as anything else – and to have a plan in place for when things start to wane.

I’ve been pretty lax for the last decade or so, all of the work we’ve picked up has been through word of mouth so I’ve felt very little necessity to promote. This is bad on two levels, firstly because it means I’ve not got anything in place for when things do slow down but also as I’ve very little control over the direction of my business and effectively get dragged by the tide (more on this another time). I do now have a basic strategy in place for new business finding which I’m hesitant to present until I’ve had a crack at, as may be clear it’s not an area I have any great knowledge of.

There are plenty of articles/books/tutorials out there on business building and I’m not eager to add to them with my unproven technique, as an incredibly basic breakdown my strategy is pretty much:
1. Engagement
Both ‘real world’ and social media networking. Nothing more complex than communicating with those in our industry on a regular basis and making ourselves known through general purpose profile raising.

2. Being really quite good at what we do
Obvious? Maybe, maybe not. Just making sure we really do supply the best service we can.

3. Portfolio
Something we can throw out at prospective clients to show them how absolutely awesome we are. More important than some  think, it’s possible to land certain types of jobs with minimal discussion if your portfolio is spanking.

4. Self Initiated Projects
The sort of work I really want us to be doing is not necessarily the sort of work we are doing right now. We are very unlikely to pick up certain types of project if we don’t have a track record with them, rather than bemoan the Catch 22 situation this puts us in we will be doing ‘sample’ projects in these areas for ourselves (NOT for free for anyone, that gives out the very wrong message that we are cheap).

There’s one very important thing to bear in mind when trying to get in new business, especially when things are tight: DON’T PANIC. It’s very hard not to sometimes but as soon as you start on this path you’re going to end up making some horrific mistakes: accepting work you really shouldn’t, dropping your rates, etc.

To much to work out what’s going on?

My speciality is having far more work on than I can possibly handle. At the outset this sounds great and friends look at me like I’m mental when I bemoan having more work on than I can manage, but it can be as dangerous as having not enough to do, if not more so in some ways.

The primary issue with an overwhelming workload (aside from no sleep and an enforced diet of pizza and fried chicken) is ensuring a consistent quality of work. It’s easy to do things well when you have plenty of time and space but as timelines get tighter your ability to keep any eye on the details can drop dramatically. This can lead to unhappy clients, missed deadlines and general frowning all round. The other main business issue is lack of time deadens innovation. While I will accept that innovation can happen under pressurised circumstances often it does not. Rather than looking for fresh approaches to jobs when under pressure, you are more likely to be just knocking them out as quickly as possible using whatever methods you already trust. I find that the biggest breakthrough’s we have had are on projects (personal or paid) where we’ve had plenty of time and space to experiment. Lack of innovation will not necessarily damage your business but it’s not going to help you build your business to the next level.

Most obviously the immediate solution to a hectic workload is to employ more people to deal with it. This is a lovely theory that doesn’t always work out too well. For a small business, taking on salaried staff can be a killer, freelancers are a good solution if you are not in a position to salary staff. Regardless of where your help comes from you’re going to have to get them acquainted with your business practices, clients and projects, this in itself can eat an awful lot of time. The best approach is a little bit of forward planning. Start taking on freelancers when you don’t quite need to, this gives you that space to get to know them properly and work out the best way of working together, then when things kick off you already have the relationship sorted. Importantly don’t treat your freelancers like a commodity, foster a proper working relationship with a selection of freelancers who you will consistently supply work to. Anyone I hire freelance I’d be happy to have as salaried staff (and hopefully one day will).

Ensuring your rates are correct can be a very effective regulator of workload. In times past I’ve ended up with a massive overload of work much of which is low quality* and achieving little other than taking up time that should be spent on other projects. Setting appropriate costs has the positive effect of filtering out the time wasters and the crappy projects which you probably shouldn’t be doing anyway. It’s always good to be a little flexible and I will drop our rates (a little!) for the right project but very rarely and only if I’m 100% sure it’s not going to backfire on me. Often those who barter and knock you down the most will turn out to be the most difficult to deal with in the long run. As a rule it’s better to hold out for the higher paid/more rewarding, and less annoying projects if your situation allows.

Very close to ensuring correct rates, be picky about what sort of projects you accept. When I first started out this would have seemed irresponsible at best, the idea of turning away work is counterintuitive but can make sense. There are certain types of job that we’ve accepted in the past which have not been in line with our business model. Doing the odd bit here and there is fine but these things can snowball and you can end up having to completely redirect your business. This could work out if the new direction is one you are comfortable with and pays the bills well, but if not you need to do something about it. There’s a couple of options here. You can expand your business to include these projects (outsourcing is very much your friend here) in such a manner as to ensure you have the resources to continue pushing in the direction you want to go. My preference is to get to know other agencies who do cover the sorts of projects we would rather avoid. This allows us to redirect the projects elsewhere while keeping the client happy and helping out whoever we pass them onto. Good karma which should hopefully flow back our way in time. Of course there is the fear with clients for whom you do assorted projects that if you pass on one of them they may take everything elsewhere (as has happened to us before), this is a risk that needs to be considered carefully and would be best dealt with by accepting the projects but outsourcing.

Once again stating the obvious an incredibly important aspect of managing workload is effective time management and ensuring you are as organised as possible. An insane amount of time can be wasted by bad business practices, and you probably don’t even know you’re wasting it. I’ve had a degree of success with the Getting Things Done method although I have found a need to revisit it on occasion for a topup. The web is full of advice and applications to help get you organised and there’s absolutely no excuse not to. Regular review of your practices is strongly advised, it’s easy to slip into bad habits especially as your business grows and evolves.

Hopefully this helps to prevent a stress related breakdown for someone! I’d love to know how other small agencies and freelancers deal with long term excessive workloads. Please let me know in the comments below.

Disclaimer - I’m not a sociopath. I have a degree of concern for my fellow man and try and conduct my business in an ethical manner. I fully appreciate that if you take the ‘it’s just business’ point of view to running your commercial affairs you probably have none of the problems above and have slightly scarier solutions if you do.

* Low Quality Work = Work that is unlikely to lead to anything further and whose outcome is something that I wouldn’t want to let anyone know I’ve been involved in. Often happens when a client insists on doing things a certain way (the wrong way) and refuses to accept advice. Previously I would grit my teeth and think of the money, now I’m less inclined.

Our garden has an incredible amount of edible stuff in it. There was an apple tree, a pear tree and a rhubarb patch when we moved in and I’ve added to it ever since with assorted fruit vegetables and herbs. Every spring I get incredibly excited about the garden and put in an immense amount of effort which dwindles as the year goes on until we hit autumn by which time work is making me want to kill myself on a daily basis and the idea of putting in a few hours of gardening a weekend makes me want to weep. I’ve been suffering progressively worse feelings of guilt the last couple of weeks as there’s been (without any assistance from myself) a fairly impressive amount of fruit slowly rotting in the garden as I run through on the way to work. I usually manage to combat this by ignoring it and hoping it goes away.

We were supposed to be visiting friends today but Alexander has been a little unwell (he’s actually much better today) and didn’t want to risk making him any worse so we canceled (sorry Max and Fi). My immediate thought was to spend the day writing WordPress plugins but considered that my nearly-wife would probably kill me in the face so opted for the more family friendly option of harvesting some stuff from the garden.

We usually make a sort of effort to freeze a bulk of the apples but don’t do that with the pears as they are a pain in the arse to freeze (you need to cook them first), so opted to make pear jam instead. Did two batches based on this Pear and Lemon jam recipe we split it into two batches, one of which we followed the recipe and the other we added some stem ginger in syrup. We thought this would supply us with some gifts for Christmas, I hadn’t realised that 2 kilos of pears makes about 4 medium jars of jam. I managed to burn it (along with my hand) a bit as well so probably best we keep it for ourselves.

It was fairly straight forward, although I fucked up a bit by trying to make jam, freeze herbs, prepare apples and pears for freezing (made the effort to freeze some pears this time) and make pear muffins all at the same time. Nothing went horribly wrong but there were some moments of flailing and disharmony within the kitchen.

Lessons learned today are to do one thing at once, especially if two of the things you are doing you have never done before; wasps like pear trees, they don’t like you being in pear trees; spending the morning in a pear tree makes me itchy; I really shouldn’t have recycled that big bag of jam jars the other week.

We now have a kitchen full of tasty fruity goodness.

I’ve spent years failing to be a musician, and now I’m just about ready, with a bit of hard work to become a failed musician.

Three of the things I most want to do with my life are art, photography and music, not for profit or the adoration of others (although both would be a pleasant bonus) but for my own enjoyment. I have as yet failed to do much of any of these. I had a brief spate of success with photography – success in the sense that I actually did some, rather than I was a successful photographer – which I put down more to the enthusiasm of my good friend Scott (a very talented photographer) with whom I used to make many trips to explore and photograph things. Unfortunately a change my life circumstance have made it increasingly difficult to find time out for such trips and I can’t seem to get up the enthusiasm for the art on my own at home (a poor excuse).

The primary issue I have is that I just don’t know how to write music, I don’t quite get the creative process and as such am afraid of mediocrity and failure, although as with any other art form failure and mediocrity must be part of the process, very few (if any) are able to pick up a skill and be stunning at it straight off, you need to fail to learn and be a bit shit before you can be less shit.

An important part of any creative process (for me) is the social side, having people you can learn with and from. The times I’ve been most active have been when I’ve been spending plenty of time with proper musicians, most notably Nick Reincarnationfish -  who introduced me to the software I love (Reason and Ableton Live) and also to an awful lot of the music that has inspired me over the years. Nick has unfortunately and selfishly moved to Leeds which prevents my easily hanging around his flat making unpleasant noises. There are plenty of online locations for the socially impoverished to knock about ideas and techniques, but frankly I’ve always found them to be a bit intimidating and scathing to the uninformed (me).

Recently my relationship with writing music has changed for the better. Some friends had some ideas for a small musical project which I’m helping out with, this has instantly highlighted how fucking awful I am at writing music, but also given me the impetus to start learning properly. In the past I avoided the need to actually learn and understand by insisting on writing impenetrable experimental noise and shitty remixes (which I shall not be posting online), to be fair to myself, I was interested in writing impenetrable experimental noise so it’s not all bad. When sitting down to write something a bit more straight forward – you know, choruses, verses, drums, bass and lead – I have not a clue where to start, but that’s fine I’ll start at zero and work my way up. I’ve shed the fear of mediocrity, I know everything I write initially will be shit, I just won’t play it to anyone.

One of the big setbacks I’ve had to deal with is my workaholism. Having spent years with the mindset that if I’m awake I should be working and if I’m awake and not working I’m worrying that I’m not working has made it difficult to do anything that I cannot tie directly to work. I’m working (haha) on this and intend to be 40% less mental by the end of the year. I’m currently forcing myself to spend an hour a day doing something creative which is not work related. This generally happens about midnight when sleep would be more sensible but it’s a step.

This has all caused me to become stupidly excited about the forthcoming release of the next version of Reason . I absolutely love Reason, and Propellerhead in general, their attitude to their customers has always been fantastic, as displayed in their current Pay What You Want deal. I’ve always had this awful habit with Reason (and Ableton Live) of upgrading to the latest version, playing with it for a few hours  and then ignoring it until the next version comes out. I’ve been fighting this with my sudden massive geek love for James Bernard whose blog and tutorials manage to be exciting, interesting and not at all elitist or condescending. I’ve learned more about sound design and production in the last week than in the entire previous 35 years (thanks James).

So, maybe this year I’ll finally write that album I keep promising myself.

(I am aware that this blog is increasingly a blog of excuses for not doing creative things rather than a blog about the creative things I have done. I am very aware of this.)