Out of action today...

My darling brother has shared his cold with me, so at the moment I am sitting in the study, the heater blazing nursing a very sore head. I was confident I would be okay, but two days exposure won out and I am now sick.

Have decided I am not doing any work today because of it - I am really not in the mood to be dealing with anyone. Have decided that my day will be spend looking at camera lens', holiday destinations and working out a savings plan to put all of it into action.

I have picked up some local work with a startup web company. Although my web isn't quite up to scratch (something I was completely open to him about), he needed a designer who would design the front end of the sites and focus on user interfaces, while his programmer did all the puzzle work in trying to bring it to life. 

The money is not great. Actually, it's a touch lower than what I would expect and want. I was also up front about this as well (where did all this new found confidence come from?). He offered to start me out on one day a week, and try and find the remaining money in the next month or two. If he couldn't, it was up to me whether I wanted to stay or not.

The reason I took this was something a little different to the money. The business has the owner, the guy who stared it. Then he has his programmer. Then me. 3 people, in a 6 month old company. This was actually my opportunity to learn first hand (without the risk of doing it myself), what it was like to operate in the industry within the local area. 

It was very strange yesterday when I was in the office. At my previous place of employment, the design team were not much more than glorified extensions of the computer. We were hired because management couldn't physically work with the programs we used. So they would feed their ideas into us, and we basically churned them out exactly as they'd dictated.

A couple of times we tried to get creative, but it was not liked. One of the reasons why I left - you were not given any respect for your position or the industry knowledge you had. It was extremely frustrating. An email from one of the girls I worked with not a couple of days ago, about the girl who took on two roles:

"X is coping really well considering.... she is now understanding the frustration of the lack of information and not being included in conversations." We weren't anyone important. We were just there as puppets for management.

Anyways, back to yesterday. I was completely unprepared for how the owner would want to work with me. He asked me to create a landing page for the company website - something they can send people to if they clicked on advertising. He showed me where their media was saved (banners, cards, etc) and to base it around that.

So I did. And he looked at it. And asked, "What do you think?". And I said, "Honestly?". And he laughed and said, "Yes - that's what I want you for." So I started with the layout, the call outs, the fact that the hierarchy was all wrong. What did you want them to do when they got there? What is the end result you're looking for?

And his answer? "Good. Okay. Can you go and re-do the page to how you think it should be, what it should include." And I did. And he took one look at it and said, "You're right. Much better."

I thought he was playing around with me. Then I lost all confidence - what if I was wrong? What if I should have just taken the easy, no think option and copied the current material and let him do what he wanted. But I wasn't wrong. Which made me dislike the old place even more because they had taught me not to think about my training and my expertise and just go with whatever they said. 
Anyways. The whole point of working there at the moment is that I get a chance to be involved and be what I was hired to be. And only 3 people? So much control, and so much opportunity to learn, especially from the programmer and from the guy who owns the business.

We'll see how it all goes.