January

It’s January and I’m at work, waiting for a design brief. I’m at a creative agency in Shoreditch. Oh look, there’s a photo of my desk.

This is week number two and I’ll be here for a further three weeks. It’s the first time I’ve worked in Shoreditch and, so far, it’s conforming pretty well to its stereotype. Right now there’s a couple of guys playing pool behind me, and over to my right there’s a football match on the big screen, courtesy of the company Playstation. And it’s not even lunchtime.

Not that I’m complaining – it’s a nice place, if a little bit self-consciously “cool”. But hey, that’s Shoreditch for you. A land where Macs outnumber PCs. Maybe.

The work itself is reasonably interesting, though I took the job largely out of fear of an otherwise quiet month. Might as well earn some money while the coldness of January swirls around outside. I had other offers of work but they were all through hard-selling recruitment consultants, and I’m always suspicious of how “exciting” an “opportunity” the work they try to pimp is really going to be. “Oh right, so it’s actually a mindless production job? That nobody else wants? Somewhere out in zone 6?”

I don’t want to disrespect my recruitment friends out there of course, as one day I might need you. But so far the only time that I said “Alright then” to a recruiter’s request I ended up at an embarrassing meeting where the client had been expecting someone with a completely different skill-set and, equally, I’d been expecting a completely different job. Not the best use of half a day and a zone 1-3 travel card.

January’s never been a great month. Nothing much goes on, it’s cold, it goes dark early and public transport seems more crowded and steamed-up than usual.

So bring on February. The work I’m doing now will fund a full four weeks of photography portfolio work. And I’ll also be allowed to have a beer again. Today is Day 18 of a month without alcohol. I did this before, back in 2006 though last time it had a much greater positive impact on my health – because then I was in full-time employment. And that tended to involve at least three four-pint sessions after work each week, so the contrast was greater. Still, I’m enjoying the sobriety, getting more stuff done.

It’s now gone lunchtime and I’ve got my brief so it’s time to post this post and get on with the work. More photos and creative stuff from me next month.

Freelancing

So... lots has changed, really.

Firstly, I don't seem to be updating my blog any more (again). I think this is ultimately because the desire to share with the world 'what I'm doing' is now being satisfied by the rather lazier Twitter. Those micro-chunks of mundane information collectively form a sort-of-blog, though admittedly it's probably not going to appear in the shortlists for any literary awards any time soon. For those who have no desire to sift through what is effectively a massive collection of SMS messages, here's what else I've been doing.

I have departed from the mighty Dare (just in time to miss them winning an impressive five Campaign Digital Awards), and am now a freelancer once again. The last time I was a full time freelancer was back in 2002, when I had no portfolio, no client-list worth speaking of, and only a nifty little Flash game and a few mates' websites with which to prove my abilities. In fact, it was even before I started this blog (just).

This time round things seem to be completely different. The only real problem I seem to be facing at the moment (touch wood) is the risk of taking on too much work. I made that mistake recently and the result was more than a week of working 9-6 at an agency followed by, on average, an 8pm till 2am shift every evening. Still, it'll pay for some time off when the cheques turn up.

It's been good to work in a handful of different agencies, though I'm equally keen to escape the world of agency work wherever possible. This week and next I'm doing some photography and design work directly for a client. Cutting out the project manager, and account manager has its pros and cons but this client has been relatively well behaved so far, and it's nice having fewer cooks to spoil the broth.

In other news, I'm no longer living in Camberwell. I'll miss it in many ways, though there are clearly some aspects of SE5 that I'm glad to move on from – the immovable junkie collapsed in my doorway a few weeks ago, for example. The main reason for the move, though, is that fact that I've finally escaped the world of landlords and rent and have bought half of, and subsequently moved into, the house of my lovely girlfriend Rachael.

Fortunately, being in SE4, it's not too far away so I'll still be oft found slurping cold Heinekens in a Camberwell pub with superior blogger and old pal The Eyechild.

As for the blog: I'll try to post more often, though it's rather dependent on not having a hundred other things to do instead. I started writing this post over a week ago and have only managed to complete it today. Having a large to-do list keeps life interesting though, I find.

New Ventures

After seven years spent in full-time employment in the digital media industry, I'm going freelance again. I actually did a short stint working for myself in 2002 when I first moved to London, though at the time I had very few contacts, and in those days people were, understandably, being rather cautious when it came to investing money online.

But things are different now, and everyone seems to be busy. I certainly have been. So I'm going it alone again. Only this time I'm taking on photography work in addition to the Flash, video and web work. Within a year I aim to have developed the photography side of things to a level that I can get by on that alone. But for the time being I'll be frequenting the digital agencies of London for short-to-medium term project work.

I've still got a few weeks to go at Dare, where I've been since September 2005. It's a company of extremely talented, dedicated and busy people, and so it's no surprise that it's grown as much as it has in the last 18 months. So a big thanks must go to everyone at Dare. The standard excessive after-work drinking session will be arranged soon.

There's much to do in the meantime, starting with updating my CV and portfolio.

If you want to get in touch, you can find me here on LinkedIn or at my website.