Balancing Life, Work & The Future
Incoming life update that is both heavy and exciting.
These past several months have been quite the balancing act for me both mentally and physically. If you know me personally you may understand the details more vividly but they are quite personal and involve difficult themes like pain, stress and loss of life.
On top of all that things have been at a slower pace career wise for me due my own chronic pain and fatigue flaring up from these events and swallowing many of my 'spoons'. As I mentioned in my first blog post, I battle with thoracic outlet syndrome which effects my vascular system, muscles and nerves as well as an unknown immune system disorder that occasionally likes to flair up. I'm also a papillary thyroid carcinoma survivor who previously suffered from Hashimoto's Thyroiditis - now living life cancer and thyroid free.
While all of that is of course quite a big part of my life, I take it in stride and will always be primarily a creative and a "Designer".
Them: why are you like this?
Me: I'm a designer!
While this language has become a bit of an inside joke with my friends and family it's been an anchor for my identity and at this point I see it as much more than just a profession.
The End of Freelance?
I've really enjoyed working freelance for a while now. Even though I only recently created a proper brand for myself I don't feel like things are 100% sustainable in their current form. I don't see myself fully getting out of freelance work since freelance photography gigs might come up in the spring or summer months. For now though I'll be pivoting to pursue a part-time to full-time career in more emerging design fields. First I'll need to take some time to re-educate, as I feel that I've been a bit behind.
Since the start of last year I've felt this external push to better future-proof my work, my skill set, and my creative abilities, especially in the new world of AI everything. While I don't think all graphic designers will be put out of work entirely by AI, I do think that there is a lot of new methods out there that will break existing workflows and cause many designers to lose pace if they don't adapt. Many small-medium size businesses aren't hiring freelancers anymore if they can cut it with Canva and some AI agents. This is not the case for every industry but it seems to be happening more and more as the economy continues to stagnate outside of the AI bubble. It also doesn't always particularity work out well for businesses when they do this either, but when money is tight frills are usually the first to go.
Generally I think most designers intuitively know this profession is an ever-evolving one and always has been. You won't be out of a job if you can adapt your skill set, but if you stop learning, the tap for new clients and new projects starts to slowly shut off. The death of Letraset and the evolution of computer based graphic design software shook things up a long time ago in the same way AI is shaking things up today. Some designers pulled out but many designers adapted. They upskilled and stayed in the game, all while retaining the incredibly valuable creative problem solving knowledge that made them so successful in the past. No one likes to feel like they're bad at their job, but sometimes the goalposts move in this profession and there's no shame in taking a time out to train up for the next game.
Right out of the gates when I was at the end of my college career I already felt like I was behind, and in-fact the program coordinators felt the same way about their own program too. The Advanced Graphic Design Diploma program covered Design Theory, Design Basics, Package Design, Data Design, Basic & Advanced Design Tools, Web Design Basics and Illustration Design Basics. It was still missing a lot though for a three year course, there was no Motion Graphic Design Basics, no UI/UX Design Basics and the Creative Direction course left a lot to be desired.
Luckily many of the instructors in the course tried their best to incorporate a lot of these skills into some of their presentations and major projects but as students we were really left to fend for ourselves to get the knowledge we needed for proper job placements and internship opportunities.
After collage I ended up taking several workshops on basic UI/UX concepts, some small coding courses and did some at-home learning through free YouTube courses. It really helped get me the experience I needed and exposed me to a lot of concepts I wish I had encountered during my college years. At some point I got a few job, work picked up fast and I had some good workflows to depend on. While I did continue learning all throughout that time it's only now where it feels like AI has created an incredible shift.
Things are changing so quickly that not even a couple YouTube tutorials can feed the beast any longer. I've been thinking of doing something more comprehensive. More specifically, something in the UX/UI area, maybe even Product Design.
UX/UI Design has always been there in the background throughout a lot of my agency and client work but never at the forefront. When I got the first version of Sketch on my old Macbook Pro Retina at the end of my college career I really enjoyed creating mocked up apps and web designs for projects even if the instructors were sometimes against it or on the fence, Photoshop was still king after all. When Figma released several years later it became part of my workflow in one way or another. Mostly I used it for high-res website mockups and quick social media templates. I know, I know, Figma was never really built with social media content creation in mind but it was very useful nonetheless, especially it's collaborative feature set.
The Pivot
So it's the end of 2025 already. I'm excited and a little terrified to get back into the education realm, but I know it's necessary, and I already have a lot of background knowledge so that makes things a bit less daunting . Pivoting this hard wasn't really on my bingo card for 2025 but we live in a world of unprecedented events, my 2026 career goals mind as well get added to the pile.
Things are moving forward but I'm still unsure if I want to do a full UI/UX Design or Proct Design course, a long term workshop or a condensed bootcamp. Time is ticking though. There's many of all of these types of courses and bootcamps to go around, but I'm approaching them very carefully because pf course quantity does not dictate quality.
Right now I'm at the stage of trying to best understand some of the proven outcomes of these courses and bootcamps. The UI/UX Design and Product Design area has become a bit of an over-saturated market but there are a lot of new long term positions popping up every day for the right candidates. I'm not starting from zero either, I guess it just feels a bit weird to go back to a full time education, potentially.
I've lead my own successful teams in the past as a Marketing Manager, but working as a freelancing Designer has made me a lot more self reliant, so the idea of possibly working with others on projects remotely is also kind of exciting and scary at the same time. Hopefully I make some great friends and work acquaintances along the way.
I am quite sure about a few things also. The outcome of this journey must yield a fully remote career that is sensitive to my work life balance expectations and provides me with the flexibility for me to still pursue my own creative projects outside of the job. It's a bit of a tall order maybe, but I won't except anything less and if you were in my shoes I hope you wouldn't either.
Something to add? Want to talk about it? Email me directly