Why I won’t be rebooting this May

I have done the reboots for a few years now, this time around I am not rebooting though. I had the choice a few weeks to go for the reboot or to take a different approach and opt out this time. For some reason I did feel a bit of pressure to reboot, it wasn’t from anyone so not sure if anything beyond my own mind. There is a certain something about rebooting, not a ‘rush’ it’s more a community enjoyable thing, whatever reboot site you do it from. Being the community junkie I am I liked that. There was also something about committing myself to a deadline as I only really (bar one) rebooted personal sites. Add to those reasons the ‘buzz’ and feeling in the air and you get a powerful sway to reboot.

So why am I not rebooting? The reasons aren’t great earth shattering ones, but to me they are an indication of my change in frame of mind regarding my business and design in general.

Setting your own agenda can be a good thing

When you start out in design it’s very much about catching and keeping up with others. After a while it is about maintaining the place you have and you are then constantly rinse and repeating this pattern. Whilst I still maintain that you never have finished learning, I also feel that taking a back seat and setting your own agenda for learning and progression isn’t a bad thing.

The power of letting it brew

I’ve talked before about how I am finding staged design works really well for me and this is something I want to explore with my next reboots of my sites. I am really enjoying ‘stewing’ over a design and taking time to let it mature. One down side of this is a phase I seem to be in where my first batch of design work is failing to make the grade time and time again. I really find it hard to believe I used to stop designing far earlier in the process and feel happy with that design. Now I am allowing myself time my brain seems to in some part have adjusted to this and takes it’s own time. It’s working well on the whole for me and I feel some of my best work is coming from this change in process. I want to take this approach with my personal work and also think not rebooting will be good for my mindset. Whilst it’s been great setting those deadlines I am not a major procrastinator of my own work anymore (having in part shifted that by setting and adding reboots or other deadlines), so I’m wanting to give the ‘letting it brew’ a shot.

Part of this stepping away is going to happen not just on design with Logical Binary (my company site). It’s a business that is seeing a lot of changes in this year and as such the nature of the site currently doesn’t work for me as it should. I’m taking time to assess this and focus on nailing my branding which I always feel has been a ‘poor cousin’ as far as my work goes. Client work is wonderful but so is creating a solid brand for yourself and for a while the current one I have over there has just not worked as far as I am concerned.

Taking time to smell the roses

This sort of follows on from other points in the sense of taking time for myself and life along with work. I’ve been called a workaholic before and it probably is a bit of an underestimate. I have this really nasty habit of loosing months to solid work – part of the nature of freelance can easily be to forget holidays should also be something you do and time for yourself is important. The recent stop in posting and stop in activity online was brief but taught me one thing – smelling roses is good for your soul. I have had a run of feeling ‘low’ both mentally and health wise this winter which I am sure in part is due to the workaholic in me. Now I am back it’s tempting to get swept up in work but I am learning (slowly) to balance things. I’m even learning the value of taking days off which if you know me you will probably be passing out when reading this reason.

To reboot or not is no longer a dilemma

I’m not saying in any of this I won’t be doing a new flavour for this blog, I will as usual be bringing one out. I just want to take more time and I’m not fixing a time yet, I have started the design process though. The decision I’m taking is making me feel really happy so it must be the right one at least on a personal level. That is one thing I’m coming to think should be put forward a lot more in my life as the first thing to achieve. I still look forward to those new sites that will appear and will be checking all reboots out under the range of reboot sites out there. If you are rebooting good luck and I look forward to seeing your site.