The other day I was driving home with a friend and we passed this crazy construction zone that is going to be with us for years north of the D/FW airport. I immediately thought of what it must be like to sit down at that first meeting. Talk about a crazy concept, can you imagine trying to do your production calendar for that? How can you even have a meeting?
Most of our productions don’t take near that much time or money. We can make some pretty daunting projects though. But, I started thinking to one specific project and decided the craziness had to stop. I had to finish my personal website before this road construction we were passing gets done. Honestly, I have to say that the duration of my web project will have been longer than this road construction in the end.
As an artist and a media professional, I set out wanting the greatest website ever. I lost count of variations that my little website has gone through. To be completely honest, I have built gigantic websites that dwarf this project during this entire time. How long you may ask? I had a “coming soon” animation playing on my site for the better part of 5 years. Yep. 5 years! I want to stop for a moment and say that I got about 10 – 15 jobs over this time with that simple “coming soon” Flash animation. So I guess in a sense I had some sort of web presence!
At one point during the saga I actually looked at having someone else do the site for me. The problem is I was to “close” to the project. I am obsessive and it got the best of me. The other thing is that I didn’t treat it like a real project! You have too!
Well the road construction was a real eye opener for me. This simple website need to be exactly that. It needed to be simple. It’s like when we talk about live events, you gotta have something because the alternative is nothing. So that is what I did. I gave myself a deadline and even though it isn’t perfect, it is what I need. Now people can see this wonderful work that I get to create and hopefully instead of one element getting me 10-15 jobs, I will now have this massive set of projects to inspire new clients.
I know as an artist we get so easily lost and our business sense goes out the window. It may not be the “ideal” solution you have in mind, but a simple solution is so much better than no solution at all.
And hopefully I will get in the practice of hitting this BLOG on a regular basis. In addition to being obsessive I am also completely ADHD as well! Just warning you!