Hey all,
A little while I was writing a reddit post on this subreddit about what was going on with me and how I felt lost and didn't know what to do. Then I realized I could actually make my first blog post out of it so I did, which after holding on to it for a while out of embarrassment I finally published it today.
So a little about me, I'm a UX/UI Designer from Syracuse, NY, I graduated from RIT in rochester, NY where I studied New Media Design. I graduated in 2015 and got a job right out of college as a designer at a agency in L.A. California. I of course took the very first job offer I got because I was worried about not having a job. The agency and job was amazing but I quickly realized that I felt like I was bad at being "creative". A little while later they offered me a job as a UX Designer instead but I rejected it because I was worried about job security and being bored because I really didn't know much about the UX design career. For the next month, I read, practiced, paid for design courses, and consumed anything I could get my hands on. I felt like there was some progress. I was improving and people noticed, but it didn’t feel like the right people noticed and I kept messing up in front the people that mattered. Then my review came and after a meeting full of silence, I was informed that I was being let go, after 10 months of working there. The reason cited was they just didn't have the resources to give me the mentorship and attention that I needed to improve as a designer.
After that I didn't do shit for a while. I was in a major slump, I thought who would want to hire a designer who got let go from their first job within 6 months? I felt like a complete failure.
About a month or so in I discovered Gary Vaynerchuk's youtube https://www.youtube.com/user/GaryVaynerchuk which I can't recomend enough. Watching his videos started to give me the motivation I needed to get out of my slump. But like most people being inspired is the easy part, actually doing something was tough. But slowly I started to see problems that I could fix, started thinking about what I wanted out of life, reading more blogs and books.
Then I started working on two side projects that I'm still working on even though I gave myself a deadline but that's okay. Although I didn’t finish my side projects within my desired deadlines, I don’t take it as a failure because I’m still working away at them bit by bit. There is a lot that I don’t know about business, marketing, design, or development, but I’m really enjoying figuring it all out. I highly suggest having a personal project if you can, even if you only work on it a small amount every night.
This leads to what I'm currently up to with my life. I had a choice, find a job or go back to my home town which I really didn't want to do. At the time my girlfriend was planning on doing a study abroad in Accra, Ghana and I figured what the hell and started looking for companies that might want to work with me if I went there. Somehow I was able to find a company that decided I wasn't a scam.
Then on August 12th 2016 I flew to Ghana where I worked for four months on web & mobile projects for this company. During my time in Ghana I realized that maybe I would be better off as a UX Designer. After those four months my girlfriend and I flew to Chiang Mai, Thailand where we are right now.
My current plan is to travel through SE Asia for the rest of the year. North Thailand, South Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, then finally back to Thailand for a total of 6 months. During this time I'm going to be freelancing and adjusting my portfolio and social media presence so that when I get back to the states I can hopefully find a job as a UX Designer.
I'm very far from having my shit figured out, but hopefully I'm on the right track to do so.
TRDL: I'm lost as fuk yo.
If you have the time you can check out the original blog post on Medium which has much more detail and better format: http://ift.tt/2iGPay2
If you have any questions please feel free to ask! Thanks for taking the time :)
Great design resource
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter)
Submitted January 05, 2017 at 08:30AM by rikuto148 http://ift.tt/2jcO2oH
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