http://www.43folders.com/2010/05/17/future-proofing-your-passion

In it, Merlin Mann writes: “By starting adult life with an autistically explicit ‘goal’ that’s never been tested against any kind of real-world experience or reality-in-context, we can paradoxically miss a thousand more useful, lucrative, or organic opportunities that just…what?…pop up. Often these are one-time chances to do amazing and even unique things—opportunities that many of us continue to reject out of hand because it’s ‘not what we do’”.

Exactly.

*Aside: my friend and I spent too much money at the Algonquin College printers to print them, and we both ended up with a stack of poorly-cut and generally botched up cards. We were told to pay a different price than what we were initially quoted, and the people there just didn’t seem to care. We learned our lesson– we won’t be getting our business cards done at Algonquin College EVER again. Her and I also wasted additional time having to go through all of our cards and weed out the good ones from the rest. We both ended up having to throw out quite a few.

Anyway. My business card from this batch (2009) had my name, year standing, school, email address, and website address on it. Pretty standard stuff. However, it also had the following: “Web designer/developer- (X)HTML, CSS, Javascript, SQL, PHP”. It is true that I do lots of webdesign, in those languages, and that it is a field in which I am looking for work. However, I can also do lots of other things– logo design, print media, software interfaces, flash design/development, photography, and other programming (Java and C++, to name a few).  Not to mention, I also enjoy traditional media like drawing and collage-making. So… why did I limit myself on my own business card to one field?

Because it’s what I know best? That’s not entirely true; I know quite a bit about other media, too. Because it’s what I’m used to? Not necessarily. I think it’s because that’s what I’ve seen myself as for a fairly long time. I got into webdesign 9 years ago, and I’ve been designing (and hopefully improving) ever since. And up until recently I even thought I was going to go into webdesign/development as a career. So I limited myself, albeit unconsciously. It was in my head as “this is the field I want to work in, so this is the only field I’ll ever find work in”. So I didn’t even want to look for other kinds of work (because I thought I’d fail at everything else), and thus my nice, narrow business card description was born.

It is this kind of unconscious conditioned mental limitation which is still following me around as I decide what I want to do as a career. I am toying with the idea of starting my own business, but what would I do? My limitations tell me that pursuing anything other than webdesign will lead to failure, or that I’ll never be good enough at anything else, or that I’ll never find work otherwise. I suspect many people have been plagued with these kinds of thoughts before, including those people who now run successful businesses, and that is a comforting thought. I think that’s the key– to replace the limitations with goals, and the negativity with optimism. One step at a time.

So when I sat down the other day to make my 2010-2011 cards, what did I put on them? “Web + Print + New Media — Designer and Developer”. Much better. The possibilities are endless .

*Aside #2: This time around, I wised up and used Moo for my cards. Same price, amazing quality. The only downside is you have to wait for your cards to ship (about two weeks for Canada), but it’s a small price to pay .