I work on the web.

This is me, I work on the web.

I don't have a job title - I make one up everytime someone asks, depending on what I'm doing at the time. It's a bit annoying because being without a definite job title makes me feel like I have less credibility. I've done everything from e-Learning through to e-Commerce, private sector projects, government projects, ASP.NET and PHP through MS SQL and MySQL to HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I cover so many fields in this web industry that sometimes I feel like a bit of a jack-of-all-trades (master of none). But I think that having experience in all these fields has an inherent value in that I can act as the bridge between different sorts of technologies and particularly the people working in those technologies and the clients, users, stakeholders - so I can spec a UI design for developers, then describe it in a meaningful way to clients, then to users. So this space in the middle of all these groups and technologies is where I live.

Even though I do fill a niche in this space, I do want to specialise something - and so am working towards developing my skills in UI/UX design and implementation; there's an 18-month-long project at work where I'll really get an opportunity to develop and use my skills in this area, and I'm looking forward to it!

Up until the end of last week I didn't have much spare time to do anything besides being at work and running the business (Urban Interactive); however after quite some consideration over the weekend I acknowledged that this isn't really what I want to do. I started the business 6 years ago when I was 18 primarily as a source of income (because I was only getting paid $18-22k at the time) and to develop business skills. 6 years later I have a very well paying job and I think I've developed my business skills sufficiently ... so I've quit the business, and am looking forward to (once I've closed off current projects) having some free time. Practically, I was only doing maybe 6 hours a week actual freelance work/coding ... but it's on your mind all the time; you wake up and you're thinking about it. All during the day. At night. How to fix one problem. How to pay that bill. How to make that client pay up. How to cram all that into a couple of days with that budget. So realistically it takes up a lot more time than you realise ... and I didn't realise that till I decided to get out.

NOTE: For the "I work on the web" meme.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/purecaffeine/1275447918/