It’s been an interesting week. I got run into by a driver on my commute home, so became a member of that club of moving targets for other road users. I’ve joined the ‘anti-growth coalition’ apparently. Didn’t even realise there was a thing. Maybe I forgot I posted for membership. And I came to terms with making a 'living by design' gifts you special access into a company that takes a rather solitary path. 

Basically, it can be quite a lonely profession.

Dwelling on it, I wrote a few hundred words to try and understand where I’d arrived at. It was useful, but a bit, well, maudlin. I can do self-pity with the best, but honestly, what’s some old git moping about going to change? Exactly. Sweet fanny adams.

But, but, what I did capture was something possibly useful. In the cathartic process of typing I realised how remote a designer can feel. We’re hardly renown as an industry (and looking at you Architecture as well) for looking after one another. You’re (we, me) are supposed to be resilient. To stand up for what we believe. 

But more often than not we’re a proxy. Standing up for what other people want other people to believe. In losing the agency in agencies, you lose some of the you. And if all you have is yourself to listen to (‘Richard, will you. Just. Shut. Up’) the result is usually not all that helpful.

Most in this business aren’t lucky enough to have mentors (let alone managers) who you can talk to about this stuff. Those that have, know what boon it can be; to help make some sense of a cycle of events flying around you but spinning away from you. 

If the former includes you, and if that moment sounds like is charging toward someone you know, why not offer to listen to them. Likely as not it won’t be much help but sometimes sitting down and sharing the situation is really what you need to decide what you should be doing next. 

Hopefully it’s not giving up on design. It might be odd company, but it’s all the better for that. And all the better for you being part of it.