After a few years of part time freelancing while studying, the dreaded step into being a full time grown up is at hand. But what to do? Despite the freedom of working from home, I find myself longing for a respectable day job where I get to leave the house and meet people I don’t share the toothpaste with. A lot of people ask me why. Here’s my answer:

1. I want to learn more.

Obviously, I try to learn something new every day. Being self taught in web design, I’m no stranger to finding out new ways of doing things all on my lonesome. But I feel that in an agency environment, I could learn so much more - from the people. Working alongside experienced, inspired individuals is more rewarding and infinitely more enjoyable than trawling through online tutorials day after day. Also, having worked on my own since I started out, my social muscles could use the excercise. Team work is such an important part of being a good designer, and a good designer is what I want to be.

2. I want to do more work

I don’t spend my days twiddling my thumbs now, either, but being a new kid on the block, projects don’t fall into my lap at such a rate that I could feel I’m stretching myself to the fullest. There are days when I get to concentrate fully on my own projects, but unfortunately I can’t afford to pay myself. Ha ha. Being a one man band, I also spend more time on administrative tasks than should be legal. I’m fully aware that no job is 100% designer geekery, but working for an agency, I’d hope the scope of projects to work on would make it more than worth the change.

3. I want the security

Let’s face it, freelancing can be feast of famine. I have no problem with the feast, but the famine is a no-no. To be honest, I could do with shedding a few pounds, but the little nipper might have issues with living on porridge. As would the missus… So a regular salary is Our Official Idea Of Heaven. I wouldn’t say no to private healthcare either, but that might be getting greedy.

On the whole, I think that a full time job would just suit me better. After all, it’s ultimately about what’s right for you. I long for a team to realise visions with and bounce ideas off. I still wouldn’t turn away freelance work. But a nice desk with my name on it is somewhere in London. Now we just need to find each other!

Hypocrisy alert: I hate it when people start a blog and then give up after a few posts. It’s deflating, when you keep checking back and nothing happens, and then you stop checking back. And even if they do continue posting at some point it’s too bad, because you’re long gone. And here I am with a blog of two posts and then nothingness.

So anyway, after a week of whimpering at the bottom of my bed with pain and a fever, I am now back to blogging duties. To start it off, here’s a quickie to boast about the new Web Designer Magazine, out now, which features a showcase of graduate talent in the UK this year - with yours truly adorning the London page!

I actually toyed with the idea of leaving the default WordPress “Hello World” post up, just to be rebellious. But then no one would have realised the genius in my stupidity, assuming simply er.. stupidity, so I decided against it.

But to the point! This here’s my brand spanking new blog, in which I’ll pour out Things I Really Want To Tell You about my work, my inspirations and everything I find interesting about web trends/design/development, or anything that may have a (sometimes small but distinct) connection with what web designers do. Like global warming.

Speaking of which, here’s a picture of our pet hippo Henry soaking up the sun at Brighton Beach. I was going to put up a picture of myself, but he’s much cuter than me, and I’m trying to make a good impression.

So - welcome to Digital Spaceboy!