Experience is everything

It seems that some omnipotent academic was reading through my most recent blog entry and felt that, whilst clearly substantial in emotion the post was somewhat lacking in any significant factual evidence.

And, thus, saw that divine intervention would create a more substantiated reasoning for my rant.
Now, if this ethereal force had merely mentioned this to me, I would have been able to haul out from the dusty depths of my memory a plethora of events that would have acted suitably as my sources throughout.

If it would help, I could even order them alphabetically.

Basically I would say that on the topic in question, that of general client trauma and work difficulties (and how I fail to deal with them rationally), I have surmounted a fair old whack of experience.

But no, apparently what I needed was to experience a new low, achieving previously unreached and untapped emotion, pushing the boundaries of pissedoffness.

I am traipsing through the remnants of my career in Web Design a. in order to save some money and b. because I was about to embark on one closing project, what I imagined would be a beautiful grand finale, the Web Design equivalent to the recent ending of the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games (where 2000 people donned Dame Edna Everage accessories, obviously).

This was to be my baby, I'd created the proposal, bidded for it and won more money than I thought conceivable for my employers so I could take on this mini epic of a project.

And, most importantly, I'd get to make little Flash games.

But it was not to be.

In a client meeting yesterday, where I assumed we'd just agree a sign off of the timeline, I saw my project, while praised for being a brilliant proposal and idea, torn down til merely the foundations were left remaining, just a title left on a page.

And the meeting I thought was a kick off for the project, turned out to be just a meeting to decide when we were going to have another planning meeting in order to further destroy my creation before it had even taken breath or seen the light of client-unmeddled conception.

I should have known, I should have learnt by now.

I should not offer my creativity with such ignorant enthusiasm, with such wafer-thin skin that a few choice verbs and adjectives can perforate effortlessly.

I should remember, I should understand. When someone pays for your creative services, they pay for ownership of your creativity. They are granted the ability to manipulate the varying degrees of talent that their employee may have to offer.

And, like with all those parting with money and paying for a product or service, they are always right.

Or always have to have at least be instilled with the knowledge that they are right.

And their choices, unwise or foolhardy, or damn right ugly, as they may be, are meshed in an unsightly collage of poorly conceived ideas with the designer's original conception.

I am not saying that clients always have the wrong ideas. I am not a good enough designer to have faith in the beauty of my chosen artistic interpretations of whatever brief I may be handling.
I just use the assets I can pilfer and try my best. But with this one, I had ideas, I had vision, I had, above all, unreigned enthusiasm.

I even had delusions of future enjoyment of my web endeavours.

And my boyfriend's poor aunt had the unfortunate idea of asking me how my day was yesterday.
There ensued a lengthy rambling, sprinkled with regular apologies for my complaining followed by a continuation of what I was apologising for, and I felt terribly sorry for her while being unable to in any way restrain my verbal outpouring.

A glass of wine tonight, I think.