A WebStress of all trades, a master of making a nice cup of tea.

Before Christmas, I was working what can only be described as stupid hours.

I was badly juggling several freelance projects, the development of a business idea for myself and my boyfriend’s sister and, hopefully, future business partner, Newfy care and, oh yes, my actual job.

I was juggling these so badly that, once Christmas came, I allowed them to collapse on top of me, and I in turn collapsed beneath them.

This isn’t unusual of the WebStress. It is a cyclical process that I fall into again and again, unwittingly or consciously, I’m never all that sure.

It goes a little something like this (if someone wishes to provide some sort of accompaniment of a musical nature, perhaps a shaky egg):

- WebStress is working normally (with the now permanent addition of Newfy care)
- WebStress acquires a small, seemingly inoffensive freelance project which she thinks may be useful to pay off a holiday/Christmas presents/debts etc. depending on the time of year and personal situation. She accepts said freelance project and waits for further details.
- WebStress by this point already has a sick feeling in her stomach. Like a Star Trek episode, there is something lurking behind that seemingly innocent polystyrene boulder and those scantily clad half naked nubile beauties aren’t all what they seem. In a word (or two), nothing’s exactly what it seems.
- Before the WebStress has a chance to do much about anything, she a. becomes ill, b. realises the project is way beyond its original specification, c. is given a deadline of last Tuesday, d. will achieve a very poor ratio of stress/workload : cash, e. have another promised project also thrust upon her ever-southward-bound bosom, or, as was the case before Christmas, the ever faithful f. all of the above.

I promised myself when my boyfriend came home that I wouldn’t take on any more freelance work. This is a promise I have made, in earnest, many times before. This time, though, this time it was for real. (Like the time before, but let’s gloss over that one and concentrate on the present).

Then, well, then my tax bill happened. And, like the breaking of a damn, I accepted project after project, all small and inoffensive in their own right, but each with their own individual, let’s say ‘niggles’ for want but wise suppression of a more aggressive word.

The problem with freelance projects and me is that they seem to most of the time just find me. And they seem to always be in the assumption that I want to do them. The problem with me and freelance projects is, I, in the most part, say yes, not because I want to do them, more that I don’t really have an excuse not to do them.

I am a poor freelancer. I have been told this on many occasions. I became involved in the downwards spiral of charging too little for my endeavours way back when I left University because, in the understanding (misguided or not) that I couldn’t really actually design, let alone design a website, I charged under the going rate. Therefore clients (and, bless, this took a long while for the WebStress to understand) didn’t necessarily come to me because I was good (and therefore raising my otherwise fragile self esteem) but because I was cheap.

Therefore I never make any money, and am never able to really say ‘wow that project was shit but hey it took me half a day guess who’s flashing the cash now’ (or words to that effect). At the end of every project instead I feel a little deflated when I receive my cheque.

Because the sort of clientele I have accumulated in the past are the sort of people who have chosen me because I am cheap, the work I get is therefore likely to be uninspiring and need to be done in a fraction of the time it can feasibly accomplished within.

I have these words, that I try desperately to chase away from, but that catch my ankles, that curl through the hollow passage ways of my head, that cling to the quiet breaths that I am left with on an evening. Words I loathe, that aren’t what I stand for, that aren’t who I am. I want to be a person of quality. I want those who come to me, as friends, as family, as co-workers, and know I produce quality, in my words, in my feelings, in my work. But it echoes throughout my keystrokes, it sits there in the whirring of my overheating laptop.

I spread myself too thin.

There is work, and I take it on, and on, and on. What is achieved? What is done well? To start a project aching to be finished, to open a Photoshop document watching seconds, minutes, hours drain away and ill thought out designs appear on the canvas, dragged from my conscious, incomplete, half conceived.

It isn’t for the money I do these things. Well, in the most part. I can’t believe in my heart it is. The money trickles in and drains away without a moment at the lips. What I achieve isn’t money. This time it has been, for my tax return, and maybe other times, oh the excuses, maybe it is.

But I am more than money. Time is more than money. My Newfy, asleep snoring heavily by my side is more than money. My boyfriend, my family, my friends. My life is more than these projects, these infections that drain my energy and my strength like a seeping wound.

Then what? I’m guessing experience, in the most part. An ever swelling need to be better than I am. To be a better designer, a better coder, just…better. You want me to make you a form, a catalogue, a blog, a shop, a message board, a game, something beautiful, yes, yes, yes I’ll do it, pick me pick me.

This project will make me, this string to my ever changing bow, never playing one type of music, never achieving something well. An increasing need to grasp the future, to say I will be better than this, I will be more than my job, I will be recognised, I will achieve.

But really, WebStress, as a web designer?

A WebStress of all Internet skills, a master of none.