It's official: I'm giving up graphic design.

Ever since I had come down with cancer and survived, working has just not been very fulfilling. I work as a full time (well, now part time) graphic designer and it just doesn't feel the same anymore. The creativity and the drive are gone. I never thought I would have to worry about creativity being constantly drained or sapped but after a while being forced to be creative is just becoming a chore. But more importantly, ever since I survived I just don't see graphic design to be very fulfilling. My life flashed before my eyes, I saw the fragility of existence. And now that I've survived and now know I must do something bigger and better to escape mediocrity and blandness of what my life had progressed to.

To do just that, I am going to become a nurse. A registered nurse. I will be working on my CNA license starting this month (next week!) and hopefully once I have that license I can start working as one and gain experience in the field I so desire to be a part of. Other determining factors of this were the great care the nurses had me under while I was being treated for cancer. Phil!!!  I wanna tell you so much that I'm going to be a nurse!!! Also, the doctor who first diagnosed me in the ER shared with me his story of his triumph over leukemia when he was 20. It made me realize that I have the same gift he does: hope. I can inspire hope in others for I have walked through hell to an extent. I have always been the caring, empathetic type and I am certainly too nice for my own good so I would say the heart is definitely there.

Other than that, I just don't see the graphic design industry getting any better. Thanks to the economy, graphic design jobs are even harder to come by, and what jobs are out there are really only for in-house techs or the super elite of design schools. Graphic design is also becoming like photography in that anyone can pick it up and everyone's doing it. With photography; cameras are getting cheaper and cheaper and better which makes it easy for a commoner to buy one and to claim they're a photographer. And sure enough the same is happening to graphic design. You go out and buy an iMac, you obtain an illegal copy of Adobe Creative Suite, you're all set. Graphic design is also becoming a field that's being seen more and more as "cool" and "popular" and now more than ever people are picking it up. The internet has also ruined graphic design. There are so many free online tutorials, resources (like this site!), and YouTube videos on how to do cool, edgy tricks - stuff they don't actually teach you in class which means: you really don't have to go to school to be a graphic designer! It really upsets me because the school I went to (Pittsburg State University) didn't teach me all those cool tricks like I had dreamed of. Hell, even one of my classes was all about looking up tutorials! God, I will never forgive that lame ass teacher...  So why don't I just look up those tutorials? I do, trust me. But it's still upsetting seeing design school material and info out there for free, and you still have to contend with "you don't know who posted it." But as you can feel, hobbyists are also ruining the field. What's a fun hobby turns into freelance profit which makes it hard for those who went to school for graphic design.

All in all, I really should have seen this coming. As in: me not being that great at graphic design. Sure lots of my stuff on here is good, but good doesn't cut it in this economy. You have to be great. So I say this to you or any aspiring graphic designer or fine artist: if you have at all any doubt in your mind about the graphic design industry or if you doubt you talents at all, get out. It's not worth it to land a job making the same amount of money as a two year veteran of a grocery store and freelancing at the same time just to barely get by. Unless you're going to be the next Paul Rand, Milton Glaser, or Roy Lichtenstein, study something that there's always going to be a demand for. Get into the medical field or be an engineer! The art field just isn't financially rewarding anymore, and won't be for a long time. At least, not for more than half of the poor dopes trying to pick it up. I won't stop being creative, even for me that's hard. I will always take pictures and play with a layout in Adobe InDesign.

I walked through hell, I survived, and I now want to inspire hope. And I will.


~PlaidGuy86