This year did not go to plan… possibly in a good way? Maybe that will be clearer when I’ve finished typing it up and understood exactly what happened myself. There’s some insight into my blog posts; they’re all unplanned, improvised ramblings.
Travelling with Instagram
It didn’t last long, but my new year’s resolution was to travel every month of the year. To make this a little bit more fun I let Instagram decide where I travel and what I do whilst there. The first time Instagram users sent me to Venice, Italy. The second time around Instagram sent me to Dublin, Ireland. Whilst both trips were fantastic, they didn’t sit quite so well with my boss so I stopped. That was one of the many reasons the following happened…
I left my UX Designer job
Whilst I genuinely enjoyed my time at CookiesHQ and I learned an awful lot, things slowed down. This wasn’t “hitting the wall” – that happened much earlier and I stepped back, took a deep breath and clambered over. This came a year into my time there; it just didn’t feel like I was moving towards my long-term goal of becoming a Director of Product anymore (mentioned in last year’s retrospective).
There were a few months of simply pushing through because I wanted to last longer along with not letting the side down, but eventually I couldn’t do it anymore. Dragging myself out of bed in the morning simply didn’t seem worth it for myself. I really didn’t want to do it to the guys that had put their faith in me but my friends and family had commented on my deterioration into a walking bundle of negativity. It was time to be selfish, so I left.
Along with that I left Bristol. Evolving requires full commitment and the next step would only carry over my previous mindset if anything remained, so I packed up my big 7-seater family car and went back to mum’s. Shame didn’t come into this; it was a conscious decision with a goal in mind; grow.
Start-ups and sports cars
Well, not really. I got quite drunk watching football with my mates and at 3am I found myself bidding on sports cars on eBay. The next morning I awoke to find out I won myself a lovely black BMW Z4. This sounds like a minor thing to reflect upon, but I can honestly say owning this car has changed my life.
Since picking it up I’ve been on a generic British holiday I won’t describe and started a new company; Dropstand Ltd. It’s basically just a furniture dropshipping website, but I’ve done a lot more work than most dropshippers do with the UX. I’m not just talking about clean UX decisions on the website; I’ve focused on the entire user journey from start-to-finish and set a seamless fulfilment process in place. I fully intend to dive back into a permanent UX role asap, but I’m rounding out the year with a profitable start-up that needs my full attention. I expect to start job hunting again in spring 2020.
Honestly, this bizarre yet awesome new venture and ending to the year is down to the positivity I get from driving my 3am eBay purchase around with the top down. Is this a quarter-life crisis? Possibly.
