So it’s been pretty much 3 weeks now that I’ve been working on my own as a freelance designer. Its definitely been a learning experience through and through. Right off the hop I had a couple of projects offered to me, one of which I’ve completed already, a fitness site called FitWithUs.com.

That project really made me feel good, one in that I was able to completely redesign a site in a week and a half, but the second reason was more important to me. It was the feeling of getting back on the horse after having fallen off. I found after losing my job I originally wasn’t really upset by it, aside from the fact I’d have to scramble to find a job having very little safety net to fall back onto. Now that I’ve had more time to mull things over I’m more ticked that I wasted 2 years of my career. That job was always just a job to me, as I took the job originally after having been out of work for awhile and I was getting desperate. I’m happy with the work I did in my time there, but in reality that job never challenged me in a design sense. In the last 2 years I had essentially worked on 1 site full-time, a couple freelance gigs and my blog redesign. So getting a new, fresh looking site out the door in short order really served to boost my confidence.

Last week I went out and did something I’ve been meaning to do for forever, which is actually registering a business name. As of last Wednesday I dropped the $60 and registered my business in the Province of Ontario, slideawaymedia. I’m still mucking around with a new redesign of my website though. I’ll get that sorted out one of these days.

I’ve found that drumming up work hasn’t been too hard so far. It’s amazing how simply just talking to people and letting them know that I was now working on my own and I’ve had a bunch of people point me in the direction of new leads. I’m really happy I’ve been able to use my connections and be able to get myself rolling. I find the biggest change I’ve had so far is that I’ve really had to come out of my shell a bit. I’ve never really been a shameless self promoter, but I think if I want to be successful at being a freelance designer I’m going to have to. People who know me personally wouldn’t classify me as quiet, but I can tend to be introverted at times. Maybe I just need to get one of these t-shirts printed up for me to do the talking for me.