I’ve been fortunate in my design career that I never really had to worry about lack of work. I’m not trying to sound egotistical. My luck is probably caused by a combination between right place right time, and being friends with some seriously super talented people that thankfully saw potential in me.

In one way or another, I’ve always had some kind of side-hustle on top of whatever in-house design gig I had at the time. Even when I was first starting out, I got super lucky and landed a design agency job during my time in school.

I have now been doing web design, product design and ux design for over 10 years—and needless to say I have become complacent, and my portfolio has suffered because of it.

In my current UX role at Experian, I have been doing more leadership-based work such as writing internal case studies, being more involved in acquisition & sprint planning meetings, and creating more powerpoint presentations for higher-ups. My work calendar looks more and more like a poorly planned game of Tetris.

For a couple years I was focused solely on my work at Experian. The desire to be a part of design community kind-of evaporated.

I have been so focused on my career in my current role that I had let my portfolio suffer.

I believe design is like working out. After a while of not going to the gym you begin to lose muscle-mass rapidly. If you don’t use it, you lose it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining.

I love the planning aspect of design. Being involved on decision-making meetings and contributing more to the planning & leadership aspect of design is what I really love—but I also love to produce.

Working on in-house enterprise software can feel almost like being part of a cult. Sprint planning is the ritual. Prototypes are the sacrifices. End customers are the benevolent spirits to which we make these offerings. We get so caught up in our internal in-house rituals that we often forget about the outside world—and I definitely have.

Because of my responsibilities, I’ve pretty much stopped going to design meetups after work. I stopped socializing on twitter. I haven’t contributed to dribbble in years. I’ve essentially stopped trying.

One would say it’s because I’ve found a great role. Yes, that’s true. But I feel like I’ve gotten so used to my role that the muscle memory I once had of designing things outside our pattern library is slowly disappearing.

This is why I think it’s super important to participate in side-work. You don’t need to hustle, I think, but you do need to maintain that muscle memory that got you the role in the first place.

Out of sheer frustration that the only work I was presenting out into the world were really old projects, I decided to delete all of my portfolio profiles. It all looked stale and aged — and not a good aged like fine a wine aged, but more like a these potatoes are starting to sprout aged.

I’ve also been focusing more on my mental health the last couple of years, and maintained a few hobbies for myself. I decided to pick up art again purely because I enjoy the process of it. I also picked up a healthy surfing and skateboard habit, which has been absolutely great for me both mentally and physically.

In the last few years I have really taken care of my mental health, and feel a fire to really contribute back into the design community again.

I created a new dribbble profile where I’ll be showcasing both my digital art & side projects I’m working on. One of which is a surf forecasting app for Orange County I’m building in Angular. I’m aiming to finish this in two weeks—even though all the beaches are currently closed. Thanks COVID19.

I have a new twitter profile. I thought it would be fun to broadcast my gaming sessions on Twitch, so I started that as well—which I’m really enjoying.

I have aspirations to teach what I’ve learned over the years with design and life in general, so I’m contemplating starting a YouTube channel where I talk about design & art, and how junior designers can break into the industry.

I’m really getting excited for the future, and I’m excited to reconnect with the design community again.

I think it’s important to have some compassion for yourself. I—like many others—tend to be really hard on ourselves. When you see a foundation that’s become unstable over time, it’s better to scrap it altogether and start over than to build on top of a broken one.