or, Starting My Design Business
Here is the story of how one particular girl geek realized her bliss and decided to forge ahead with what she loves: Building Websites.
A Little Background First
January 1, 2007 two Police Officers dragged my now-ex-husband away in handcuffs and saved my life. My friends tell me that it was actually me pushing back out of unconsciousness to find my knee and plant it before crawling away on my hands and knees to the safety of the spare bedroom and calling for said Cops but ... you know ... they're my friends. They kind of have to say that.
Three months later my same friends convinced me to move into the apartment I'm writing this from now and out of the little home I had built with the Ex. "He'll come back and finish the job Saff" they said, and they were probably right if the damage to the old apartment is any indication. My current place is nice. more than 15 floors off the ground in a well secured, well patrolled high rise. My neighbours all know my story and watch out for me; so too do the guys in security. I have everything I need in this place except for one very important thing: a way to make a living.
After January 1, 2007 I was never able to go back to work. Now, I come from a long line of hard working women. I got my first real job at 13 and I've always had a job. When the dot com bubble burst I freelanced and worked Retention Desk for AT&T Wireless rather than sit on Employment Insurance. I'd never even collected EI at that point (still never have), but suddenly in 2007 I found myself in a position I had never known before: my Doctors said flat out I wasn't able to work my old tech support office job. I tried to prove them wrong and lasted about 90 minutes. They were right, I hated to admit it but they were. The damage to my voice box, the rest of my body, my nerves ... there was no way I could go back to taking 50-70 calls a day in a noisy tech support centre. With the only straight job besides designing websites no longer an option, I was put on Permanent Disability with the Government.
Today we're half way through 2010, I'm still there and - pardon my vernacular but - it sucks.
Picking Up the Pieces
I didn't just sit around these last 3 years though.
The first year was a lot of hospitals and rehabilitation. Then that August I finally had enough time alone to get good and mad and decided to go back to High School. At 27 - almost a decade after I should have graduated - I decided I wanted to take that one, single piece of my life back. I signed up for classes at an Adult Ed. school in the North End of Winnipeg and took the hardest courses I could find. In June 2008 I got that little piece of my life back too, when I graduated with Honours exactly a week after my 28th birthday.
No matter what I do though, my Doctors still don't think I can go back to a "traditional office work environment". And, like I said before, they're probably right. Nearly 5 years of living in abject fear every single day does something to a person's nerves. So does almost having the life throttled out of you by the person who said "So long as we both shall live". I don't like crowds, I'll be the first to admit that. The leader, the joiner and the team-player in me have all found their respective closets to cower in for now. I get better day by day with that aspect of it; the limp and the crushed voicebox on the other hand aren't so easy to walk off.
This last year I went to College. I wanted to see if I could do it, and all in all I did rather well, but I learned something very quickly in that course: I really hated it. It wasn't what I wanted to do, it stressed me out to no end having to do it, and then the strangest thing happened. I started building websites to Zen out. My friend Andrew thinks this highly amusing. So does my Mother. The deeper into the course I got, the more miserable I grew, and as I grew more miserable the web projects I took on also seemed to grow. At first it was just the odd portfolio for friends, but then I was taking on a freelancing contract for a 300 page technical website with built in CRM and shopping cart.
My mother was the one who put it to my finally in April as I was preparing for finals in this course I had learned to loathe. She looked at me one afternoon in her livingroom and said, "I can see you doing that other thing, but to be honest Saff when I see you in my minds eye I've alway seen you doing the website thing".
The Website Thing
I love the Website Thing. I've been building websites since 1997. I bought my first domain (the predecessor to Mutable Dreamer) in 2001. I've built, easily, over 150 websites in that 13 years time. I've worked for a half dozen design companies as a designer, programmer, and marketer. I've built websites for famous actresses, small rural family businesses, and up and coming artists on three continents. I love the Website thing.
And the Internet Marketing Thing.
And the Graphic Design Thing.
And the Programming Thing.
And I'm even learning to love the Video Production thing, finicky as it is.
So I decided that I was going to do it. For years I had tried to do things the way the disability system wanted me to, but in the end the system is built for you to fail. It's a sad fact, but I have learned it first hand over the last 3 years. If you're labelled as "Permanently Disabled" by the Powers that Be - even if you are able-minded and creative and sharp in every way but a couple of conventional ones - then your lot in life is to essentially rot within the system. Barely enough money for rent, eating out of a Food Bank, begging your worker for bus tickets. For someone who used to bring in $40K a year without breaking a sweat and has been working since Junior High? I'm sorry, but I just refuse to do it anymore.
Creastra
My company is called Creastra | Creative Marketing and Design (or just Creastra for short). Creastra is an online and print marketing company. We build beautifu, dynamic, easy to update websites. We do graphic design, branding and corporate identity. We do Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing, Web 2.0 and Social Media Integration, and Email Marketing. With Creastra I want to offer not just a design house, but a partner for small companies and artisans. Small business is the life blood of my hometown here (Winnipeg, MB, Canada), and I want to help it shine. I know it sounds hokey, but that's what I've always wanted to do with my design work - Help people Shine.
The name says it all in the end. The name Creastra came to me one night while I was watching movies and surfing the web. Ad Astra was already taken by the RAF, of course, but then Creo Astra came to me. To create a star. "A Star is Born". That's what I want to give customers with this company and her services: the feeling of being a star ... an expert ... a force ... beautiful and effective.It's what I want to feel myself too; reborn out of the darkness ... a second chance ... a shiny new star all my own.
The Road Ahead
It's been three and a half years since I crawled hand over hand down that 3 feet of hallway that felt like 30, gasping for breath and praying the cat was in the office so we would both be safe. Three years of slowly taking my life back one little triumph at a time. Today I'm working on turning Creastra into my greatest triumph. I want it to be, so badly, but the going it rocky and mostly up hill. The Ex and the Divorce have destroyed my once perfect credit, and on Permanent Disability I'm not allowed to hold a Savings Account let alone any Investments. No matter how good my business plan, loan officers have - so far - been very by the book and refused my requests for lendings. That's a problem not just for Creastra but also for me and the cat, because as soon as I officially open doors on Creastra I get knocked off the small government assistance stipend I do get.
And so that's my story to date.
I'm not giving up. I will make this thing happen. I want to do what I love ... what I was put on this earth to do (sounds shmaltzy, but it is true). I am blessed in that I have already found a number of really talented graphic designers, programmers, copywriters and front-end designers who want to work for me and help make Creastra shine. The funding on the other hand has been a little harder to find. Banks want collateral but I have none. They want savings but I'm not allowed to have any. They want good credit and unfortunately I lost that when I said "I Do". So banks are out, but there are other ways to find help, mentoring, and funding and I'm on the look out for them.
This area of Mutable Dreamer is about that search. Looking for knowledge. Looking for financing. Looking for pitfalls and mistakes and places where I come up short becaue I've always been a Freelancer and never a proper business owner. In this part of Mutable Dreamer I hope to share with you the things I have learned over the last six months since I decided that this was the path I wanted and needed to take.
Some might think it impossible, but if we were the kind of people who thought things impossible we wouldn't be freelance artists now would we? I know it's going to be a bumpy ride, but I'm up for it if you are.
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