“All things are difficult before they are easy” – Thomas Fuller
I definitely think there is an element of truth to this statement. More than an element in fact. I am a recent graduate, and what comes with that? Job hunting. This is never an easy thing to do. Jobs rarely just fall into your lap – you have to work for them, and once you get them, you have to work even harder until you become so good at what you do, it all becomes second nature, things start to slow down and finally become ‘easy’. I don’t think this particularly happens with jobs in design, but if you fall in love with what you do and enjoy every second of it, it will eventually seem as though the initial difficulty has disappeared. You feel really good at something, and you like that feeling.
This is what I want. I want to wake up every morning and want to go to work. To look forward to returning the next day, and the day after that. I had the opportunity to experience this back in July. I had an internship at Homemade London, and I cherished every second of it. It was only for four weeks, but I learnt so much, met some amazing people, and got some extremely valuable experience in the world of design – as well as a different idea of what kind of jobs are out there in the industry.
Enjoying what you do is so important, even if you start from the bottom and work your way up, it is so much more worth it than having a job that you don’t really want, but do it because it earns you good money. This is definitely one of my biggest life lessons, and luckily I learnt it a good few years ago. Money does not equal happiness in my life. I have to love everything in life to be happy – and this is why I am working for free to get to where I want to be.
I don’t want to ramble on about everything I did whilst working in London, but here are a few photos of the things I was up to (as well as eating lots of cake and drinking lots of tea. It really was the best job in the world..)
The general point of this is just to highlight the importance of work and play. Not in the sense that ‘you work hard and play hard’, but that you get to play in your work. To get joy out of what you do.
Now I just can’t wait for my next internship… BBC Magazines, here I come..
annavsdesign.wordpress.com 