Scaling it Back

As soon as my eyes opened this morning, I knew I was in for a bad one.

I could feel the panic welling up inside as I showered and dressed. I put on my usual face, trying to bury it because like usual, the last thing I have time for is all that noise.

Especially coming off an unusually busy week or so where I did not feel that I made nearly enough progress on my site redesign. Between Halloween, parent teacher conference, group commitments, and then my husband and daughter getting sick, I don’t feel like I did enough.

But then, I look back at what I did accomplish and I actually got a lot done amid the chaos of the last 2 weeks. WTH? I wonder what I’m beating myself up about.

And then I remember the deadline I set for myself which I do not feel is negotiable given how many chances I’ve had and let slip away.

It’s never going to be enough until it’s done.

But are portfolio sites ever really done? No.

Despite knowing this, it does not stop the panic from taking over. I managed to choke down a lite breakfast, as I wept and struggled to control my breathing quietly at the kitchen table while the littles watched cartoons in the next room.

I opened a meditation app on my phone and that sort of worked in that the crying stopped, but I could still feel the urge to crawl out of my skin, threatening to explode and the pang of a headache quickly forming.

It was enough to get through straightening the kitchen a little, popping a coffee pod in the Keurig, and booting up my laptop. But that’s about it.

After about 20 minutes of sitting in front of my 80% complete site mockup and not being able to do anything with it, the melt down resumed. I knew I needed to get up and walk away for a few minutes, but I fought it because I could not afford to get sidetracked.

I was getting dangerously close to my 5 year old noticing that I was not okay so I just said fuck it and got up.

My hair was recently bleached and colored. I typically take scalding hot showers (which is terrible for hair) so I wash my hair in the sink now. Figured it was a good time to wash and soak in conditioner for an hour.

With my head hanging upside down in my kitchen sink, I could feel myself finally starting to come down a little. After conditioner, I wrapped my hair and set my timer.

I attempted to tackle my mockup again, but I was still completely blocked. I just couldn’t think of what to do next and the thought of everything that was still left to do beyond the website started to get to me again.

My head was a little clearer though so I was able to realize quickly that there was no point in forcing it, I just wasn’t going to get anywhere right now. At the same time though, I knew turning to something utterly unproductive (like Netflix) was only going to make me feel worse about not being able to work. So I turned to cruising the web design subreddit instead.

My justification was that it was relevant to what I was working on, and I did target anxiety related posts for the most part.

Not sure if I was really looking for answers or reassurance that I wasn’t the only one, but I did come to a hard conclusion on my own, and as hard to swallow as it is, I think it’s right.

I’ve got a lot to prove with this portfolio. As much to myself as to any potential clients. While I don’t believe my ideas for it are overly ambitious in the slightest, I think my timeline might be.

I went into this wanting to deploy my site in its most complete form as possible. What I mean by that is like I said before, portfolio sites are never really done. I’m always going to figure out subtle tweaks I can make to improve it, but I wanted the meat of the really cool stuff to be done out the gate.

My last site was such an afterthought. I had been paying for the domain name for a couple years and hadn’t done anything with it. I threw something together that really had no aim and ultimately, I wasn’t proud of it at all.

I don’t ever want to deploy something I’m not proud of again, and I thought if I didn’t have all my bells and whistles in place before deploying my new site, there was no way I could be proud of it either.

Which is silly I realize. I’ve poured so many hours into it and agonized over the tiniest details for months now. There’s something seriously wrong with me if I can’t find any pride in that.

But I think it’s time to accept that I’m really going to have to scale back the scope of the site just for now, and add some of those bells and whistles later.

Me being my own client right now, is not doing me a lot of favors. I’ve set benchmarks, and conditions that need to be met before I can move onto other tasks on my massive to-do list. But I do not have the constraints of someone else’s timeline, budget, or taste to keep me from obsessing on minutiae.

You’d think as a perfectionist, it wouldn’t matter but it does. Someone else’s time and dime makes a HUGE difference.

While I’ve been fighting the urge to get permanently lost in the smaller details, I feel like maybe I’m slipping on some of the medium details.

The last 20% of my mockup, if I’m honest with myself, is not technically necessary to initial deployment. In the interest of making the site as demonstrative of my skills as possible, I am over complicating it.

Well, a little. These planned features absolutely need to be implemented eventually, but I can totally get by with super simplified versions for now, so that I can move onto to other crucial tasks that I feel (they’re not really, but in my head they are) are holding me back from being ready to accept clients again.

I don’t like it, but I know me. I’ll get lost along the way if I don’t stop this now. I need the feeling of making progress more than I need those features on my site right now.

My hair is rinsed and dried now. My heart rate has slowed back down, and although I still have a bit of a headache and I’m still a little afraid to look at my mockup at the moment, I’m feeling a lot better. Clear-headed. Optimistic that I’ll still be able to salvage part of the day.

Tags: #anxiety, #blogger, #newapproach, #panicattack, #pressure, #webdesigner, #wingingit