Day 41

I got an RFP to design another veterinary website today. Budgets certainly aren't what they used to be, but I'm eternally grateful that people still find a need for people like me. Making a living as a creative person isn't as easy as it used to be however. I'm continually amazed at how sophisticated people have become about website design. They take for granted things that weren't even possible two years ago. It wasn't that long ago that almost everyone was happy enough with a nice looking layout, lots of pictures of their product and a few well chosen words. Now, they expect to be able to fill prescriptions online and want live cameras in the day care areas.

I was a lot happier when the world moved at a slower pace. Before the work world became convinced that almost everything could be instantly resolved with the click of a mouse, we were all a lot more civil to each other. When you told a client that you could probably find a resolution to their problem in two or three weeks they didn't complain and demand an answer tomorrow. When I began my career, just about everybody had a secretary or some sort of assistant. You could scribble something on a yellow note pad, send it off for proofreading, and it would arrive neatly typed on your desk the next morning.

Those days are long gone. You're on your own now. Your only assistant is a copy of Microsoft Word. People don't even like to talk on the telephone anymore. Today my clients seem to universally prefer e-mail. It takes me at least an hour every morning just to answer my e-mail. How many times have you had to spent thirty minutes typing a detailed answer to a question that could have been resolved in thirty seconds over the telephone? Even when people do use the telephone, they don't like to talk. They text!

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