I have a hard time learning from my own mistakes. Every time I get bogged down with too much work, I act like it’s never happened to me before and I freak out and try to come up with a plan to avoid it in the future. The plan works until I send out invoices at the end of the month, at which time a reset button in my brain is pushed and I do it again. Greed kills. Greed also makes your home workstation look like this-

That’s right- 17″ down low, 32 up top (with a Discovery Channel special about military aircraft playing in the lower right corner). It’s like the white guy’s version of chrome rims…except it’s a write off. And yes, it is all to compensate for the fact that I am hung like a parakeet.

I need to start saying no to people when they want me to do projects for them because I will die if I keep this up. For some reason, that is incredibly hard for me to do. People are really insistent about this stuff too.

“Hey, do you think you could design a gizmo for my on-line thingy business?”
“No. No time. Absolutely not.”
“Oh. When do you think you’ll have time?”
“I don’t have time to sleep until May, and then I’m going on vacation. When I get back I have more crap lined up.”
“It’ll only take you a second, and I’ll pay you like a mob lawyer. Just look at it and tell me what you think.”
“Okay, send it over and I’ll mess with it.”

Once you cross the line of having the work in hand, you’re done. At least that’s how it works for me. My other problem is that I take this crap way too seriously. I can’t sleep or relax at all while work is in process, and I act like every single little job I do is somehow tied to my worth as a human being, no matter how ridiculous that job may be.

So I need to delegate and be more of an art director. Find some hungrier artists who can take a creative brief and make something out of it. Simple, right? I’m not sure how many of you know this, but the creative community as a whole is comprised of the flakiest bunch of not-showing-up losers you will see this side of a Widespread Panic concert. The only place to find someone dependable is a design firm, and they want $200 an hour, which is a great plan for having my house foreclosed on, but not so hot businesswise.

To Every single starving artist in the entire world (assuming you are talented and not just looking for a way to be poor and still get laid), I offer the following recipe for success-

1. Put down the bong
2. Show up on time
3. Finish the job

There are other factors like understanding the market, being professional, knowing how to advertise, and so on, but you’ll pick up on those things if you start hanging around people who are smarter than thou. Basically, if you can make a pretty picture and do three things that any functioning adult human should be able to do, I guarantee you will have all the work you can handle.

Case#1
Samantha is a girl who expressed interest in taking on some of my extra design work. I sent her an email offering what amounts to two months rent for a few hours’ work. She waited two days to return my e-mail, and I was okay with that, assuming she was probably as busy as I am. Eventually I went to meet her and work out the details.

Super awesome touch of class having a half-burned joint in the ashtray on your coffee table and a bag of weed on the arm of the sofa. Extra points for being so stoned you thought I would care that you hated George Bush. You can imagine my shock at the sight of a foul-smelling pot head who calls the president a terrorist- especially in the most liberal part of the city.

We didn’t even discuss the job in the 22 minutes I spent there. She chattered on about art and how she wasn’t in it for the money (which is either bullshit or incredibly stupid in light of the fact that I am there to pay you for something). The next day she sent me an email mentioning that we “forgot to talk about the job.”

Moron.

Case #2
Francois-Joachim (not his real name, but it was something just as ridiculous and made up) came very highly recommended by a friend of his. His talent was as overstated as you will hear from anyone when they talk about their artist friends “Oh my god, he is SO talented. He can draw ANYTHING. He designed Jesus’s monogrammed bathrobe and Rembrandt frequently calls on him from beyond the grave to consult on matters of color.”

Yeahyeahyeah. I’m sure the guy invented contrast and ejaculates tertiary colors. Everyone’s friends are the most talented people on earth, even mine.

Apparently a lot of talent is wasted on the non-punctual. I waited fifteen minutes for him to show up. No phone call from him, so I left. As I was driving home, he called-

“Hello?”
“Hey, bra. You here yet?” (Bra? Are we in Hawaii? Are we fifteen?)
“No. I waited a while, but figured you weren’t coming.”
“It’s not even 10:30 yet. You said to be there around ten.”
“At ten.”
“Come on, dude, we’re on artist time haha.” (Appealing to my sense of artist fraternity is not going to work, as I have passed the point in my life when I thought irresponsibility was cute)
“Actually, part of what I am looking for is someone who takes this stuff kind of seriously, and showing up on time is pretty basic.”
“What? Whatever, man. I can’t work like that anyway.”
“How’s that working out for you so far?” (He had mentioned to me in an email that he needed to pay rent before they evicted him. Again.)
“Man, I’m happy, and that’s what’s important.”

I have a feeling that some of my tax dollars are going to be funding this guy’s happiness this year, and that makes me want to break things and kill people.

There are more where those came from, and I am still looking. It’s kind of interesting to meet people like this, but frustrating to know that they could be doing so much better if they applied themselves. Now I know how my parents feel.

Speaking of parents, I went fishing last weekend with my dad. I have said this before, but it bears repeating: Nothing in the world compares to spending time with your parents- not sitting around watching tv with them, but doing something.

My blood pressure has gotten so high this year that my eyelids squirt blood when I open my laptop. Realizing that I am basically on borrowed time, I remembered that when the vessel finally bursts and I collapse to the floor, my final thoughts will probably not go back to wishing I had found a higher resolution image to use in this advertisement. With that fact in mind, I called and reserved a boat and a cabin for a couple of days and Dad and I went fishing.

Someone killed all of the fish in the lake so we sat in the sun, drinking beer and solving the world’s problems as we are want to do, tossing the occasional $7 lure into a tree just for appearances. We decided on the following universal absolutes-

Girls smell good
Airplanes are cool
We should have brought ice for the beer
Warm beer tastes like shit

It was awesome. Next, I want to do something cool with my mom, but she doesn’t fish and I don’t quilt. I’m thinking about enrolling us in a cooking class, but my mom in a cooking class would be like Chuck Norris in self defense training. I can cook pretty well for a straight guy. I just think I would enjoy burning myself on someone else’s stove for a change.

Oh, this entry was originally an attempt to recruit talent to help me out with my work on Atlanta Illustrated as well as some social clubs and various businesses around town (you don’t have to be local, just have skillz and a brain). I know I didn’t do a very good job selling it and you probably think I am a dick, but if anyone knows a responsible artist (yeah, find me a good song by Nickelback while you’re at it) who needs some extra coin, I can make that happen.

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