And the Websites I Wish I'd Designed

I can't recall quite how long I've been out of college. I think my last term was winter of last year, before I moved here. I didn't drop out, although at this time I have no plans of returning in the near future. That being said, do not believe that I don't want to continue school and get some sort of degree is something-or-other. It's just that I seem to be doing well enough on my own. Consider that at only 21, with two years of college under my belt (and not all of that pertinent to my career path), I have managed to start and keep running two separate businesses (web design and jewelry/home decor design), am now an in-house graphic and web designer for a small retail shop, and have recently (read: in the past two days) received offers of freelance work from a graphic designer (who is interested in my web design skills) and a marketing representative (who is interested in my graphic design skills). Pardon me if I fall over from exhaustion here.

Laying this all out in type before me makes me wonder: just what happened to being 21? Where are my Friday nights of going out with cohorts and getting smashed? Where are the frat boys hitting on me and offering to buy me a drink? Oh, wait, I remember now. I have no (female) friends in my own age range to go out with, boys (especially frat boys) never approach me, and I don't drink anyway. Huh. I think I glossed over my young adulthood; hopefully I will not regret any missed opportunities when I'm older and going through my mid-life crisis.

I wasn't going to watch Buffy this morning, but when the housemate turned the TV on it was already on FX and Buffy had just started. I got sucked in--it was a dramatic episode. What is it with feeling contemplative about ones life and the events in that show always being able to relate? Anywho, one of the characters had a line that glued itself to my frontal lobe, because of a website I had been designing. It goes like this: I took a E-Commerce class my second year of college, which involved a fair bit of teaching web design basics along with business aspects. Some of the code stuff I did not have previous experience with (CSS), some I did (XHTML), and some was/is being deprecated anyway so I made no effort to remember it. For my final project in the class, I offered to build a retail site for a friend/business associate and her wares. It was being done free of charge and I got to test just how much CSS I had memorized. A site was had before the term was up, I got an A+ and all was good. I had fullly intended to finish the site, as did my friend. We tried. Things came up; we both got busy. I consistently told her exactly what I needed her to do to finish the site and offered to help her with it. That was well over a year ago; I believe now she has a new web designer.

I think of this friend and her website because the quote from Buffy is a tagline we incorporated into the retail website; I didn't even know it came from that show. I'm just really wondering exactly what went wrong between the two of us and if I should feel any guilt over not finishing what I started for her. She's a grown woman and I shouldn't have to hold her hand through things, especially when she never asked me to. I started this site design free of charge and intended to finish it that way, although knowing this woman and her extreme generosity and support of small businesses it is doubtful I could have walked away empty-handed. Should I have made myself more readily available to help complete her tasks for the site, knowing that some form of reimbursement would have been received? Even if she didn't give me any form of pay, I would have had another working site to add to my portfolio, and a dandy reference at that. Should that have been enough to justify spending the time and energy on projects that were not necessarily my responsibility? Oh but alas, I just don't know. I am disappointed that I never finished the site, no matter who was supposed to do what. But I am fairly sure that I did not lose a friend; she invited me over for a Buffy-thon sometime in the next month and I hope to resolve any questions regarding our status.

For me there is a business lesson to be learned in all this, and a fairly sappy one at that. You cannot, as a business, satisfy every client. You can, as a person, try to keep your friends. The real task is keeping business business and friends friends, and ne'er the twain shall meet.