I have always been a driven and creative person, I just can’t put my finger on whether it is drive based on ambition or a hope of just getting by.

Around me everyday are living examples of people who have tirelessly worked at what  they love to do with little or no gain, then they finally realise their aspirations by taking a risk that most of us wouldn’t be brave enough to follow.  This made me wonder about my own circumstances and ask myself  the question, “Am I living or just surviving?”

Now don’t misunderstand me; I have a family who I adore, I have a job which provides enough for us to enjoy life and in-turn makes me feel blessed.  However, this is the surviving part of life, and for all the beauty it brings to my existence it also brings a certain level of fear and restrain. For example, I don’t feel able to take certain career risks for fear of being unable to provide for my family, this is obviously a massive responsibility and society expects you to do this over all other more personal ambitions; yet I see successful creative risk takers around me all the time, and they are not just surviving but living as well!

These creative risk takers come from all walks of life.  Eddie Izzard and Tim Minchin have taken comedy in new directions, Prodigy and Nirvana created whole new genres of music and designers such as Elliot Jay Stocks have taken the leap to freelance design and simply didn’t look back.

What I have discovered from watching the living creative thinkers out there is, do what you love, do it well, live for the moment and the rest will simply follow.

Is it my own fear that restrains me or the relentless expectations of the society that we live in, I truly don’t know, I just know I need to survive.  Maybe the new year and new challenges will give me the push I need to get to the next level of achievement, and maybe I will let go of my fear and begin to start living the rest of my life…

On the 18th August 2008 my wife and I arrived back at our home both aching and tired from the weekend behind us. After unpacking our things and hanging all the wet clothes and sleeping bags out to dry a depressing thought entered by head, AM I TOO OLD FOR MUSIC FESTIVALS?

We were both over the moon when two tickets to the V festival became available through a friend, my wife had already ticked the festival box some years ago and I was keen to do the same before I became unfashionably old. 

The morning of Saturday 19th soon arrived, and with a nervous excitment we started our 2 hour journey to Stafford Park and the V festival.  We arrived at noon and after unpacking the car and finally finding the ticket exchange point all we had to do was find a decent spot for our tent, and as you can imagine this was easier said than done.  So we pitched the tent and did the 30 minute treck to the main arena where we would see all the bands we had eagerly awaited. 

We were immediately greeted by Girls Aloud on the V stage, as I expected they were well rehearsed and probably miming, but they weren’t who I was here to see and after aclimatising to our surroundings we caught the first of many great acts, Lenny Kravitz had taken the stage and blew us away with a string of hits, then swiftly we moved on to catch David Jordan, Tom Baxter, One Republic and the odd song from a few bands here and there as well as what can only be described as an awful performance from Amy Winehouse.  After grabbing a bite to eat we made our way back to the V stage for the Kings of Leon and I’m not lying when I tell you they were amazing, simply great music played to perfection, it had started raining but nobody cared.

As the evening was coming to an end we had to make the choice between The Verve, Kaiser Chiefs and The Chemical Brothers, as the wife wasn’t sure about the Verve and I had seen The Chemical Brothers we opted for the Kaiser Chiefs and what a good decision that turned out to be.  Their performance proved to be a lesson in how to perform a series of good song you didn’t even realise you knew with an energy and passion that I haven’t seen before, I couldn’t of asked for a better finish to our first day, but that was soon to change.

We started to make our way back to our tent in the pooring rain both still buzzing from the amazing day we had, only to be presented with a tent that had no front pegs and sleeping bags and clothes that doubled as sponges.  After a few hours of uncomfortable wet sleep I made the decision to pack up and get back to the car to try and dry the contents of the tent and ourselves, this was not however, a pleasant journey and after walking for 2 hours back to the car drying our clothes and walking back to our tent it was nearly 8am. Once back at the tent we laid out the dry covers and managed to catch a few hours kip.

Now mildly refreshed and slightly dryer we packed up and ventured back to the car park to return our clothes and tent to the car ready for the journey home that evening, but with blisters on my blisters this was proving not to be an enjoyable exercise.  We finally made it back to the arena for the final day and had decided to make the best of it and try and forget the previous night, but this was proving difficult and after catching a few average performances and a suprisingly good set from the Sugababes we decided at 7.30pm enough was enough and made the journey home, unfortunately missing what would have been a highlight for me ‘The Prodigy’.

So now this is where I cannot work out whether it was bad fortune that made me leave that festival early or was it simply my age, I’d like to think I am a spritely 32 years old; but leaving a festival early and 3 days to recover makes me wonder if it was just too much for me and my weary old bones. 

All said and done I think I may have learned to important things; don’t go camping to a festival and wear thick socks inside your wellies and you probably will enjoy the whole experience a lot more, well when you’re my age anyway

Being one of the main designer of a small studio I felt confident in my own abilities, I was able to produce good quality artwork for all forms of print and create this using all the application provided to a good standard (obviously I still had a lot to learn). During this time I had started to take an active interest in all things web, and when the opportunity for a change in direction arrived I grabbed it with both hands.

When I started I quickly realised what a massive learning curve this was going to be, I not only had to get to grips with our internal content management system I had to learn a never ending list of scripts just to get by, and that was what I did for the best part of 8 months.  I would work late, take projects home and read more articles on the web than I could possibly imagine, and finally I started to get to grips with a move I thought would be fairly straight forward.

Well, now just over twelve months has passed and I am now able to (I hope) share what I have learned, and over the next few months I will try to help any other budding web designer make the transition over to the mystical web.  Visit the ‘my say’ section of my site in the future to find simple but useful help.