"Fire" reminds me of working for Burning River Web, a now defunct web design company.  I designed a logo and website for them as well as designing multiple web sites for potential clients on spec.  For those of you who don't know, that's speculation potential customers will like the work and agree to pay for it.  In other words, I took all the risks and the business would make a tidy percentage of the profits if my efforts worked out.

I was willing to take risks because I was between jobs and wanted solid web experience for my portfolio.  I sucked it up and did my best until it became too much.  I finally said just pay me for the work I did for the company (not the spec work for clients) and let's call it quits.  He refused.  I sent him a tersely stated email and he responded...

"You have some nerve calling my ethics into question while having executed a poison apple strategy..."

?!  All I said was that I wanted paid for the non-spec work.  When did I agree to be exploited?  I could've pursued the money legally, but I gave up.  It just wasn't worth it, and there were extenuating circumstances causing me to back off, but it galls me that there are people who think they can get work for free.  Well, he did get it for free so I guess he was right.  The only justice I got was when his lawyers told him to quit using the logo and website.  That didn't do me any good though.

I could tell you of many more times when people tried to rip me off, and spec work isn't the only tactic.  The first and best thing to do to prevent this is to sign a contract before doing anything, allowing for the unexpected.  For example, I used to design logos but could get swamped with endless revisions.  I wrote a contract promising 3 initial layouts and final art.  Revisions would be billed at $__/per hour, payable on delivery.  Simple.  Everybody knows what they're getting.  Which of course didn't stop some people from trying to rip me off, but I got paid or they didn't get the work.

Creative people are often exploited.  We want the joy of creating, the pleasure of seeing our work in print.  How much can we pay you for the opportunity?  Cut that out!  You can do something your customer can't.  That has value and you deserve to be paid.  There's no glory in being a starving artist -- unless you're dead, and then who profits?  I wish I knew how to get creatives to unionize.

Creatives are also too often optimists.  We think we'll get the project done in 4 hours when it will really take a week.  We undercut ourselves when we think about how much we should bill per hour.  We're afraid we'll lose the work if we charge too much.  Maybe you will, but maybe you'll get paid fairly and develop a good relationship with a continuing customer.

If you call a plumber there wouldn't be any talk of spec work.  You'll probably get a bill just for the house call to get a quote on the actual work.  You won't bargain the plumber's $50 or $100 per hour rate.  You just want your pipes to work.  I really should've gone into plumbing.  Let's all start thinking like plumbers.

When I started this post I intended to show my work for Burning River, but thinking about that still makes me burn.  The box above was a happier project I made for Mrs. Fields.

If you're wondering about burning rivers, the web company's name was inspired by the Cuyahoga River which winds through Cleveland, Ohio and famously caught fire a number of times.  These fires were caused by wide-spread chemical dumping by businesses.  The fires inspired the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), an important government agency that has been under attack by the current US president who is well-known for stiffing contractors.

"Spark" 2

There are a lot of campfires in my memories.  Family camping, Girl Scouts, college... and with the memories of all those fires come memories of all the people singing happy songs with pleasant melodies and guitars strumming...

It seems like life was more musical back then.  Songs were written that were meant to be sung, not only by the musician, but also by the audience, war protesters, lovers, and churches.  Songs expressed our emotions and had something to say about what we were feeling.  There was something about sharing the flickering light of a campfire that made us a group and less shy about singing with our friends.

I wonder if the best campfires of my life are in the past?  We get to where we start thinking that sitting on the ground seems impractical or painful and bring lawn chairs, or let's just put the fire in the fireplace.  Or for that matter, collecting friends for a bonfire seems harder when they're shuttling kinds to soccer or working late or whatever.

I've gone "wimpy girl camping" with friends in later years.  That means we get a cabin with plumbing and a kitchen.  Even those commodities are insufficient for some of them and we stopped doing even this, but I'm due for another trip like that.  The last time we went, we had a long covered porch.  One night we rocked in rocking chairs and watched a heavy rain fall through the forest.  There's a peacefulness in that I don't know how to find at my house or in my regular life.

What we do with our lives is up to us.  If you decide you're too old to have fun, then you are.  If you want to have new experiences, then do it.  For people who are young and aren't collecting memories, get outside!  Have a bonfire and sing with your friends.  Just put the fire out when you're done.  If you don't have friends that will join you at a campfire, get some more friends.

The whole point of living is to have a life.  When I was in my 20s, I planned a trip with a friend who bailed at the last moment.  I told my grandma I was thinking I should save my minimal money and be responsible.  She shocked me by saying that I should go on the trip and spend everything I had.  "That way you'll have memories to look back on when you're old like me."  Ranks in best advice I've ever received, and strange that it came from my very responsible grandmother.

This week my brother and I went hiking.  2.3 miles of steeply up and down in the relatively balmy 35 degrees of Ohio March.  That was 2 days ago, and I'm still feeling it, which in my mind is pitiful, especially when I can read about some of you doing mini-marathons and biking and whatever else you're always up to.

This happens every year, and every year it seems a little harder to slough off winter hibernation.  I've even had the radical idea that maybe I should do some exercise all year instead of waiting for summer.  Maybe going on my brother's forced march is the spark that will lead me to better habits, which lead to new, more, better campfires?

In case you're wondering, illustrationfriday.com didn't give a new word for the week, which is why I revisited "spark".

"Spark"

I wished I was more creative when I was in college.  My classmates did wonderfully creative things, but I thought of myself as a practical problem solver who depended on technical ability and hard work to keep up.  I didn't think I had the creative spark that moves people, or enough ideas, or the necessary people skills to sell myself.  I felt like a guppy amongst piranhas for a long time.

When I was going to school K-12, I didn't think I was unusually smart either.  I got better grades for less work, but I figured that was because I had a head start and a good memory.  My friends were smart enough, and they often got into a lot less trouble because they didn't do stupid things.  I didn't understand when they didn't get something I wanted to talk about.  I figured I just wasn't explaining it right.

My first draft for this post was describing my irritations with an artist who took my soft lavender layout and made it bright cyan blue.  I deleted that draft because I figure nobody wants to listen to me complain.  I started thinking about my high school frustrations of trying to explain politics to my peers and my envy looking at my college pals' homework.  My problems with the current artist seems to be a replay of times long gone.

When we hang out with people like ourselves (and we all do), we can't see how we're different than the average person.  We lose abilities in communicating with "average" too.  I like people who are smarter and more creative than me because that pushes me further than I can go on my own power.  As a result, sometimes my self-perception is that I'm not that creative or smart.

Someone told me her friends were diverse because she has black friends -- but her friends are at about the same level of income bracket, education, and type of career.  "Black" isn't really a descriptive word for what a person is like.  It's just a color, and a vague one at that when it's applied to people.  If she really wants diversity, she could make a friend from the slums, no matter what color -- and with her new friend she might have a different perspective on her own self image.

It's always so easy to point out this kind of thing in others, but it's harder to see it in ourselves.  I know my self-perception is skewed because in the years since college many, many people have commented on my creativity in both good and bad ways.  The positives are obvious, but the negatives are that I'm easily bored, ask "too many" questions, don't do as I'm told...

I've been thinking about all of this because I read this article about creatives (Thanks for the link Rand!)  I thought about my hectic week and decided to daydream before work because that would be more productive than running head-first into my cinder block office walls or strangling the guy who turned my lavender layout blue.

It worked.  I got a great idea and fleshed it out on the drive to work.  One less thing on my to do list, and I started to think that maybe I am creative and smart -- and even if that gets me in trouble sometimes, I don't want to be anything else.  Plus, I like talking with all of my blog buddies who are creative and smart too!