If you’re a designer (or any­one in a sim­i­lar busi­ness), what I’m about to tell you is likely not news, but based on my recent hell­ish expe­ri­ence, I thought it would still be per­ti­nent to go over this.

The “this” I am speak­ing of is, of course, why being your own client sucks. It’s a hor­ri­ble, detestable, deplorable task that is an unfor­tu­nate fact of life. Per­haps I am just an awful per­fec­tion­ist, or just have masochis­tic design ten­den­cies, but the path I rode to get to my cur­rent design was a long, painful, ten month ride.

At first, the project I gave to myself seemed easy: just redesign my site, as I was tired of my old design and it needed some def­i­nite fresh­en­ing up. Seems sim­ple enough, right? Just come up with a new design, code it, and get it online – no big deal.

…But oh how wrong I was. Frankly, I should have known bet­ter, as I’ve gone through this trou­ble of design­ing for myself before, but sadly I for­got and “his­tory repeats itself because no one was lis­ten­ing the first time.” (—Anony­mous)

So with­out the slight­est sec­ond thought about the dif­fi­culty of the task in front of me, I began on the first design:

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