Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Niki Blaker

The recent article, In defense of dispassionate designers, inspired me to share my personal journey.

Sometimes you come across an article that hits so close to home, you wish you wrote it.

For many years I lived and breathed design. When I wasn’t spending 60+ hours a week working — many times through the night, attending conferences, or reading every design-related article that crossed my path, I volunteered any free remaining moments to design, AIGA, Phoenix Design Week.

None of those are inherently bad things. I’m forever grateful for the skills, connections, and friendships from all those things above.

But the feeling that I HAD to maintain that level of passion and dedication in order to considered a GOOD designer turned out to be an unsustainable expectation.

I had no work-life balance, I put my health at risk, my marriage was in trouble, I was depressed — it seemed like trying to make every aspect of my life about design came at a great cost.

It’s been about a year and a half-now that I made some really tough life decisions, but looking back, I feel like I made the right choices.

Made my mental and physical health my number one priority above all else. Changed the way I ate, started exercising, started seeing a therapist, started meditating.
Stepped down from serving as Presidents Council Chair on the AIGA National Board. Maybe one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. It was the first time in my life I ever felt like I “quit” something and I felt like a failure for not seeing my term through. But I knew I had to if I was going to start this journey of putting myself first.
Scaled back my work hours for several months. By a lot. It probably wasn’t until six months ago that I ramped it back up to a normal work schedule and even now, I won’t work evenings and weekends. Anything outside of 9–6 is sacred time.
Became much pickier about accepting new clients. For the first time ever, I turned down a big job because I listened to the red flags and told THEM they wouldn’t be a good fit for ME.
Worked actively on my marriage to make it better and stronger after coming to the brutal realization that love is not enough.
Took up other hobbies that had nothing to do with design like cooking, running, reading, video games, caring about makeup and fashion.
Relied on my girlfriends and family much more than I used to and actually asked them for help.

I was worried these changes would make me less of a designer. I still worry that maybe since I’m no longer chasing down every UX or branding article, or signing up for every new software update will mean I miss out on something. But it also feels really nice not to try to be a work martyr.

The past two months have been my busiest yet and all of my new work has been referrals from existing clients. I’m so incredibly grateful for that. I realize, well hell, that means I AM a good designer. I don’t love design any less. For those 6–8 hours a day, I still put 100% into my work, try to solve visual problems the best I know how, and stand by what I do.

No longer taking on side projects, seeing me at events, participating in online forums, or tweeting every design article out there doesn’t make me less of a designer.

The past 18 months have been pretty huge. I feel (and look) like a completely different person and I definitely have some different outlooks on life than I did before.

Funny how it took losing some passion to make that happen.

The year I decided to put myself first was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The year I decided to put myself first

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