Quite eventful the past couple of weeks have been. I went up to Fargo for a printing expo last weekend, saw some demos on vehicle wraps and even got to get up there and do a little cutting and squeegeeing myself. Is squeegeeing a word? Spell check doesn’t seem to think so. Oh well, you know what I mean.

Vehicle graphics is something I’ve always wanted to do, I once had big dreams of designing paint schemes for race cars. The plan was to move out to Charlotte, NC and the gig would be available instantly, of course. I’d be there in Charlotte designing paint schemes for NASCAR, and within distance to design for the open wheel teams in Indianapolis. Well, the world doesn’t work that way. I can’t see myself way out in North Carolina, I don’t know anyone anywhere near there. But, who says I have to go there? The company I work for is just getting into wide-format printing, so a little vehicle graphics might be in the question. I’ll get a little wide-format printing and signage experience and I’ll have the right stuff on my resume for it. That’s sort-of promising.

So I got to visit good old Fargo for this expo. Stayed up in Fargo at the Radisson Friday night, and then on Saturday night and Sunday I paid a visit to the family up in Cooperstown. Did a little snowmobiling on Sunday, and of course every muscle in my body was sore for the entire week afterward. It was about 50 degrees out so the snow was melting and very sticky, which made the snowmobile ride very bumpy and it was hard to turn. It was kind of like driving a car with no power steering, something I’ve had to do a few times before. It was still a lot of fun. The river was still frozen enough to ride on, and we saw a lot of deer out running around the area. One of the deer that got spooked by the snowmobile I was riding had leaped over a riverbank and landed flat on his head. I thought for certain he was a goner and had snapped his neck, but he got up and kept on running.

It was quiet around there, though. My older brother has been living in Fargo for a few years, so my visits home always included him, until this weekend. He’s moved on to greener pastures and moved out to Colorado. He made what I think is a good move and decided to use his GI bill and go to college, he found a school he liked out in Denver. He’s about 30 years old now, but I don’t think anyone’s ever really too old for college. I had classes with people older than that, one of my favorite classmates in college was as old as my parents and now he’s doing well as a graphic artist in an ad agency.

I’m quite excited for my brother, but it was very quiet and odd without him and his rambunctious yellow lab around this past weekend. Not having him nearby is already taking a toll on me. Yeah, I miss my big brother. We’ve been very close over the years, and I’ve counted on him for a lot. But he’s gotta do what he’s gotta do. Who knows, maybe we’ll move out to Colorado too some day, we’ve been talking about doing that for a long time. Probably not anytime quite soon, though.

First we’ve got a wedding, and that’s going to be happening June 15th, 2008. We’re slowly moving into the planning stages, we have some time so we aren’t jumping to any conclusions yet. We know that we want it to happen in Minnesota, we’re going to check out some lake resorts up north this summer. I was informed that June 15th is also the wedding anniversary of my grandparents (on my Mom’s side) so that’s kind of cool.

I’ll keep you posted on the planning. In fact, I bought the domain name dustinandelizabeth.com so that we can have a wedding site. I haven’t decided if that’s geeky or not yet. No need for me to be self-conscious I guess, everyone thinks I’m a geek already I’m sure, and that doesn’t really bother me anymore. The dustinandelizabeth.com web site doesn’t have anything on it yet, but eventually we’ll use that for photos from the wedding, announcements, and even RSVPs. I was talking to a friend who recently got married, and he said that one of his biggest frustrations was that 75% of the RSVPs didn’t come by the deadline. Perhaps an online RSVP will cut that percentage down a little bit. I’ll announce when I have something on that new website, I just haven’t had any time yet.

Talk to y’all later… (yes I said “y’all”… I’m practicing my Charlotte, North Carolina accent dont-cha know).

Yeah, it’s been quiet around here lately. Plenty to write about, just haven’t found a good enough way to write it. I’ve been very critical of myself lately, to the point where I can’t even write a sentence without hating every word of it. I get that way sometimes. Why? I don’t know. I can’t explain it. Oh allright then I’ll try…

I had been having some nagging feelings about my design work recently. I’m pretty sure I’ve just been experiencing a bit of a burn-out, as the past few weeks have been very busy and stressful. I started feeling like the design work I was doing was not really touching anyone on the kind of level I would like. I’d get to the point where I would feel like the work was completely selfish and irrelevant, only touching people on a very superficial level. But I suppose that’s the nature of marketing design. If I wanted to touch people on some truly deep and profound level I’d probably have to hightail to Paris and mingle with the “real” artsy types. I know what would happen, I’d come running back after winding up painting road signs.

Don’t get me wrong, I love what I’m doing. I’m just in a rut. It happens. After a while, the batteries have to be changed. So lately I’ve been looking everywhere for some sort of seeds of artistic revolution. I’ve been looking for something to convince me that my designs are still worth making and looking at, that they aren’t as irrelevant and silly as I fear.

Initially I thought that what I needed was some time and space to think. I thought that maybe I just needed more time to be able to focus on my personal life, without all the distracting clutter of marketing bottom lines and mission statements. But I need to save that for later. It’s way too early in the game for a time out.

The fundamental question for me isn’t how do I as graphic artist touch the world, but how the world touches me as a graphic artist, and how that shows up in my work. There’s certainly more to this story, and there are all kinds of related tangents, but I’m afraid I’ve gone on too long already. The rest will likely come out another day. For now, I’m not really going to change anything, I just need to relax and look at things in a more positive way. It gets tough sometimes to overcome this perpetual state of angst that I seem to be in.

Thank you as always for your kind attention, and please let me know if you’d like me to clarify, recant, or feel embarrassed about anything. See-ya later!

Today I feel like repeating myself, but I won’t since I’ve already said it. Just go back and see this post again to understand exactly what kind of day today was. You know, I’m a very neutral person. I don’t pick sides, I’m never out to get anyone, I do my best and try to get along with everyone I can. But for some reason people form these vendettas that make absolutely no sense. I’m cursed as a very self-conscious and insecure person, so I do take things a little personally, I admit that. But seriously, being an adult is just as rediculous as being a child was sometimes. Do you ever feel that way?

Yeah, it was one of those Mondays. Very busy day, had some fires to put out. And at the end of the day all I get is some pety office politician trying to make my life even more miserable. A co-worker had some inspiring words, though. He vents to me when he’s having his trouble with office politicians, and so I felt it would be okay to vent to him. Not surprisingly, he had the right advice, better advice than I can usually offer him. He told me to go home and just look around at what I’m even going to work for. Realize that work doesn’t really matter that much, what’s at home is what matters. Unfortunately Lizzie wasn’t home when I got here, but the thought still helped. He’s right, I should just leave my aggravations from work there. Because I’m just there to make money all for the ultimate goal of having a nice, stable, safe home. I don’t live at work. I live at home, that’s what matters most.

Maybe that doesn’t make sense, but it makes sense in my head. Yeah, I’m the kind of person who takes his work very seriously and I live and breathe what I do for a living, but ultimately I just have to stand up and scream “I don’t care!” to maintain my sanity.

Man, I can’t wait to go home for Thanksgiving. A four day weekend up north sounds great right now.

Well, It’s supposed to snow tonight. I guess that means I need to get up about an hour early tomorrow. First snowfall in this place is always a huge event, everyone forgets how to drive. Wish me luck.

It’s been hectic lately - good, busy and productive, but hectic. I’ve managed to survive through more hectic times, so don’t worry. We’re getting into the busy time of year at work. Lots of trade shows, lots of orders, and we’re launching some new products. The cool thing is that I’ve been playing a pretty big role in the new products addition. I’ve been working with a programmer on a new dynamic web site for a division of the company which we designed for easy and quick product addition. Now that we’ve basically got that up and running as slick as possible I’ve been developing the print materials - direct mail, catalogs, etc. So I’ve been having a lot of fun. It’s good, challenging work, and it’s helping the company grow.

When I starting looking for the right job about a year ago I was out for something small so I could make a difference, but I still needed something that would be a good stepping stone to the next level when I’m ready for that. I started to have some doubts about my decision after the first few months. At a certain point I didn’t feel like I was pointed in the right direction in terms of my career ambitions, but now that I’m really starting to see an interest toward growth in this company I’m a lot more positive about where I am.

Yes, the commute up to Rogers still sucks, but at least I’m enjoying where I’m going to. 494 can be kind of scary in the morning. Especially when I’m trying to pour out of my coffee thermos into a little cup while driving down a construction zone with no shoulder and a semi truck next to me hogging the middle of the road. But, the work is good so I don’t mind where I’m headed every day. That at least makes the drive worth it. Hopefully we’ll be able to get out of Bloomington and find a place that will be a little more central and I can not spend so much time, gas, and money on getting to work every day. The only problem is that the more central suburbs are either too expensive or too icky of a neighborhood.

So that’s the scoop on work. I haven’t talked about work much. You know, I guess it’s hard to. You keep hearing about people getting fired from their jobs because of their blogging about work (like that Delta airlines stewardess who got fired for posting a photo of herself posing on board one of their planes), so you have to be careful. Sure, work hasn’t always been all that wonderful, but I understand that you’re going to have your petty gripes and botherations at any job. So I don’t really need to vent about work too here too often, at least not as often as I did while I was working over at the bank.

Yesterday was one of those days, though. I’ve been trying to get a catalog off to print, and unfortunately have come to a bit of an impasse with a rather icky Prepress department at this particular printer. But I don’t choose the vendors, my bosses do, so I just tried to deal with it the best I could. But it just got very, very difficult not to just tell these guys “screw you we’ll just find someone else to do it then.” No, I didn’t say that, but it almost got to that point.

You know, over a great bulk of my working life I’ve worked in a customer service oriented position and have had the “pleasure” of dealing a lot with angry customers. So one could say that I’ve developed the skill of talking angry customers through a situation and getting them to calm down, and finding at least some way to reassure them that the company cares about them in some way shape or form, even if it’s total bullshit. When dealing with this prepress guy at this printer yesterday, I seriously felt like I was dealing with an angry customer.

So I sat there as this guy talked down to me on the phone and I thought to myself, wait a minute… what’s going on here? I’m the customer here, aren’t I? This guy is acting like I’m HIS problem. That’s when I went to my bosses and to purchasing, told them the whole situation, and to my delight they backed me up. They called up the owner of this printing company and basically said to get their asses in gear or we’ll take our catalog somewhere else for printing. I guess we’re going to have a meeting with the owner of this printer on Monday and I get to be included… you can bet I’ll be discussing this prepress guy’s attitude with him.

I’ve dealt with difficult customers many times before, and I honestly wasn’t being difficult with this prepress guy. I was just asking logical, legitimate questions about why he was asking such unreasonable things of us. You see, we were given a high-resolution proof of the catalog that we had sent over to get set up for print. There were a couple of minor things that needed to be fixed so I fixed them and then re-sent the documents to get proofed again. Other than the few minor issues, everything else looked great. So after I sent the fixed documents, this prepress guy calls me up and says that I have to fix the whole thing, even the stuff that looked fine on the first proof. So I thought, wait a minute, you already proofed it out to us and everything worked fine, why doesn’t it work now? What are you doing different? I have physical proof sitting in front of me and you got it to work and now you’re trying to tell me it doesn’t? Nothing changed about the documents, they are all in the same format we sent them to you the first time. Why did they work then and not now? And it wasn’t a matter of something changing about the documents since the first time, they were the same. It was the way they were created he was taking issue with, but there was not an issue with that the first time so why should there be now? Apparently he was quite offended by whatever it was he thought I was implying because he became quite argumentative and angry toward me. He made me feel like I was inconveniencing him and so I got caught in the corner trying to calm him down and trying to help him help me, and that’s just not the way it should be at all.

It’s just a plain case of bad customer service. I’ve seen it in many instances, and it’s always really surprising to me when this very simple requirement of a successful business (good customer service) is so blatantly disregarded. It should be so obvious, but unfortunately it’s apparent that not everyone understands the importance of customer service. It can really make or break a company. As I said, I’ve put in my time in the customer service industry, so I’ve seen a lot of what it can do first hand.

No matter what, customers have to be treated a certain way. As long as someone else is paying for your way of life, be it through a weekly paycheck or your clients paying for your products or services, you are essentially working on their time. This may be a bit of a heartbreaking realization for many small business owners or entrepreneurs, but it’s a fact regardless. Your clients are your customers, no matter what other word you use to describe them to yourself, and your customers need your top of the line service, always.

Of course, there are some people that think they are the exception to the rule. Case in point, employees in a large organization - the bean counters, for lack of a better explanation. These people often only report to their co-workers or their managers and can make the work environment hostile with their lack of people skills and professionalism. This is a generalization but applicable nonetheless. The justification for this sort of behavior? They aren’t dealing with the actual customers so they don’t feel the need to act like they are.

Now, could you imagine if they treated their co-workers and managers as if they were customers? What a difference that would make. In reality it’s not that hard to hold that sort of mindset either. You are accountable to your managers. They are your clients and therefore your customers. I’m not saying you have to be a kiss-ass, but a good work ethic and even showing a little bit of undue respect at times is definitely an important part of success.

Needless to say, I’m going to make this clear to this printing company and if they don’t get it, I’m going to recommend to my bosses to find someone else to do the printing.

I always find office politics to be a menace. I also find office politics to be extremely offensive. I don’t like people who create office politics. I don’t understand office politics, why can’t people just learn to work together happily?

You see, office politicians think that they live longer than Earth’s creation, hence they have nothing to do. No office politics = nothing for them to do. So what they do is they work on new tactics and ways to embark on new office politics to keep themselves busy and occupied.

These same “office politicians” feel that the office is too peaceful and unreal to live in. Basically, since these little buggers have way too much time on their hands after work, they watch too many drama shows on TV back at home. Since they want to experience what it feels like to live in a TV drama, they create their own drama in the office. They become the sole director/producer/script writer/actor/stylist/cameraman/casting agent, etc.

Perhaps I need to be more open minded about such stuff. After all, these people are very good at what they do.

Sorry that the last couple of weekends/fridays have lacked posts. I’ve been very busy, and had company this past weekend. Nothing too extraordinary has been going on lately so you haven’t missed anything. I’ve been pretty much just conforming to my regular routine lately.

But with the holiday season on the horizon, the craziness is coming. You’d better be ready for it. I’m not!

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