I find myself thinking about the day I learned how to ride a bicycle fairly often.

It was an early summer day, one of those that seemed to stretch forever when we were kids. My sister and I used to spend our summers with our grandparents. It wasn’t a novel idea – many children our age did the same thing, so we were never without company, those never-ending summers.

I was about 10 years old, quite old for learning how to ride a bicycle. I used to feel bad about it, but being the elder child in a family with two daughters, bicycles weren’t the first toy that came to mind. Nevertheless, I felt bad about not knowing how to ride. I felt lacking somehow – all the children my age already knew how to ride that wretched thing, what did I do wrong?

The tipping point was when one of our cousins left his bike at our grandparents’ place. We got drawn to it immediately. It didn’t have any helper wheels, since our cousin was one of “them”, he already knew how to ride. Me and my sister started taking turns, trying to tame the beast, pressing tentatively on the pedals, always ready to get our feet on the ground so we don’t spill.

We tried and tried for many hours. At some point, around dusk, my sister grasped the mystery of keeping her balance, and she started riding the bike up and down the road triumphantly.

I was devastated. I felt miserably alone and useless. My sister, three years my junior, could ride a bicycle and I couldn’t – what kind of big sister am I?

I spent the day brooding in front of my old 386 PC that I used to have at the old shed. If I couldn’t do it, I would stop care about it – it’s not for me. Riding a bicycle was clearly stupid, I thought while launching Prince of Persia. For stupid, silly kids.

Something was nagging me though, I just couldn’t let it go. The next morning, I woke up at 8am, ate my breakfast in a hurry and got outside with the bike.

“It’s you and me now”, I thought.

I started the same dance – getting on, trying to pedal, losing my balance, putting my feet on the ground to steady myself. Again and again and again. At some point I realised I was crying with anger. This. Cannot. Be. I. Must. Learn it.

At that point, something clicked in my mind. Some invisible switch turned on and I knew I got it, I knew how it worked! I could force my body not to fall, as long as I kept pedaling. That’s how everyone does it! That’s how I can do it too, wheeee!

I spent the day in an elated trance, biking up and down the village road.

—

I still do the same dance when learning something new. I always approach it with skepticism. I paw at it like a kitten paws at a ball of yarn. I look at my peers and reprimand myself – “How can you NOT know this by now? What kind of scam are you?”. I have all the symptoms – the brooding, the mild case of psychosis, the angry tears (sometimes). It’s all there.

“It’s you and me now”, I have said to my cousin’s bike. So silly. It was just me and me, after all.

This post was inspired by an excellent post of mr. Moraitakis, written almost a year ago, on how to do business in a bankrupt country.

I started writing it in past November, but for some reason it just got pushed down my writing list and never got published. Time to change that. Nothing in Greece changed for the better, after all.

My personal experience

I started freelancing right when the recession started to really show its fangs in Greece, back in March 2010. Everyone thought I was a fool back then – leaving a nice job in one of the best IT companies in Greece to become a hired gun? Why would anyone do that?

I won’t go into reasoning, I’ll just say I wanted it very, very much. So I left my job in December 2009 and started looking for clients.

Yes, I didn’t have any projects in the pipeline when I started. No, you should never do that.

Right now, my greek to overseas clients ratio is 50/50. I spent the past two years designing tiny school websites and huge news portals. Here’s what I found:

Fear the Greeks bearing gifts

Dealing with greek clients can get tough, be it companies or individuals. I’ve had both bad and excellent experiences. From a freelancer’s perspective, it’s always very interesting to see how small- to medium-sized companies pay in a more timely way and with less fuss than big companies.

You’ve got a business now, albeit personal – learn about the benefits. See if there’s any way to incorporate your pricey purchases in your business, so you can offset your VAT. Search for state funding programs and see if you can apply, but don’t invest your business future in them. People keep asking me, “why didn’t you ask for state funding?” like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Well for me, it isn’t – first you create value, then you get funded. That’s the way I see things.

Press and nudge to get paid. E-mail (or telephone if you’re daring, I’m not), and then e-mail again. There’s a status quo of slugginess during the payment phase in Greece – combat it by setting set dates for each project milestone. Don’t expect that your client is losing sleep over not paying you – he’s not. If there is a pending payment and you notice this kind of slugginess, politely remind him that you must get paid. Now.

Don’t get too focused in Greece. Keep your greek contacts close but always be on the lookout for overseas clients. You’ll notice quite a big difference in business attitude – I often joke about how my international projects are the most fun I’ve ever had while freelancing.

Nevertheless, if you find a greek client that pays you on time and with minimum fuss, by all means, stick with him.

Learn from my mistakes

In retrospect, I’ve found that it’s better to get busy with 2 or 3 small scale projects at the same time than with one huge project. Since there’s not much cash in the market, don’t expect to get the big budgets you’ve thought you would – that is rare.

Don’t give 100% of your time to one client – that applies to freelancing in every country, but more so in Greece. I’ve made that mistake in the past and I was left hanging for 2 to 3 months till I got finally paid. Not fun.

Cash flow is everything. Don’t agree to work without an advance deposit, you can’t afford it. If you bill hourly, don’t forget to bill for Skype calls too – it’s amazing how verbose people get when they talk for free.

Passive income is your friend. If you think you’ve got a way to make a steady sum of money each month, chase it. A steady sum means that you get to pay your bills. Paying your bills means less stress.

Bureaucracy won’t kill you, but it won’t make your job easier either. Even if you struggle, pay your VAT and insurance costs first of all – they’re going to be the most significant cost of your freelancing. Find a good accountant and ask him about doing job with overseas clients. Don’t make my mistake – pay your VAT taxes yourself, don’t trust anyone: my previous accountant failed to pay my VAT reports, so I had to hunt him down and get involved in a generally unpleasant process I’d gladly skip.

If you’re like me, you take your business too personally. There has been a moment when I burst into tears after a particularly vicious e-mail in 6pm. I don’t take work that gives me grief anymore, even if I find myself short on money.

Can you do it?

It’s tough, but it’s doable. I always like to say that if I could do it, everyone can.

Keep cranking up high quality work, be positive and promote yourself without making a huge fuss out of it.

You’re not alone, there are dozens like you. Contact your peers, ask for advice and feedback, talk about clients and bureaucracy and money and life. Meet for a beer, let some steam off. You need this.

Even if you eventually find out you can’t do it, don’t despair. Quitting freelancing should not be considered a failure – this way of life is not for everyone. Noone’s gonna judge you (to be frank, noone’s going to bother enough to notice). If you find it all too stressful, by all means, search for a nice job elsewhere. Going freelancer is not permanent – it’s volatile, as volatile as our industry is.

Forget the Porsche

I’m leaving you with this: if you think you can make tons of money from freelancing in two months, you’re mistaken. If you’re in for the money, well, I hate to disappoint you, but you have to struggle for every penny that you get. That’s what freelancing is, in a nutshell – it’s terrifying and awesome and awful at the same time. More so in a country as deeply in trouble as is Greece right now.

But then you wake up in the morning and you drag yourself to your desk with your Care Bears pj’s still on and you find an exciting project lead waiting for you in your inbox and then you realise: that’s what I want to do right now.

Later, I started writing for greek magazines and online publications and found out I could do that to earn money.

Then freelancing hit me, and it hit me hard. Writing? Pah! You don’t have time for that!

Nowadays, I realise that writing is one of the most productive, heartfelt things I’ve done so far.

So it’s tonight, on a busy Thursday night, about an hour before friends start coming over for drinks and laughs, while our new home is semi-settled and Gadget’s sleeping on the sofa and my website is still not responsive and my blog design looks dated and OMGSOMUCHWORK, that I’ve decided that I’m going back to writing.

My (and his™) iPhone alarms went off at 8am, but I woke up half an hour later because I couldn’t sleep properly last night. Despite the insomnia, I was in a pretty good mood, humming softly while I brushed my teeth and got into my running shorts. I made sure I had a 30-min run today by taking a glimpse in my miCoach schedule on the iPhone and briefly checked my e-mail.

I was pulling my hair up in a ponytail when he™ got in the bathroom and told me the news.

I rushed to my iMac to find my Twitter stream exploding. I briefly scrolled through the messages while plugging my iPhone to sync some new songs from my iTunes running mix. Closed the iPhone 4S tab that I was checking out last night, as well as the keynote (is it called now a Timnote?) presentation from the iPhone event. I opened up Apple.com. Then Wired.com. Then Google.com.

I typed some half-assed tweet in my Apple keyboard and shuffled around my Macbook Pro to find my sunglasses and my iPhone armband. While running, I was thinking how cool would be if we could use Siri on our Macs. Surely it’d be amazing to tell Siri create an appointment in iCal while I’m typing in an article in Pages…

Today is just another ordinary day.

* This is a really personal post for me. You have to allow me the lack of comments. Thank you.

This September (apart from my cat’s first birthday, according to his vet) marks another anniversary, personal this time: it’s been a year since the moment that I got tired of being full-time sedentary and started running¹.

What’s in a year? 400 kilometres, or 30.000 calories, or 180 days out in the park, putting one foot in front of the other and trying to shake my previous lifestyle off my shoulders (and legs).

I’ve written this post to help people who are thinking about starting to run. It’s been one of the few habits that stuck with me and I really want more people to get up from their chairs and start moving, because it’s a life-changing decision.

I have to admit though, I’m not a pro athlete nor a doctor, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

Ready…

First things first: you’re gonna sweat. Don’t expect to look like a supermodel when running, and if you do, well, it’s not really working. I’ve got to terms with my looks while running. I call it “stroke chic”.

You’re not gonna lose weight just by running. You’re going to feel lighter and healthier, yes. You’re going to feel like you’re ready to conquer the world because of the whole endorphin rush. But you’re not losing your beer belly or muffin top without altering your eating habits. I know I didn’t get much slimmer (because I love good food).

Get good shoes. I’m a fan of the Asics GEL Kayano series, I have the 16 ladies model. Very sturdy shoe, perfect for all-around running. I’ve been wearing it for almost a year now and it shows no to very little damage.

Get good tunes. Sure, you can run while listening to Barry White, but why not opt for something more upbeat? My usual workout playlist is a crappy mainstream mix I’ve found on Spotify. It helps me keep my rhythm, and by now my brain is wired to go into running mode as soon as I start listening to it. If I’m not in the mood for mainstream music, I switch to my iTunes to listen to friskyPodcast for some proper mixes (thanks Graham for the recommendation).

Get coached. If you’re like me, you’re into RPGs and you love the quests and achievements mechanism. Both Adidas miCoach and Nike+ iPhone apps have coaching programmes you can use to set goals and motivate yourself. I started with Nike+ (they’ve got an excellent Walk to Run programme) and then I switched to miCoach, which offers perfect control over your training schedule.

Steady…

Be patient and build a solid base. Don’t expect to run a 5K just like that. At first you’re going to sweat blood – when I started, I could run non-stop for maybe 45 seconds before seeing black spots. Things get better though. Even if I sometimes stop running for 10 to 20 days when I’m busy, I know I can keep running for 25 to 30 minutes when I come back.

Find your rhythm. Don’t run for 45 minutes one day and 10 minutes the next one. Don’t start too fast, you’re gonna burn out. Keep a slow steady rhythm and only go faster when (if) your coaching programme says so. Don’t forget to rest between runs.

Run when you feel like to, but preferably early in the day or late in the afternoon. That’s especially aimed to beginners who live in warmer climates. If you keep running at noon under the scorching sun for days on end, things are going to get ugly. It’s dumb and it’s dangerous. Bonus: if you run in the morning, even if your day is crappy and unproductive, you will still have accomplished something. Keep that thought.

Go!

Don’t give up. Cliché? Maybe. Just DON’T GIVE UP. Even when you feel you’re going to throw up, when you’re sweating like a pig and feel you’re ready to faint, keep going. It’s years of sedentary life that scream in agony, not your body. Put one foot in front of the other and keep moving².

After a while, it gets to you. I promise. I used to hate running, but nowadays, if I don’t run, I gaze longingly at the park I usually train every time I drive by. Really.

¹ Well, running, fast shuffling, what’s the difference anyway?
² That is, unless you have some heart condition or anything that could get worse with exercise. In that case, consult a doctor first.

At first, I reacted as I always react to new challenges: I won’t be good at it. I won’t know what to talk about. I will stutter and lose my train of thought. An ACME anvil will fall from the sky right on top of my head. You know, it’s a cruel thing, sabotaging yourself, but I’m trying to get over it.

Then I realised, there is something I want to talk about, something that disturbed me every time I checked the WordPress premium themes marketplace. So I forced myself to steer clear of procrastination and work on this idea, and soon realised I really, really liked working on it after all. Plus, I’d get to visit beautiful Thessaloniki again after 11 years and have fun with some dear friends! What more to ask for?

Skip to 4th June morning.

Mild pre-presentation stress. Rehearsing the slides in my mind while brushing my teeth. Arrived early with Thanos, so we had the chance to break some glasses socialise a bit more. Marveled at the weird Thessaloniki weather – scorching heat, cloudy and then, pouring rain? Wow.

Then the event started, Basilis gave us an intro and Dimitris hopped on stage to talk about what he loves more, blogging. Since I was second in the speaking schedule, I tried to focus on what Dimitris was saying without worrying about that ACME anvil – I think I succeeded.

Then, it was my turn. And I talked about this:

(I hope it makes sense without my presenter notes. If not, leave a comment and we can discuss it over e-mail.)

Phew, done! I think it went well. Worry-free now, I sit comfortably to watch the next presentations.

Apostolos gave us some hints on good theme design practices from a blogger’s viewpoint. Thanos talked to us about typography (and his project WireframePlus – do YOU know what WireframePlus does?), Vasilis gave a very informative presentation on using WordPress as an advanced CMS, Gerasimos introduced us to the pros and cons of WordPress frameworks, Fotis decided that merging CodeIgniter and WordPress would be fun so he told us to go for it, Basilis showed us how easy it’d be to setup a mini social network using BuddyPress, while George Kanellopoulos from Microsoft gave two presentations, on WordPress & Microsoft Web Platform and on HTML 5 that I’m sure many found interesting.

It was excellent.

I love the vibe of this kind of events – many savvy people in a room, talking about what they like best and socializing, networking, having plain stupid fun. If I changed one thing, it’d be the fact that I didn’t talk with as many people as I wanted to, as I’m kinda shy – next time, if you see me around drop by and say hi!

These two days were such a welcome break from my routine – walking around the city discovering places (and ruining my feet – damn you, strappy sandals), having good food, being lazy in Navarinou Square, gazing at the lovely Roman Forum view from our hotel window, walking by the sea, all lovely and a great start to my summer.

Thanks to everyone involved and special thanks to Thanos, Yiannis, Gerasimos and Eleni for showing us around the city. You rock, peeps.

Here’s to a great third WordCamp next year!

…because in the end of the day, people you love come through your door and you know, you just know, that you’re really not the stuck up ambitious bitch you think you are, you don’t have to anyway, you’re just a girl who likes to dance and is still scared of lightning and would give it all up anytime for a small house with a big garden in the countryside.

I’m the worst freelancer in the world.

I wish I was one of those industrious web designers that can work for a focused 4 hours and produce small miracles, but alas, I am not. I never was. As I’ve already explained in My (totally) Paranoid Way of Working, design is such a heart-wrenching procedure for me, I sometimes wonder why I chose to do this for life.

For over a year, I’ve been going around claiming to be a freelance web designer and I had no real portfolio to show. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

I worked my derrière off in numerous projects throughout 2010 and I had nowhere to showcase them. On a whim, I created a Behance.net profile and started populating it with my work, but it never felt right.

During all this time, I kept working on it, on and off, based on an elusive idea I had in early 2010, an idea that said I should divide my work into two separate fields: design & content. I liked that idea a lot, however, I never found enough time to really put my soul in it and I kept pushing this particular to-do list to the bottom of my favourite GTD app.

So my portfolio design lagged. And lagged. And lagged some more. Pressing deadlines and client projects always got in the way. My own perfectionism, always a huge problem, whispered in my ear all the time that if you gonna do it girl, you must do it well.

All in all, it got me over a year to put together something that could be done in a week or less.

But I don’t really regret it. Working on this thing for so long has given me the luxury of sweating over small details that I wouldn’t normally sweat over (for example, how to create miniature Safari, Coda and Mail.app windows for the different kinds of work I’ve done).

I can now safely say that a huge burden is off my shoulders. I have a place I can call home, where I can properly showcase the projects I work on.

In that sense, Sugarenia.com was so worth the wait.

Thanks all known (and unknown) suspects for keeping up with my whining and nagging me to finish this thing.

Hat tip to all of you for the warm welcome. Now, if you want to hire me, you know where to find me.

For this ranting, I’m gonna use Petros’s profile, because he’s a cool guy and I know that he started working on github some months ago. He also went on a trip to San Fransisco! How cool is that? I wanna see photos of that trip. How difficult can it be?

The mysterious case of Facebook photos

That’s Petros’ profile page, complete with goofy avatar. I see some random photos on the top strip, but I wanna see all of his photos. On the left sidebar, there’s a (6) right next to photos – so I guess there’s only six photos of him on Facebook? Puzzled. I click on it.

I don’t see 6 of anything, I just see two sections – “Petros’s photos” and “Photos and videos of Petros”, I guess posted by other users. That’s twelve thumbs, so I guess the (6) metaphor got lost in the way.

Let’s start with “Petros’ photos”. The six albums shown seem fishy – I know there must be more! There’s absolutely no other indicator for that, only a tiny link on the top right with a label “See all: Photos”. So there must be more, right? If you click on a link, you’ll see that there are more, indeed. sigh

Anyway, back again. There’s another link to see all videos by Petros. Video’s cool! Let’s click on it.

Nada. My question is – why have a perfectly normal link to something that doesn’t exist? Make it grey. Add a (0) indicator. Remove it altogether. sigh

Underneath that section, there’s “Photos and videos of Petros”. Well first of all, which of them are videos? You guessed it, there aren’t any, eventhough the title hints to it. And there’s a cryptic link on the top right that says: “See all Photos”. I click on it – nothing happens, except that the link text changes to “See all Photos and videos”.

Excuse my french, but what. The flying. Fuck.

Why so unusable?

There’s no question that Facebook is huge. Their developers and designers are hard-working and I understand their struggle to keep up with millions of users every day.

But they should get theis grip together and properly address the gaping UX holes they created over the years.

The whole situation is foul and dangerous. Not for the future of Facebook per se, I couldn’t care less about that – plus, people don’t really care about usability when they stalk their exes or poke random blonde girls.

I consider it dangerous for the future of all web applications though, and for user experience in general. I can already see a full generation of people, hardly ever using web services apart from Facebook, sitting baffled in front of perfectly functional design patterns because they learned it the Facebook way.

Naysayer? Maybe. Pissed off? Definitely.

And I didn’t even touch the “tiny 11px Lucida Grande font” or “horrendous new photo viewer” subject.

Last night, while I was walking towards home, a stranger felt up my derrière.

Thought you misread? Let me rephrase: while I was returning home last night from my weekly trip to Stelios‘ place for our podcast, a random man on a scooter approached me, slowed down, grabbed my bum and drove away.

Here I was, thinking about wireframes and workflows and a Mac app, when suddenly I felt a hand on my ass.

What. The. Fuck.

My first (and only) reaction was shock. I just stood there, totally speechless, and watched him leaving without as much as a shout.

At first I thought I was stupid for not screaming. Then I thought, maybe it was someone I know. But then, I don’t keep grab-yo-bum relationships with anyone apart the boyfriend™, and even he wouldn’t dare to do that in plain sight, while I’m walking alone at night.

Then I realized what happened. And I felt like shit.

Do you know what’s worse? I momentarily felt guilty. I thought – hey, maybe my jeans were hanging too low. Maybe they were too tight. Maybe I moved too much while walking, do I do that really? I must stop it, then, it’s provocative. That stupid female remorse that’s wired in our brains.

I’m not big on feminism and I’ve been quite vocal about it. I think it creates a huge divide between the two genders that’s uncalled for. If we, women, want to be treated as equals, we have to start behaving like we are. The whole thing seems a bit whiney to me.

But one jackass in a motorcycle helmet managed to lessen me and my big mouth to pulp.

That prick.

The subject is touchy. Therefore I won’t tolerate jokes in the comnents. In fact – screw it, I’m closing them off completely for this post only.