Now imagine that scenario after years and years of studying, working and persevering. You work your butt off trying to remain on top of the ever-changing techniques that everyone expects you to know every tiny detail about. It's achievable I know, but something has to give. Me, I have a family. A wife and four sons. I can't spend every hour perfecting my design or code methods. These things take time and before you know it, you have spent a month learning something to install it into a design only to be told something else has taken over and is better. Your efforts are a joke and outdated.

Choosing your tools and techniques becomes more of a skill than actually learning them. It comes with wisdom and practice. Learning from mistakes is imperative for survival, also not getting caught out with trends and fads is vital. I understand that knowing the latest methods is important, but it is not essential, not at least until others have tested it. Let others be the test subjects and don't risk your business and time until you know for sure it will benefit you.

The reason for this post is obvious. I'm talking from experience. Whilst I see people in my industry burning themselves out trying to work an eighty hour week to be on top of their game they loose sight of everything else around them. I say this talking about myself, to be honest rather than speculate about others.

So what is the solution then? It's obvious. I have seen a stubborn grumpy designer I admire do it. Stick with what you know and do it amazing. Think of it like a menu. If you are a chef and your restaurant try's to cook everything. Some dishes may be great, some ok, but quite a few just crap. Now imagine learning to cook all those dishes and the equipment and ingredients. That's you with code. That's me with code. It's sometimes better to just concentrate on a couple and make them legendary. Sure experiment now and then and try new things. But don't do it like you have to. That's when the flame of desire to create amazing things will slowly, but surely extinguish. Because when you burn yourself out with all that hard work and effort, there is rarely ever a big payback for all your hard work.

Most people notice and don't care but it has always been there with me for as long as I can remember. This is the first time I am coming clean about it all and actually talking about it in detail.

I wasn't always like this. I have seen photographs of me as a young child and I have super straight eyes although I have no real memory of any of this. Later on, though one started moving inwards. I did have an operation to have it straightened but I think they may have got a little overzealous in tightening and loosening the muscles as it ended up moving outwards. Other than having another operation when I was around ten years of age (which I started to wake up in whilst my eyeball was hanging out) I have not pursued any other form of treatment.

Fast forward thirty years and I am now explaining my decision, mainly due to me wondering whether the advancement in medical science would benefit myself and have another, third time is a charm, operation. The reasoning means I would have to explain the condition of my eyes in greater detail.

My Left Eye

I am short sighted in my left eye, nothing special about it, just crappy vision at -3.25, nice, simple and easy to sort out with a contact lens or glasses.

My Right Eye

Now this is the awkward one, the rebel in my head. I'm not short sighted at all in it, in fact, I can pick up amazing detail the trouble is it just doesn't work correctly. If I close my left eye it will instantly straighten and start working (to an extent), although it has a blind spot like if you were to look at a bright light for a few seconds then look away.

So Why Write This?

The reason I write this post is because I had before decided to have an operation to correct the lazy eye. Trouble is after a consultation with a specialist they advised me to look further into it and think about it. This is because at present, I only look through one eye, thus so, I have no 3D vision or depth perception. So upon correcting the eye, it may start to work and then my brain will have to deal with 3D vision, which I have been told can take a period of time to adjust to. Anything from three, six or even twelve months. This can also cause headaches and most importantly I work with fine pixel-perfected details in design. Blurred vision could knock me back a year of design. This is something I am really not sure I could realistically deal with.

So if anyone knows a person or have themselves experienced something similar, please message me via twitter @sulcalibur for any and all advice on this issue. Thank you.

The event itself was amazing, we had hundreds of people through the doors at the Future Business Center where it was held and numerous speakers and workshops constantly happening throughout the day. There was even the Cosmos Cambridge Science folks there causing all kinds of mayhem.

It was a wonderful event that had an amazing team on board and felt really worthwhile and motivating. The people at the event were amazing also. Some of the speakers and their topics were truly inspiring and thought provoking whilst still being highly engaging.

I strongly hope to be part of the 2017 Peterborough STEM Festival as it was an honour to be part of something so great with such inspiring people.

I used to have an iPad Mini along with the walnut finished pencil by 53 which whilst a pair of great tools, didn't come close to a good quality ink pen and some decent paper. I also usually carry my tools with me as I ride or walk into town and chill out in a coffee shop getting the creative vibes flowing. Lugging around a ton of pens, pads, paints, etc is just a pain to be honest. An iPad and a single pencil are a great deal lighter.

As of today, I have only got the fifth day with four pieces of work submitted. One sadly wasn't finished but I could tell that was turning into a grand illustration and would require a great deal more time. Overs I have pushed through to get to a finished acceptable state; not ideal, but acceptable. This is the reason for my post. I have noticed that coming back fully to illustration after over a decade of dust accumulating on my talent has been hard. I knew that I would get frustrated with myself as the ideas I had wouldn't manifest exactly how I wanted them too but want I didn't account for was the daily pressure and not being able to put in as much time as I would have liked. This means that whilst I am finding new methods and techniques to create the desired results I want to take more time and get to the finished state I feel would be acceptable, so for a many of my illustrations I will most probably revisit and put more love and effort in.

For this, I apologise for my half-arsed submissions. You can follow my progress via my Instagram account, Twitter and Facebook. I welcome and encourage any constructive feedback :)