04/16/2004: "Worth"

I know that I already complain alot on this blog o' mine, but please indulge me once more, as I'm really quite upset this time. Maybe writing about this will make me feel a little better. I'm here at work, and I was just told to stop working on this series of icons that I was making for the top bar of our new, yet to be released, website. My boss told me that he was going to outsource them to some guy in Russia so that I would have more time to work on other stuff. What's so bad about that you ask? Several things.

First of all, out of the dozen or so projects I'm currently swamped with, this is the only one I've been even halfway enjoying. I'd never really done much work on icons before, and especially not in WinXP style (which I'm not really fond of personally, but I was having fun making them). This is not the main problem though, if it was fun it wouldn't be called work. Another issue is that lately the company has been giving pretty much every graphic design project to me. Now, technically, my job title is webmaster, but I really enjoy graphic design and it felt really nice to know that the company trusted my abilities enought to give me all the graphic design stuff. It sort of made me feel, I don't know competant and appreciated and such. But really the main problem is that up to now *everything* on the new website was mine (except the company logo itself) and I was really proud of the work I'd done. I had complete creative control on the project and the new site looks really good. Losing that makes me feel exactly how I used to feel working here, like a worthless and easily replaceable web monkey. Which is probably what I am.

Now, it's not as though the company meant any harm by it. My boss is an incredibly nice guy, and I think he could tell that I was upset about the whole thing. He came into my office a few minutes later to show me one of the cds with the label I recently designed in an effort to make me feel appreciated. But the whole thing is like a cold wet slap in the face by reality. Yes, you can be replaced. I guess that's what I deserve for thinking too highly of my abilities up to now. Well, maybe I feel a little better now. Eh, back to web monkeying anyway.