Tweakedly Obsessive

So I'm building a website. . . I've built a few (or more) over my time.  Some are personal, more have been for businesses.  Even built one several years ago that had a live shopping - cart.  That was a real challenge.  Won't do that again.  Sometimes you just have to learn the hard way.  I learned.  It was hard.

Yup.  Here I am, building yet another website.  And it's not as though I actually go out and look for this work - it just seems to find me.  Do I like building websites?  Yes. . . and no.

I like putting things together and making them aesthetically pleasing (what an overused phrase!) and match the overall mood of the site.  I like choosing colors and searching for clip arts and editing photos and thinking up catch phrases and arranging the page - then 'diagramming' the entire site with all of its pages.  I like, generally, working with the people and making their vision become a reality.  I especially like it when my website leaves the owner speechless - in a good way. 

I like making things work.  I like putting things together.  Like cooking.  Or decorating.  Or sewing.  Or jewelry making. Or making holiday cards.  I like figuring out the 'pieces' to make the 'puzzle' create the perfect 'picture.'  I like achieving balance.  Part of my Fixer Personality?  Perhaps.   Okay.  Probably without a doubt.

But I obsess.  I compulse (is that a word?) I can't  let it go.  I have other work to do, multiple responsibities, and things I want to do. . . and yet I can't.  I need to eat, sleep, bathe. . . . I simply canNOT leave the design be.  I keep thinking about the background, or search for hours and hours for the just right clip art. . . Or spend hours and hours tweaking . . . . I nit-pick, over-focus, and virtually become compulsive until the site is 'just right.'  Wherein lies an issue.  It's never 'just right.'

I can always find something that needs to be tweaked. . . lighten that  background color a bit, move that photo over, change the text, flip the buttons, add a page, re-do the entire layout.  Something always could be improved.  Edit-edit-edit something.

Sometimes, when I'm feeling especially nostalgic, I look over the sites I've built for other companies.  Just LOOK - wishing I could get in there and change something, wishing the owner would change it (I do NOT 'babysit' sites) or getting upset because the owner did change something.  And my own sites that I have control over?  Yeah. . . tweak tweak tweak.  Seriously.  Little things.  Things that no one in the entire universe would ever notice, or even care about, but it's a glaring, spotlight, can't-miss-thing that simply begs to be changed.

I'm known, while shopping or researching, to critique websites to the point of distraction.  I jot ideas down, I jot 'don'ts' down.  I 'save as' clips, I bookmark sites to look at later.  It's a constant thing.  But while I have a site under construction, like I do now, I find it hard to do anything else.  Heck. . . even my blog pages are victims of my detail-obsession.  Tweak-tweak. 

I skip lunch. . . . I work late into the night. . . My family suffers.  My 'zoo' suffers.  My real-job suffers.  I suffer.  So, if you're wondering why there's been no recipes posted, and nothing much is going on in my studio - I'm focused.  REALLY focused in the opposite direction.  Pretty much literally, if you know how my office is arranged.

Thankfully, this website is a very simple one with just a few pages - 4-5 to be exact - and shouldn't take long at all to get set up.  There will be some interesting things that will need to be embedded - such as an e-mail application and subscription form - but nothing really complicated.  The owner is already very excited with how it's coming along (I let him peek today). . . and I'm anxious for the owner to provide me with the last of the details so I can 'whip through it.'

Yeah.  Right.  Whip through it?  Me?  Not!

Have an obsessively tweaked kind of day ~

Robin Z