It’s What You Do. Who You Are.

We were four or five pints deep when I told my electrician friend that business had been better this year than the previous two.

‘You know what the difference is, or one of them?’ I rambled.

‘What?’

‘I’ve been spending less time sending speculative emails, on social media, and arranging calls instead, meeting people, going to things, taking care of my relationships, and starting new ones. It’s easy to forget how important that is, you know? Seeing the whites of someone’s eyes instead of a fucking avatar.’

He’s nodding as I trail off into questioning whether it might just be that I’m now in my 40s. He shrugs and says,

‘Well yeah, that’s who you are.’

The simplicity of his words and the certainty in how he says them hit me hard.

‘As long as I’ve known you, that’s just what you do – talk to everyone, bringing people together, making it make sense.’

And it’s funny because I fall into that trap of thinking the best insights will come from those in my industry, but this friend has known me since 2005, when he moved to Preston without knowing a single person, and bumped into a lecturer of mine in a pub. The two of them played pool and drank beer, and by the end of the night, they had decided to start a 5-a-side football team. Trouble was they needed 3 more and ideally a couple of substitutes. That’s where me and the other football fans on the illustration degree came in. Then I invited him to everything, and he was always shocked by the range in the many little worlds I liked to inhabit. I had my creative industry lot, but I’d worked in factories, the council, bookshops, and regularly had friends from Yorkshire, London, and overseas come out. I’d always loved it that way.

Twenty years later, and despite much of my counsel being from other artists and designers, his valuable perspective makes it abundantly clear – he’s right. This isn’t a strategy, it’s permitting myself to step away from the noise and do it the only way I know how. The way it works for me.