CGWise: Big Mistake

Hey guys! Welcome back for another blog post. This week I was going to look at Graphic Design and what it is, but it turned out to be a reflection on the most important lesson I've learned in life. I decided to leave it. Who knows, maybe it will help some of you.

When I was in high school I made a big mistake. I chose to stop learning. I had vague aspirations to be a teacher, or a computer programmer, or starting my own business. I settled on not being a programmer, because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life learning new technologies. I decided not to be a teacher (yet) because I didn't want to graduate, go back to school, graduate, go back to school, graduate, and finally go back to school again. I was offered a full time job, and I figured I had it made. I could have free time, and money at the same time! (Boy, was I wrong!) I didn't need university or college because I would probably go, and then come out to be flipping burgers, or do a job like the one I already had. I'm not saying that pursuing secondary education was what I needed to do. Where I got the education wasn't in question, the fact is I chose to stop learning. I think this is the same as choosing not to live. At least it was for me. I stopped living and let life happen to me instead. This greatly limited my opportunities, and my awareness of what is actually out here in this great wide world. My idea of work places was rather black and white. There was manual labour, or there was office work. And since I didn't want to go back to school, office work was nothing more than a pipe dream.

Naturally, as life continued to live me, I learned anyway. It's a rather unavoidable thing to do. Eventually I made the choice to start reading about my interests. Not as a conscious act of learning, but because it was interesting. But of course, this meant that I was learning. I acquired a variety of skills and interests. It sounds rather cliché, but I think the biggest lesson I learned was realizing that there is so much in this world that I don't know. Now I have something of a hunger for learning, and an actual desire to go back to school. (gasp) Quite the turn around! After a lot of soul searching, personality reviews, failed projects, and ultimately a car accident that had me off work for a few months, this hunger eventually led me to Graphic Design. And also the realization that work environments aren't anywhere near as black and white as I've made them out to be.

So where am I going to go with this? Time will tell. I might take on the question of what Graphic Design is next week. The answer to that seems quite subjective, but until then AIGA has a fantastic article discussing the facts of this question: http://www.aiga.org/guide-whatisgraphicdesign

I hope that helps!

--CGWise
aka Charlie Griffin

Stick with me, and we'll get wise together.
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