I am glad you are here to write this post. I’m sorry you had to earn this rich wisdom in the way you did.

I speak and write and think, a lot, about how the web design and development professions suffer for our lack of formal professional organisation. We have no union, no centralised standards or membership group, no consultative body, no unified voice, and what we do have, such as platform-specific groups, inevitably descends into Pythonesque factions and power struggles.

So what’s the consequence of that state of play – it’s situations like yours. It’s an industry where everyone is each other’s friend and no one is acting as the parent. Organised professions take on that parent role – the one that orders you to switch off and leave the office for a week, to come and have a chat, or to attend a counselling session paid for by the union. We’ve got nothing and we’ve got no one.

One of the most talented and creative web professionals I ever encountered took her own life three years ago. She was online and social, both personally and as a job requirement, 24/7. She’d been hoarding prescription drugs for months and took them all in one swallow. She never tweeted or posted on FB about that, of course. TV shows, shop queues, plugins, yes. Her plans for that mountain of pills, no.

Now, it’s almost 2014, and we’ve got high schools teaching web design as Flash and Dreamweaver, and they get away with it because we don’t have a recognised, unified professional voice to give them a better curriculum. We’ve got “web professionals” whose sales strategy for their Drupal-based business is to personally attack designers who use WordPress (and vice versa), and they get away with it because there’s no sense of working towards something greater. And we’ve got web designers waking up intubated and sectioned (if indeed, they ever wake up again at all) because they have thousands of followers and friends and not one human being to call on the phone at 2 AM.

Something’s got to change here.

What an article to read on what is probably the first day of a lot of people’s holidays… I’m thinking twice about the work-related things I’d planned to do over the next two weeks. A true break is probably the wiser thing.

Thank you for writing this and for exposing more of the dark side of the industry. I think most people have been struggling lately, I know I have, although I hope the severity it got to for you is very rare.

I wholeheartedly agree with making it count. This year I have got a job (a one year contract) instead of freelancing. I know I could make at least 3 times the amount of money I’m now earning, but this job (using the web to make scientific data more accessible to the public and politicians) is far more important than developing yet another blog or shop’s website.

This is a discussion that needs to go further. How do we, as an industry, slow down the pace a bit? I think there is an element of competition between us all (a good thing, of course) which probably makes a lot of people want to keep working late hours because everyone else is. Sarah Parmenter spoke at Altitude, at the beginning of the year, about how it doesn’t even just affect us but our family and friends feel that they can’t interrupt us because we are too busy.

Things definitely need to change.

Firstly thanks for sharing this Chris, i’m sure it took a mountain of courage to face things head on and then to write about it is an entirely different feat.

Speaking only as a recent graduate on my way home from the airport from my 4 month placement in Berlin this was very enlightening as most of the things you’ve talked about I had been deliberating in my head particularly more so while I’ve been away the last few months. It may be presumptious for me to feel this way since I haven’t really worked in the industry that long in comparison to you and all the other guys other there. However since I’ve been thinking about the future and what my plans are I’ve been plagued with the question “am I doing this because I like it” or “do I just want to seem productive and successful” am I actually truly creative or did I just want to seem creative”. It seems that with the abundance of creative people and work out there that I’ve lost my own design voice and opinion. So to counter this for my new year resolution I intend to keep a journal, not to record the daily occurrences since that’s what a calendar’s for but for self reflection, what I did that I liked, hated, could’ve done better etc. I think that these are the things that we should ask ourselves daily to grow as a person.

Also it was reassuring to know that that its not only me that feels like a imposter sometimes and that there’s actually a term for it.

Thank you for sharing and apologies for my rambles.

“Your body is made of the same elements that lionesses are built from. Three quarters of you is the same kind of water that beats rocks to rubble, wears stones away. Your DNA translates into the same twenty amino acids that wolf genes code for. When you look in the mirror and feel weak, remember, the air you breathe in fuels forest fires capable of destroying everything they touch. On the days you feel ugly, remember: diamonds are only carbon. You are so much more”. – Curtis Ballard

Source: http://curtis-ballard.tumblr.com/post/56767288213/your-body-is-made-of-the-same-elements-that

Thank you all for the kind comments. It means a great deal that so many people have taken the time to respond, both here and on Twitter. I’m glad folks found the article useful.

I’m about to shut up shop for Christmas, on which note, I’d like to wish everyone a restful break and every success for the new year. Good luck on the journey, everyone!

I’ve been reading a lot about mental health issues in the web industry lately. I’d be interested to see what kind of statistics our industry has in terms of mental health and things like suicide. It seems to me that there is a subtle hidden problem in our industry, and in order to do something about it, we need to understand it better.

I did a few Google searches looking for information about this and wasn’t able to find anything. Does anyone have more info regarding mental health in the web industry?

Thanks for your honesty. A lot of recognition in your story. Altough a hard time I am very grateful for the lesson I learned. I am happy for you. And like you said…to simply enjoy life.

Wow! What an article. I can’t pretend to be anywhere near where you found yourself Christopher but so much (almost every line infact) of what you’re saying rings true for me or either illuminates my situation as a fellow web designer – or whatever we are called.

You mention about seeking constant feedback and dare I say, validation for what we do through the monocle of social media is and questioning whether this is a good way to go because of the highs and lows it entails. Well I have a very longstanding client (18 years) who shuns social media and instead seeks feedback and crucial focus group insight from a close network of people in his industry and further afield. This is something we can learn from I think. Step back from the narcissism and apparent instant feedback of social media and instead work out who you trust in the real world (yes I think that social media is not and never will be the ‘real world’) and stick to their valued support.

Glad you “woke” up Christopher and respect for sharing the break point of your life with us. You have balls mister. Merry Christmas!