I’ve been a full time web designer for twenty years. For the last couple of years now I’ve been dreaming about all the cool things I wanted to do once I retire. This intensified every time an older friend retired. In some cases they weren’t even that much older than me. I envied them something fierce.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate my job. As I told another ex-UX designer “When I get to actually do my job, I love it!” I loved trying to get into the heads of the people I designed for. Many of them were very different from me and finding out what made them tick is fascinating. Then I designed software that would work for them. The rush you get when you design something and then someone from your target audience uses it without hesitation at first sight! If I could bottle that feeling and sell it, I’d be a millionaire.

It was all the other stuff that wore me down.

• Party lines that had to be toed

• Uninformed opinions that had to be taken seriously

• Executives that had to be lauded for chasing the next shiny object

• Mandatory fun that had to be “enjoyed”

• Corporate buzzwords that had to be spewed…

Yeah, I admit that twenty years of that has left me a bit jaded.

So it’s time for a change. I’m starting a business. I want to make the things that make my heart sing and get paid for it. Will it work? Time will tell…