I really need to improve my Adobe Illustrator skills. I mean, I’ve got some game, but I need some serious help to push me further on. My main motivation for getting better at AI is that for the kinds of jobs I want to apply for, I need to be able to say that I’m fully proficient, which I’m not. Not yet anyway. For a while I’ve known that I need to improve, but life just gets in the way, other projects happen, and prioritising trying to improve AI just got put waaaaay by the wayside.
Then I read this post by Jamie over at A Life in Translation (which by the way is a definite recommended read). Its called “How to Make Things Happen Instead of Waiting For Them to”, and reading her words really made me realise the real reason that I hadn’t gotten off my ass and started to practise my AI skills. I realised that part of me really thought that I could just get there, or blag it, without actually putting any time or effort into getting what I wanted. I was in effect, just as Jami’es post title says, just waiting for an improvement to magically happen without putting any clear steps or plans into action to help me get there.
Right, I thought, after this revelation occured. Here is what I’m gonna do. First, blog about this, so that this moment will be forever etched in the webosphere and I can read over it later for inspiration. Second, start getting some serious AI game.
Lynda is a website with some crazy excellent tutorials on it for almost any kind of software. I have used them before as I got a free trial with them as part of my CS4 purchase. They have a massive catalogue of tutorials and they are presented in a really clear and concise manner, for all different levels and proficiencies. Buying a Lynda subscription isnt the cheapest option out there, there are many free excellent AI tutorials on the web too, and I hope to do a post in the future about my faves out there. But I always find that investing money into something makes me that bit more committed to getting the most out of it that I can.
So my subscription is purchased, and time has been diaried in thrice weekly solely dedicated to getting through some tuts. Doing this, working at it over a period of time, even ‘slogging’, is the only way that I am going to get any better, Enough with the sitting around hoping that it will all just come to me.
What are you going to make happen today??
It took me 6+ years of trial and error with Photoshop to ever feel very proficient. Now, I make a living as a web designer. If I would have thought that I needed to put in 6+ years of effort to translate that into a career, I would have NEVER done it. Sometimes you just gotta take the first step (subscription purchased! nice!) and just see what happens.
Congrats and thanks for linking to me!
Thanks Jamie! Thats good to hear. I love your blog, its incredibly inspirational. Thanks for putting it out there for the rest of us to read and be inspired by!
Best wishes,
Yael