Am I Bragging?

I've never been so happy to do absolutely nothing. I'm a compulsive worker - if there's something that needs to be done, I'm a little psychotic about making sure that I get all my work done before I play. And once again, it has served me well. The big client turned out to be- well, it was a challenge, but in a different way than I expected. We were working on an already insane (7 day) deadline. There was an incredible amount of content that needed to be whittled down, sorted through, streamlined, often rewritten and redesigned, and greatly compacted into a cleaner package that displayed as something far less mind-bogglingly overwhelming and confusing. I subcontract under http://creativeurge.com - she does the planning, the strategy, the big plan - I put it into action. She spent 10 hours with the clients and helped them mold the idea and end-goal into a functional, well-thought out plan and design.

I joined in at about the sitemap stage. I do the fun stuff, build the site, port content, design/create pages, code tables, design buttons, etc... in other words, Cami is the brain, I'm the brawn. She is an incredible brain, I am, well... new to being the brawn on someone else's behalf. I've built web pages for years, but always based on the pictures in my own brain, not in someone else's. Translation is difficult, and clients change their minds, or have new ideas, or... delete pages, repeatedly. And rush the job. And call a lot. And forget to talk to one another before changing things - at which point, the partner typically calls you and asks exactly why the heck things are not being done according to the origianl plan. Or... just, you know, delete the page. Again.

Anyway. It's been a long grueling week. I haven't cooked dinner once since last Tuesday, until tonight - I've barely slept, or eaten, or put down my laptop. I've been on the phone a LOT - Saturday was a 2 1/2 hour conference call in the afternoon, Sunday was another conference call, at 11pm (Oh the joy of time zones!) This job would easily have filled two full weeks at a more sane pace, but we had 1.

And here's the thing. It goes live tomorrow. There were nearly 30 unplanned pages to build, some CSS changes they wanted which I had to study up on to do because frankly, I suck at CSS. There WERE communication issues, changes of plan, insane stress, issues and problems that arose. But it's ready. It's DONE. I not only survived my first client, I survived an incredibly challenging first project. And I didn't fuck it up. Not only did I not fuck it up, I aced it. The clients are thrilled. Someone leaked the url a day early, and there are already over 100 members! It's a smashing success and it hasn't even been officially "opened" yet. Cami, essentially my boss in this case, is so happy with the results that she's going to add it to her online portfolio. The clients are thrilled and crazy grateful that I was able to do it in what they admit were unusually difficult circumstances.

I am typically not a proud person, but by golly, I'm damn proud of myself for rising to the challenge and doing the job well.

And I'm not too upset about making $1100 in a week either ;)