Work slowed to a crawl this week. It's not entirely unexpected; work usually comes to a screeching halt once we hit Thanksgiving and won't pick up again until after the New Year. That's just how it is, although it's a little worrying that it's starting so early this year.
The first day, Monday, wasn't bad. I'd been working non-stop for months and actually welcomed the break. It gave me a chance to catch up on billing and update some woefully out of date websites.
Then, on Tuesday, I panicked.
That's usually what happens when the pipeline runs dry and it happens every six months or so. And every time it does, I hit the internet looking for freelance work and what I'm noticing is there is vanishingly little call for the type of work I do anymore.
I believe I am officially a dinosaur.
I didn't reach this state intentionally. Back when I and many of my colleagues were unceremoniously dumped back in 2007, we all rushed to stay ahead of the digital tsunami and notch our resumes with the latest software. The end result was one of two things.
First, the already shrinking market was swamped with people with only a passable knowledge of the software. Having been burned by hiring a bunch of novices, employers started requiring two to five years of practical experience with each program. That created a Catch 22 - you couldn't be hired without extensive real-world experience, but you couldn't get extensive real-world experience if no one would hire you.
Second, the software you'd spent thousands of dollars and every waking night and weekend learning, would be suddenly rendered obsolete.
Which brings us to... Flash.
F L A S H
Flash is the software that makes possible a lot of the interactive qualities of the web, not to mention all the annoying animation. Those little chickens that hop around in the mortgage banner ads? Flash.
When I first found myself out of work, every headhunter and placement firm was unanimous... I had to learn Flash. The ad world had moved beyond static images and if I was to survive, I had to learn Flash. At the time, good Flash artists were earning around $100 an hour, so who was I to say no?
It just so happens I had Flash. I hadn't learned it only because it's so daunting and everyone I know who uses it hates it. But a girl has to do what a girl has to do and one of the employment firms was hosting a free weekend seminar in the basics.
The seminar was held in an overly pretentious loft in Venice and it started somewhat ominously... the instructor said he had a lot to cover in two days and that he would be moving fast and it was up to us to keep up.
Flash isn't like most design programs. It's actually closer to trying to fly a 747. Or pilot the Space Shuttle...
See that little white square near the middle? That's your work space.
At first, I was doing OK. By the time we took our first break, after two hours, I had been able to draw a square.
Once we returned, things went downhill fast...
I made a mistake.
By the time I had fixed it, the instructor was two steps ahead. We had been warned there would be no time for questions or for going back and for the next few minutes I tried to muddle through but it was obvious to me and my little square that we were now deeply in the weeds. Not long after that, I quietly stopped working, accepting my failure. I closed my laptop and when we broke for lunch, I left.
But I didn't give up. I bought "Flash For Dummies". Turns out I don't even qualify as a Dummy. Eventually I scraped together enough money to sign up for a weeklong seminar, one where the instructors would actually take questions and be helpful but by then the house had sold and we had to move and I abandoned my dreams of ever learning fucking Flash.
Which, it turns out, wasn't such a bad idea, because on Tuesday of this week, the makers of Flash announced they were abandoning it instead.
See, back in the summer of 2007, Apple launched the iPhone. And it wouldn't run Flash. Apple claimed it was horribly buggy (which it is) and that it was such a processor whore it drained batteries to the point they were nearly useless. "Oh just wait" everyone said. "Apple will include it in version 2.0. Flash was simply everywhere, they couldn't just ignore it."
But they did. Version 2.0 came out without it. And the so did the iPad. And that's when the death watch started.
The other phone makers saw Apple suffered no repercussions and many of them bailed on Flash too.
You could see it in the job listings. Flash designers were now making $50 an hour, then $25. Lately it seems to be around $15.
So finally this week, Adobe, the makers of Flash, threw in the towel. The mobile web is moving on and Flash is dead, long live Flash.
I hear the next big thing is HTML5 and CSS. Whatever those are. I figure by the time I were to learn either or both, and get my years of "practical experience", they'll be dead too.
And so it goes. It's nothing but a hamster wheel anymore and I'm just too old for this shit.
