Michaelbox

Ladies and Gen­tle­men, My name is Michael Beck­with, and I am a self-confessed min­ion. I am at Rachael’s com­mand. When she tells me to go make a site update, I go do it. When she tells me to go con­vert a newly arrived web design into a theme for your new favorite blog, I go do it. When it comes to her bid­ding, I’m on it. Such is the life of a caf­feinated min­ion, and you know what? I would not have it any other way.

The Meet­ing

Per­haps I should tell you how I got to this min­ion state. Let me take you back to the start of Rachael’s and my acquain­tance­ship. I was at a point in my life where I was just start­ing with twit­ter and microblog­ging in gen­eral, and was fol­low­ing any­one who seemed inter­est­ing. Rachael was one of those peo­ple. I am also a self-confessed cof­fee junky so when “caf­feinat­edelf” showed up on my screen, my ears perked. At some point I read a post on her blog about a finan­cially tight time for her and her awe­some hus­band Troy. My little heart percolated with intrigue and kindness, and I contacted Rachael about donating $5 of my hard earned money to help two people who I didn't know at all. I reasoned that $5 is not a lot and is equivalent to giving up a large mocha from Starbucks or any higher end coffee location. I could live with parting with one beverage worth. Needless to say, Rachael was extremely touched by the gesture.

The Hiring

During the course of our friendship;, another idea started percolating. I attended college for five years studying graphic design and multimedia/web development, but have yet to really find my footing afterwards. I knew I needed a way to stay in the game while working a general 40hr/wk job. I was not, and still not, completely confident in myself yet to go full time freelance but if I could pick up some work from time to time, that would be wonderful. I knew that Rachael was running Caffeinated Design Studio so I offered my knowledge and skills. I reasoned that if some of the work load was off her chest, together we could get work done faster and have more time for new work. I felt confident in her company and wanted to help make Caffeinated Design grow.

The Work

My first minion assignment didn't arrive right away but got to get my hands dirty soon enough. Rachael proceeded to introduce me to a client named Amy Crook. She had herself Antemortem Arts that she uses to promote her paintings and traditional arts. The website was going to use Word­Press as its CMS and Amy had a theme design ready, being a designer her­self. This was my first assign­ment. I had a good fun time mak­ing the theme work and pro­vide an awe­some web­site theme.

Min­ion assign­ment num­ber two was very much like the first one but with an added layer of work. Once again I was work­ing with Amy but this time she had a sep­a­rate client who also needed a word­press theme imple­mented. This time I was sent the design’s .psd file and I had to export the ele­ments myself. The rest of the them­ing process was like the first assign­ment and in the end, another lovely web­site was given to the world.

The Pay­off

Through these two assign­ments, I have helped pro­vide some won­der­ful look­ing web­sites for peo­ple using the ever-awesome blogging/cms plat­form Word­Press. I am con­fi­dent enough to say that every­one involved is more than happy with the final results and the inter­net is that much of a bet­ter place.

There is no telling what the future holds for me and my min­ion sta­tus with Rachael. I know that I have really enjoyed the work pro­vided to me so far, and hope that Rachael will let me con­tinue along the same vein. I have heard some rum­blings that I may be given some prac­tice runs at cre­at­ing designs myself to see how well I do there. I know that that half has never been my forte because I think I may be bet­ter suited on the devel­oper side work­ing with the code and markup. The design expe­ri­ence would be pos­i­tive and would def­i­nitely help refine my rough edges, allow­ing me to be a big­ger asset to both Rachael and any­one I work with in the future. Now if you excuse me, I think I hear an over­hy­per elfling call­ing my name.