Trying a switch up on the old portfolio yet again. This time I am going with more of a Tumblr idea without actually having to use Tumblr.

I have actually given using other services a try, such as combining LinkedIn with Behance. But I am already paying for the hosting and the domain name, so paying more for other services to do the same thing seems silly.

And even though I am a big proponent that web folks do not have to design their own portfolio to be respected (“the cobbler’s son wears no shoes” idea), I am too much of a control addict when it comes to my work not to be able to display it the way I want.

I will say this – this is not my theme. I am using the Launch theme provided for free by Themezilla. It came at the exact right time (wanted to move to more of a Tumblr style), does most of the heavy lifting (while still allowing me to customize), is free, and looks pretty good.

Those last two in particular are very hard to come by in one theme. Not that I am adverse to paying $40 for a theme, but my wife would ask why I was spending money on something I am probably going to change in six months anyway.

At the end of the day, is this all for naught? While I have dreams of leaving my current job, I just don’t know if I have the motivation. Comfort can create amazing inertia, and –  having been where I am for more than a decade – comfort is definitely the name of the game.

So I have changed “identities” twice in the last year or so. I started with my portfolio being “Onedeep Designs” which – while functional – just never really sat right with me. Having been in government for more than a decade, I had begun to transition to “Designing dot Gov,” which I felt really suited me.

However, I realized that while Designing dot Gov was a great identity, it was too limiting. Originally, I was ok with that. After all, 10+ years in the government sector tends to encourage many more years, so what’s the harm in boxing myself in?

But after some change of perspective at the federal office where I work (more on that later), as well as my wife and I opening our own business, I decided I might just need to be a bit more broad than dot Gov would allow, so I decided on something simple: Designing Sean.

I settled on this pretty quickly, and with no real consolation from the folks I usually bounce ideas off of. It probably helped that I was coming from Designing dot Gov, so I was already in the mindset of talking about what I was building and why. And then I realized that these designs and blog posts weren’t just about designs and web happenings, but were really about me (deep, I know). Or more to the point, how they impacted me and who I am as a designer.

So here we are. I am just starting to get some content in, though I doubt everything will transfer from the original Onedeep portfolio. But now that I am actually satisfied with the idea, name, and layout…I am hoping that the content will be much easier to arrive at.