by David Appleyard

I have just returned from two days in an oasis.

Future of Web Design is an annual conference held in the centre of London, bringing together web designers from across the UK and Europe. This year, it was situated in The Brewery, a delightful haven in the centre of London’s soul-destroying financial district.

No more than thirty seconds after leaving the event, I was sucked away from the energetic, inspiring and overwhelmingly enthusiastic designers and freelancers I’d spent the last 48 hours with, into a sea of grey. I went from fitting in with a group of passionate designers and freelancers, to feeling like I’d stepped into a different world.

The financial district of London strikes me as one of the worst places in the world to work. People compete with suits and expensive luggage, not creativity. Merit is given for long hours, cut-throat corporate practices, and burnout. People are always rushing to their next meeting, or next train. It epitomizes everything I hate about business.

I completed a degree in Management a few years ago, and had hoped that it would teach me how to be an entrepreneur and make something of value. It didn’t. I learned how I could mould myself into a cog within a corporate machine. As soon as I was encouraged to see people’s time and energy as a measurable, quantitative “resource” for increasing business profit, I was disillusioned.

Business shouldn’t be like this.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, nine out of ten Americans worked for themselves. Today, this statistic is reversed. After just 100 years of industrial revolution, nine out of ten Americans now expend all their energy working for someone else (Barbara J. Winter).

This isn’t how we were made to work.

Please don’t think that I’m suggesting everyone should work for themselves. It’s challenging, and takes time to master. But it isn’t risky. Job security being assured in a large firm is a complete myth. I would rather have the future of my career be in my own hands over someone else’s any day. No-one has my best interests at heart more than I do.

I can try new ventures, fail, learn, adapt and experiment with my business in a way that would be completely impossible working for a large firm. That said, the journey of freelancing and running my own business is still relatively new to me. I have a huge amount to learn.

But I’m so excited.

I’m excited because I have the rest of my life ahead of me to create things.

I’m excited because all my energy is expended to benefit myself and the people I work with, rather than a large corporation’s shareholders and partners.

But most of all, I’m excited because I’m part of that oasis. Nowhere else can you meet people who wake up everyone morning and feel so incredibly passionate and excited about what they do.

We’re free.

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I’m an editor, designer, and entrepreneurial character based in Manchester, UK. You can follow me on Twitter, or subscribe to my humble blog.