Me > GPT
9/27/2026 | 10:19am | Saturday | Me > GPT
At the Creative University Design Conference in Whitewater, WI, multiple speakers and audience members shared their experiences with burnout.
This was almost foreign to me. I’m not a graphic designer by trade — I’ve never worked under strict deadlines, cranking out client projects for hours on end. I create until I feel the urge to stop.
As I sat in the audience, I felt a little out of place. They spoke of the pressures of being a designer, the privilege of being able to create cool stuff every day, the shared experience of “we.” But I’m not part of that “we.” I don’t make a living from design — most of what I make is for myself, my projects, my brand.
But putting together a small portfolio these last couple months (thanks to a Goodwill find — very on brand for me) reminded me: I am talented. I do enjoy sitting for hours making things come to life.
So I went into the conference timid, but prepared — proud to show up as a self-guided hobbyist, a one-man in-house creative team for my own dream.
And then I realized: I’ve been cheating.
It’s embarrassing to admit, but I’ve leaned on shortcuts — cheap clipart, AI generation — anything to save time when I couldn’t execute something by hand. Maybe I have a good eye for color and type, but much of my work hasn’t been created entirely by these hands and eyes.
When the Fried Design Company said, “We use AI as a tool, but we never send anything AI-generated to a client,” I felt like tossing my whole portfolio in the trash.
But that moment changed my perspective. I realized I’ve been sharpening my creative director skills: knowing what I want, building a vision, finding ways to make it real. Still, I knew I had to trust myself more.
Last week, I fought to reconnect my Wacom tablet after a Mac update. No tutorial or AI could solve it — I had to troubleshoot and figure it out myself. When it worked, it reconnected me not just to my tablet, but to the craft.
So I gave myself a challenge: design something entirely from scratch.
In 2008, fresh out of high school, I used my parents’ $3,000 college fund to buy a Digidesign MBox2 and build a makeshift studio in my mom’s basement. I had no idea I’d use it for 15+ years. That same gear helped create a song in 2015 that went viral in 2020 — over 1M Spotify streams, earning back that $3,000 and then some. It didn’t make me rich, but it changed my life.
Now, I’m finally retiring the MBox2 and upgrading my studio. To commemorate it, I spent the entire night creating a completely original design — no AI, no clipart. I rebuilt the old Digidesign logos by hand, recreated the MBox2 product mark, and even reworked my own Out Here logo to strip away any shortcut work.
Once I started, I couldn’t stop. It was 2:30AM when the Aaron James Draplin procrastidice told me to “HAMMER DOWN AND FINISH IT” — so I did.
This piece was to prove to myself that I only need AI to condense my blogposts ;)
The M-Box2 [2008 - 2025]
