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I have great hopes for my family and me. Always have. Now if there's enough time in the day or in my life to hit all the things i plan on that is another matter all together.

I have recently taken on a new job. I've left my first "professional" graphic design job. I've jumped  in the river of chance and opportuniy to find myself landing on the banks of a new and slightly different career path.

I now manage a framing store in Cambridge, MA. (right outside Boston) (Corners Inc.) I have employees. Employees that work hard, ones that hardly work, ones that stop coming to work so i can work even longer hours to pick up their slack. Wow what a change. One that was both welcome and needed!

So together with my wifes income we are comfortable. Great. But adding up the hours that we both work vs. time spent with our son and i get weirded out. How did it come to this?! That we both work crazy hours to make it all come together and not have one of us home to be with the little one.? I suppose that if i were able to make a 3 figure income i would want my wife to stay home with our son and be able to do whatever she felt. Or for that matter if she were making a 3 figure income that i would be an at-home-dad.

So many things i want for myself and my family may never happen. More time with eachother, more time alone, more, more, more.......I have great hopes that what i am doing is the right thing for my family and me.

See Ya Later.

After only 8 months at the Free Press i have said good by. i just couldn't figure out who i worked for or what the fu@! was going on with respect to good design.

After creating a nice ad for a local restaurant my ad rep took the ad and sent it to our competitors newspaper. i had placed a copyright Free Press mark small but there for those that need to know who created the ad. Well the ad ran and the copyright mark was removed. I took it upon myself to call the newspaper and see why. (it's not the first time that this has happened just the last) Well the Advertising Dept. gave me to an Ad Rep who gave me to Graphics who was bullsh@! before i had the chance to ask him why they removed the copyright. He said "who are you? ", "are you an ad rep"? "oh, your just a designer"! i calmly asked him why they had removed said copyright, and he replied, "we don't advertise for you".

As i'm on the phone with mr.happy graphics guy my ad rep gets in my face, points at me and says "you're out of line". Well that was the straw. i knew my future was calling me. As i put the phone down after the nowhere conversation with mr. happy graphics guy my ad rep says "we need to talk about this Matt". "You want to talk, here you go.." i responded. "Here's the ceiling " placing my hand below my chest, "there is no insentive to do good design here", "you shouldn't call this position graphic design and don't tell me i'm out of line for researching what i've done"!

Well than i set down my keys for the place and walked out.

Why are we sending ads to a competitors newspapers? They already had there own ad for this restaurant. Why was mine chosen to replace the old one? This client hadn't even ran their ad with us yet! Why is ther no art charge?

I was told months ago by our publisher that "we are not an ad agency". BUT we treat the client as though we are, except anything goes like endless proofs and changes, cleaning up logos, finding images and art for their ad, creating their entire ad from scratch, altering photos, and letting them make little decisions like could you move that over a little bit, oh no a little bit more.....

It ain't about the money! It's about the respect! I have to create a good ad to keep the client happy who isn't paying an art charge, who makes me no more money if they stay or go, who takes .pdf proofs and sends them to competitors newspaper, who ruins the knowledge that if they come to OUR newspaper they get a good design AS the competeitors newspapers run the ad as if they created it by removing my last shot at being respected as any part in the rediculous cycle to begin with!!!!!!

See YA... 

I just got news today that a man from the bay area in California will fly me out to his house to paint an extremely large painting for his extremely large home. This will be in November.

I am very excited about the opportunity! i can't wait.

The painting will be around 8 to 10 feet wide and or tall, and i won't know exactly what i'm doing until i see the space it will hang in.

He got excited about my work from my website msloboganart.com i knew it was worth putting together. now i'll be able to pay my friend who helped me with the flash.

...and possibly lead to more work. there's nothing like getting gritty, dirty, and deeper into the world of motion, color, expression, searching, finding, fighting, winning, what if i don't, i will, will power, freedom, what rules are rules, dreaming etc.....

today would have been my fathers 55th birthday. he left us in '92 after battling brain cancer for 11 years! i could go on about how it makes me feel but for some reason it makes me feel better just to say happy birthday dad.