I’ve slowly been updating my web site, adding pages for my projects and web sites and whatnot, and it got me thinking about progress.

Take web sites, for example. It would be tempting to think that, given more experience, I’ll consistently produce better and better work.

It certainly doesn’t feel like this, though. While I love my most recent design, The Peacock’s Paintbrush is still one of my favorites — and one of my first; it was made around ten years ago.

It’s tempting to feel like I haven’t made much progress at all. Which, sometimes I do. I worry that I’m not improving as a designer or a programmer or whatever here.

My output is really more like this:

Kinda random.

But really, it’s not as random as it looks. Experience does not make my work consistently better. It increases the probability that my work will be better.

The quality of my work will tend towards the darker red areas here. Without question, my work experience has made my average better.

However, under the right circumstances, I am still perfectly capable of producing crap. If I don’t get along personally with my client; if I hate the work itself, the work will suffer.

Ten years ago, under the right circumstances, I was perfectly capable of creating amazing things. The Peacock’s Paintbrush was a fascinating challenge. I was excited about getting portfolio pieces out there, and I had just the right amount of creative freedom.

The true measure of my progress is, I suppose, to look at the jobs that I neither love nor hate. The ones I just do because they have to be done. They’ll tend towards that nice dark red stripe, and I’ll forget about them the moment they’re over… but that’s the sort of stuff I should think about, when I’m thinking about what I can reasonably expect to accomplish next.