Hello, my name is Carl. I’m a creative freelancer.

Welcome to my site and thanks for stopping by.

I wish I could say I always planned on being a designer, but it’s not true. I’ve only planned a few noteworthy events in my lifetime, and being an entrepreneur, let alone, a creative freelancer is not a choice that makes the list.

I don’t have an art-school education pedigree to brag about. I’m also ok without having a significant social media presence to document my every move and thought to gain “friends” and “followers.”

If you’re good at something, your central focus should be on honing your craft, not trying to be a celebrity.  Build a reputation for producing something substantive and of real value to others. People will take notice. Ability speaks louder than words.

I was a different child from my three female siblings beyond those distinctions in human anatomy. Always an avid reader and constant joke-teller, I was never shy about asking questions about why things were the way they were or speaking up when I saw something that I didn’t agree with, even if it wasn’t in my best interests.

Both of my parents had a couple of years of college under their belts and held down respectable working-class jobs in the Southeast Texas refining town where I grew up. Seeing—but not old enough to understand—the value of their work ethic, their struggles with prejudice and racial discrimination, their repeated utterings of the benefits of expanding my mind, and the power at my disposal by refusing to let to let anyone—not even them—helped me become more independent as I got older.

I still believe, in the words of Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes from 1975, each of us is “free to be who we are.”

When I moved to Houston in the mid-1980’s, I did so with a goal to learn everything I could but promised myself not to stay on any single job more than three years. I didn’t want any employer having total control over my life.

Call me a rebel, but don’t call me lazy. I still wake up every morning between 5 and 6 a.m. without the assistance of an alarm clock.

After getting married and starting a family, I gave up on college, its endless lectures and indoctrination about things I had little to no interest in, and ever-increasing mountain of student loan debt.

Through a friend, I landed a job as a paralegal clerk at a Manhattan-based law firm with an office in downtown Houston. Besides shuffling paper, running errands, and playing the “yes” game, I got my first exposure to personal computers and the fledgling new software that drove them—Microsoft Windows.   Working all-nighters with paid overtime provided me with knowledge and extra access to discover how this new software and computers work.

In 1989, I bought my first PC with a monochrome screen and a dot-matrix printer for a resume-writing service I ran at home in my spare time. Looking back, that’s where desire to be my own boss started.

Still, it would be years before it was a reality.

Call me a rebel, but don’t call me lazy. I still wake up every morning between 5 and 6 a.m. without the assistance of an alarm clock.

I spent the next 17 years working for several law firms. During that time, I learned, mastered, and taught others to use software programs from PowerPoint to Photoshop and Premiere Pro, and others. I even conducted weekend training sessions showing others how to use specialized legal presentation software.

In 2004 I left the law office culture for good, striking out on my own as an independent courtroom presentation consultant. It’s one of the best decisions I ever made.

When the word spread about my skills and availability, I had no problem finding work or hopping on a plane to numerous coast-to-coast destinations over the next 13 years. Life was good.

In 2014, my wife and I moved from Houston to upstate New York to be closer to my Manhattan client. After enjoying four years of living in a smaller locale with the convenience to major Northeast cities with the option to travel by train, unexpected urgent family matters required us to move back to Houston in 2018.

Our lives were about to change, and not for the better.

I share a deep kinship, a connection with anyone doing their best to make ends meet, be they garbage men or licensed professionals…While I love designing…reality often overrules my emotional impulses. The first of the month never comes late.

Our move back to Houston in 2018 confronted my wife and I with the deaths of several family members, a decline in the economy, a rising cost of living, and the all-too-familiar torture of Gulf Coast humidity, mosquitoes, torrid temperatures, and threat of hurricanes and flooding.

And then COVID struck in the spring of 2020. Wow.

Talk about piling on the misery. For me, traveling was now out of the question, though that decision had long been on the table for the benefit of my home life. Still, I knew I had to bring in some real income, and real soon, even if I didn’t know how.

Deciding not to wade into the waters of the take-it-or-leave-it corporate minutiae, I reached out to my friends and associates. Soon, referrals to small business owners who needed design services trickled in. After I few projects, I got referrals from people who knew people, which is amazing, considering I don’t use any social media outside of LinkedIn and Vimeo.

Outside of my personality, goals, and experiences, I share a deep kinship, a connection with anyone doing their best to make ends meet, be they garbage men or licensed professionals. In between design gigs, I’ve done everything from rideshare driving, landscaping, and painting to make ends meet. I’m proud of it, because it means my parents didn’t waste their time teaching me work ethic and how to get by during tough times.

While I love designing and producing website and video content, reality often overrules my emotional impulses. The first of the month never comes late. Sometimes you need to do what you need to do to get by until you can do better.

When I’m not designing, I free my mind by reading, cooking, watching historical documentary films, dabbling in photography, listening to vinyl records,  maintaining my lawn, and servicing my vehicles.