Fresh out of university, I’d just landed at the agency through eighty booklets and a knock on a door. Now I was somewhere between intern and designer, with no desk and everything to prove.
I was sitting in the reception corner because that’s where they put me when the receptionist wasn’t there. Nervous about everything.
The first real project they gave me was a publication for a nonprofit. Find and replace. Simple work. I thought I understood it. I acted like I did.
Instead of going one by one, I hit replace all. Lowercase to uppercase. But some cases needed to stay lowercase. Some needed uppercase depending on the page, depending on the context. I didn’t check. I thought it was minor. I saved it to the server.
A few minutes later, a senior designer screamed. What the fuck is happening here. I turned around and knew immediately it was me. Hours of proofreading undone before a tight deadline. But my boss, he wasn’t angry. He was patient. He told me plainly. You can’t bypass the process. You have to be thorough. Even the smallest thing cascades.
I never made that mistake again.
Months passed. I started to find my groove. After every project I’d go back through what I got wrong and sit with it until I understood why. I asked everyone questions. I measured myself in six-month stretches, just to see if the gap was closing.
Then my boss won a website project. Best Western. A big client. He needed a developer and couldn’t find one in time. I raised my hand. I’d taught myself to code since I was thirteen. I could design it and build it.
I didn’t know how far the gap was.
The first half felt solid. Then I hit the wall. The features they wanted, the code standards, the structure, all beyond what I knew. I got desperate. Stayed til 5 AM studying, coding, troubleshooting. Wired on coffee at four in the morning thinking do or die. No other choice.
At 5 AM I’d sit outside the office. Light a cigarette. Listen to my favourite music. Pack my stuff. I’d start walking towards home and feel the chill breeze on my cheek. Just to calm myself down before I got there. I remember the sighs. A lot of them. Deflated. Burnt out. But tiredness wasn’t touching me. I was determined to deliver this. Because at that moment, I had nothing but this.
The client was happy. My boss saw something shift. Not just a designer. Someone who could design it, build it, and whatever came next. After that, he handed me bigger things. Logo design. Branding projects. More websites. Illustration work. Animation. Video. Clients that mattered.
That’s when I stopped being the nervous intern.
I was still sitting in that reception corner during this same period when I came across an article. Dot CO domains were available for the general public now. Something about that caught me. I’d been carrying the same domain since high school, but it didn’t hold who I’d become anymore. Maybe it was time for something new.
I typed 5am.
My heart was pumping. I couldn’t believe it was available. I was so tired I could barely think straight. But I bought it immediately.
It made sense the moment I owned it. Not just the hour I finished work, but the whole thing around it. The cigarette at sunrise, the music, the only moment in all that grinding where I could actually breathe. Proof I’d pushed through something I didn’t think I could.
I was known for working around the clock. For not giving up. For grinding til the work was done. 5am was all of that.
Now I’m a father. I can’t pull all-nighters anymore. Two, three AM is the maximum before everything breaks. The version of me that could stay wired til sunrise doesn’t exist in the same way.
But 5am.co isn’t just a domain. It’s a tether. A reminder of what I pushed through. The shape of the work changes, but the hunger doesn’t disappear.
I remember the hours.