What do you do when you want something so badly that you dive in before you learn to swim? You don’t drown…necessarily. But doggie-paddling isn’t exactly thriving.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a talk with my boss about working on the company website. It needs some major work. But aside from the obvious aesthetics and functionality, they wanted me to keep the basics up to date: things like interest rates, adding and removing employee contact info — simple stuff.

Then we had a committee meeting…

I started out saying yes to basic textual updates and all of a sudden we’re looking at a total site overhaul or building a site from scratch to replace the current page. But here’s the problem… I’m not a web-design-guy. I’m a photoshop-design-guy. I make pictures and prints that don’t move or link you anywhere. I can’t write flash programs or javascript add-on’s. The most I offer in that area is basic HTML. I can make a site on MS FrontPage. I can manipulate my MySpace page. I can update my church’s page using a really great WYSIWYG editor. And when you compare my work to some friends of mine, even calling myself a photoshop-design-guy is stretching it.

So, now that I’ve agreed to update the rates and text and have been talked into updating the entire website inside and out, what can I do? Hire a friend and take the credit? Do nothing and hope they never visit the page again? Admit I’m in over my head and ask for help? Assume the fetal position and cry like the girl I’m portraying?

This is one heck of a way to cut my teeth in the graphic design industry.