![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_gneech"Deleriously happy" was always my favorite answer to that question. "Filthy rich" was a good second choice.
However, over the course of my life, I have had many things I wanted to be.
My earliest one that I remember was "an astronaut." In fact, I wanted to be the first person on Jupiter. (Yes, I know, re: Jupiter. But I was five, okay?)
Around that same time, I started making little illustrated stories about Bambi, based on a "Little, Golden" book I had: Bambi: Friends of the Forest. Besides Bambi, Thumper, and Flower, it also had a random beaver, and compulsive handwashing raccoon, and Chip and Dale. (Chip and Dale? Why Chip and Dale?) Not too long after that, I read Felix Salten's original Bambi: A Life In the Woods (or, I should say, an English translation of it), and was traumatized for years. But that's another story all together.
Anyway, the astronaut idea gradually lost its charm, and I had started gaining more interest in illustration, particularly influenced by "Peanuts." My dad worked at a paper factory and would bring home reams of typing paper, which I used to do two things: draw pictures of Star Trek or of various cartoon characters, or to write, although that mostly came later.
Sometime around age 10, I got typing lessons. My mother had an IBM Selectric that she had brought home for work purposes, but I used it a lot more than she did, so it was decreed that if I was going to be typing, that I should be typing properly. In this same rough era, The Empire Strikes Back came out, and was quite nutty over Star Wars stuff in general ... so I started writing about Star Wars ... and drawing about Star Wars. I created a Star Wars comic book on typing paper, involving Luke, a vaguely Han-like buddy for him of my own creation who was also in Rogue Squadron, and a woman who was the object of their respective affections. (Yes, those of you who read Suburban Jungle, I did write this same kind of stuff when I was ten. Now you know.)
At the time, I was going to a private school, basically because I wasn't socially developed enough to survive public school, and I went through their English curriculum like it was water. By the time I entered high school (back at public school again), I had the equivalent of a college freshman's level English.
At that point, I was more or less assuming that I'd probably be a writer, but then one day I saw "The Making of Raiders of the Lost Ark" -- and suddenly I wanted to be a movie star! Specifically, an action hero! I was roughly the shape of Pugsley Addams and had no social skills or even basic hygiene (ew), but I wanted to be an action hero!
So throughout the course of my high school career, I was in theater, figuring that would be the gateway to the movies when I grew up. Except, as time went on, and I began to meet other people who were in theater, I came to dislike what I saw. Everything was about ego; other theater types were flaky, overemotional, self-obsessed social dropouts. And while this made me blend right in, it also made me want to get the hell out. I didn't want to be that way, and I didn't want to hang out with people who were.
So in college, which I started with the intent of studying theater, I wandered around a bit and ended up with a degree in English, with a double-handful of courses in philosophy, and a lot of self-taught knowledge about cartoons, which had kept on bubbling along in the background during high school. (A friend of mine and I had collaborated at lunch and in history class on what could almost be considered a daily comic strip, although it was never published and had a total audience of about ten people.)
During and after college, I decided to give a try to both cartooning and writing as professions, figuring I'd do graphics as a "day job." At first, I couldn't even really get graphics work, either ... I got data entry jobs, which segued to desktop publishing jobs, which segued to graphics. I wrote, wrote, wrote, and drew, drew, drew, while working all the live-long day on Powerpoint presenations and government contractor proposals and newsletters.
Both my graphics and my cartooning hit a peak when I was hired by LifeMinders. Finally, a job that paid what I considered a good, livable wage ... so I could do my cartoons and writing at night and not be combing the want-ads every weekend. It was nice to let my "day" career take a backseat for a while and run itself, and know that all the bills would be paid.
The downside was that LifeMinders was very demanding -- and got more so as the dot-com magic began to wear off. Finally, one day, I had to create 20 banner ads in one day -- after having spent the past month churning out ad after ad after ad, often working 60 hrs/week.
That was the day my graphics ability burned out.
Yes, I am still capable of doing it, and doing it fairly well. But I have no passion for it any more. I don't get excited by a cool layout ... I don't drool over nifty fonts ... I don't care about the intricacies of Helvetica vs. Arial. As long as it doesn't look horrible ... I just don't care. And then, of course, LifeMinders up and pink-slipped me.
I was confident that I could just tutor myself in java, find an entry-level job, and be working again by the end of the summer. I was sure that by this time, I would be making $50k+ as a programmer. But java was harder than I expected, and there were precious few entry-level jobs -- or for that matter, jobs of any kind -- to be found.
So here I am, foaming lattes at Starbucks, once again looking through the want-ads every Sunday, and wondering what I want to be when I grow up. Yes, I want to write; yes, I want to draw. But those haven't paid me a livable wage yet and don't look like they will before the rent comes due again. If they're going to be stuff I do on the side, because they don't have short-term potential, then what am I going to do for a day job?
I've gone through personality-type tests, and they always come back with what I know anyway: Do something creative or artistic. Thanks for the helpful advice. What those tests utterly fail to do is take into account the fact that creative/artistic jobs are few and far between, have tons of people who want them, and only the top 0.005% of them pay the kind of money I want.
Sure, if I was willing to spend my life being a supplemental salary in a family unit I could sell commissions and cartooning books and the occasional roleplaying game module while working on "The Big Novel." But I'm not. I want at least $30k/year, and I want it to start sooner rather than later. Once I have it, it'll pay for me to get some more vocational training or maybe night school to get $50k/year, $60k/year, or more if I can get it. I'll keep drawing, and I'll keep writing -- I always have and I probably always will. But until I get into a good setup again, they've got to take a back seat to this more primary problem.
I need a career that pays. Okay.
So what pays? That I have the ability to do, and can stand to do?
I have no idea.
And I have no idea how to find out, either. Nobody I know makes any money either, except for the guy who sold me on java, a guy who has a job that leaves him constantly stressed out, and an entrepreneur (and I am a rotten entrepreneur).
What do I want to be when I grow up?
The winner of the lottery, I guess. :-`
-The Gneech
However, over the course of my life, I have had many things I wanted to be.
My earliest one that I remember was "an astronaut." In fact, I wanted to be the first person on Jupiter. (Yes, I know, re: Jupiter. But I was five, okay?)
Around that same time, I started making little illustrated stories about Bambi, based on a "Little, Golden" book I had: Bambi: Friends of the Forest. Besides Bambi, Thumper, and Flower, it also had a random beaver, and compulsive handwashing raccoon, and Chip and Dale. (Chip and Dale? Why Chip and Dale?) Not too long after that, I read Felix Salten's original Bambi: A Life In the Woods (or, I should say, an English translation of it), and was traumatized for years. But that's another story all together.Anyway, the astronaut idea gradually lost its charm, and I had started gaining more interest in illustration, particularly influenced by "Peanuts." My dad worked at a paper factory and would bring home reams of typing paper, which I used to do two things: draw pictures of Star Trek or of various cartoon characters, or to write, although that mostly came later.
Sometime around age 10, I got typing lessons. My mother had an IBM Selectric that she had brought home for work purposes, but I used it a lot more than she did, so it was decreed that if I was going to be typing, that I should be typing properly. In this same rough era, The Empire Strikes Back came out, and was quite nutty over Star Wars stuff in general ... so I started writing about Star Wars ... and drawing about Star Wars. I created a Star Wars comic book on typing paper, involving Luke, a vaguely Han-like buddy for him of my own creation who was also in Rogue Squadron, and a woman who was the object of their respective affections. (Yes, those of you who read Suburban Jungle, I did write this same kind of stuff when I was ten. Now you know.)
At the time, I was going to a private school, basically because I wasn't socially developed enough to survive public school, and I went through their English curriculum like it was water. By the time I entered high school (back at public school again), I had the equivalent of a college freshman's level English.
At that point, I was more or less assuming that I'd probably be a writer, but then one day I saw "The Making of Raiders of the Lost Ark" -- and suddenly I wanted to be a movie star! Specifically, an action hero! I was roughly the shape of Pugsley Addams and had no social skills or even basic hygiene (ew), but I wanted to be an action hero!
So throughout the course of my high school career, I was in theater, figuring that would be the gateway to the movies when I grew up. Except, as time went on, and I began to meet other people who were in theater, I came to dislike what I saw. Everything was about ego; other theater types were flaky, overemotional, self-obsessed social dropouts. And while this made me blend right in, it also made me want to get the hell out. I didn't want to be that way, and I didn't want to hang out with people who were.
So in college, which I started with the intent of studying theater, I wandered around a bit and ended up with a degree in English, with a double-handful of courses in philosophy, and a lot of self-taught knowledge about cartoons, which had kept on bubbling along in the background during high school. (A friend of mine and I had collaborated at lunch and in history class on what could almost be considered a daily comic strip, although it was never published and had a total audience of about ten people.)
During and after college, I decided to give a try to both cartooning and writing as professions, figuring I'd do graphics as a "day job." At first, I couldn't even really get graphics work, either ... I got data entry jobs, which segued to desktop publishing jobs, which segued to graphics. I wrote, wrote, wrote, and drew, drew, drew, while working all the live-long day on Powerpoint presenations and government contractor proposals and newsletters.
Both my graphics and my cartooning hit a peak when I was hired by LifeMinders. Finally, a job that paid what I considered a good, livable wage ... so I could do my cartoons and writing at night and not be combing the want-ads every weekend. It was nice to let my "day" career take a backseat for a while and run itself, and know that all the bills would be paid.
The downside was that LifeMinders was very demanding -- and got more so as the dot-com magic began to wear off. Finally, one day, I had to create 20 banner ads in one day -- after having spent the past month churning out ad after ad after ad, often working 60 hrs/week.
That was the day my graphics ability burned out.
Yes, I am still capable of doing it, and doing it fairly well. But I have no passion for it any more. I don't get excited by a cool layout ... I don't drool over nifty fonts ... I don't care about the intricacies of Helvetica vs. Arial. As long as it doesn't look horrible ... I just don't care. And then, of course, LifeMinders up and pink-slipped me.
I was confident that I could just tutor myself in java, find an entry-level job, and be working again by the end of the summer. I was sure that by this time, I would be making $50k+ as a programmer. But java was harder than I expected, and there were precious few entry-level jobs -- or for that matter, jobs of any kind -- to be found.
So here I am, foaming lattes at Starbucks, once again looking through the want-ads every Sunday, and wondering what I want to be when I grow up. Yes, I want to write; yes, I want to draw. But those haven't paid me a livable wage yet and don't look like they will before the rent comes due again. If they're going to be stuff I do on the side, because they don't have short-term potential, then what am I going to do for a day job?
I've gone through personality-type tests, and they always come back with what I know anyway: Do something creative or artistic. Thanks for the helpful advice. What those tests utterly fail to do is take into account the fact that creative/artistic jobs are few and far between, have tons of people who want them, and only the top 0.005% of them pay the kind of money I want.
Sure, if I was willing to spend my life being a supplemental salary in a family unit I could sell commissions and cartooning books and the occasional roleplaying game module while working on "The Big Novel." But I'm not. I want at least $30k/year, and I want it to start sooner rather than later. Once I have it, it'll pay for me to get some more vocational training or maybe night school to get $50k/year, $60k/year, or more if I can get it. I'll keep drawing, and I'll keep writing -- I always have and I probably always will. But until I get into a good setup again, they've got to take a back seat to this more primary problem.
I need a career that pays. Okay.
So what pays? That I have the ability to do, and can stand to do?
I have no idea.
And I have no idea how to find out, either. Nobody I know makes any money either, except for the guy who sold me on java, a guy who has a job that leaves him constantly stressed out, and an entrepreneur (and I am a rotten entrepreneur).
What do I want to be when I grow up?
The winner of the lottery, I guess. :-`
-The Gneech
