If I could choose my career all over again… <heavy sigh>
I’d go back to talk to the high-school me, and try to convince him into going to the Ontario College of Art* for drawing and illustration, instead of Waterloo University for architecture.
It was a very close decision; I’d been drawing for as long as I could remember, but I was also interested in architecture and solar-powered houses. I chose the route that I thought would lead to a better career. I had no idea how anyone could make a living as an artist, but I suspected that it involved social skills that I did not then have.
Little did I realise that the 1982 recession would hit and I’d never get to work co-op in an architectural-related field. I would discover computers, fail out of architecture, switch to electronics, graduate from that, and spend the next 19 years working in various capacities as an electronics engineering technologist. (That’s right–not even making as much money as an engineer. So much for the money.)
Meanwhile…
During the eighties and nineties, the Internet and later the Web flowered. Disney-style animation revived from its torpor; comics boomed; Japanese anime became popular and spread across the land. It became apparent to me that there were ways to survive as an artist. It also became apparent that I was in the wrong place with the wrong qualifications, and I couldn’t see a way from here to there.
Twelve years ago in 1992 I tried to bail from electronics, applying to the classical animation program at Sheridan College**, actually getting into it, and then flaming out after seven months. By the end of those seven months, I knew (WARNING! 1995-era web design!) what I wanted to do, but at that time the program at Sheridan did not offer it, and I was so burnt out from the effort that I followed the lure of a steady paycheck and returned to working at the same computer company.
And then came family crises, one after another. I’m still there at that computer company. I work as a technical writer. And I want out.
I still draw. I’m still interested in computers and languages and math and art, just like I was in high school. With a little effort I can find my way around the interior of a Linux box, a TCP/IP network, or a website. Starting in 1998 I’ve been studying Esperanto, then French. I managed to make it to Europe one summer. I hang around with people who’ve built their own solar-powered house. Sometimes I work on my comic book.
But I feel trapped by my past choices. Unfulfilled possibilities crowd my mind. I’m now desperately looking for a way back to my art, and forward to a more real life. If I’d graduated with an art degree, I could have gotten in on the ground floor of the computer animation revolution.
Am I looking for a better job, more money? Not so long ago, I would have said so, but then I remember that money and a job are but tools to help one realise one’s desires, not ends in themselves. I remember that the best friends I’ve had, I met when I was doing what I want, not what would make the most money. Yet I need to eat, to pay the rent.
And that is the core problem of my life, more important than the reconstruction of myself in counseling, the slow painful learning of social skills (and the attendant realisation of why I was so crappy in the romantic arena), or the long struggle out of near-bankruptcy… and it hasn’t changed in twenty years: how the hell do I support myself while doing something that nourishes my soul???
If I could give one piece of advice, it would be what Thaumaturge so succinctly put:
If you have to crawl across broken glass on your hands and knees to do it, follow your heart. You will slowly wither and die otherwise.
[sub]*Now known as the Ontario College of Art and Design.
**Now known as the Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning.
Both institutions have substantially expanded in the last few years and are offering university-level courses.[/sub]