What do?
That's a dilemma. I had it drilled into me that hopes and dreams won't take me anywhere. So I'm a coward that says it's best to take the safest choice and do what you like on the side, rather than taking a leap of faith now and regretting it later. That's just me though, and a lot of people are only content once they've taken risks to make it somewhere they're proud of. If that's you, there's nothing wrong with that. It just won't be stable or certain, I'm sure.
I wish you luck in finding a balance that makes you happy D:
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If your current working conditions are really that bad and you got no time left for your true passion of making art, you should take the new chance. But not after careful consideration. How likely will your current job stay like this or is even getting worse?! I fear no one can really help you with that decision. But there is nothing wrong in following and pursuing your true talents, as long as it's viable enough to work out and make ends meet.
I'm wishing you all the best in making the right decision and in ultimately becoming a paid artist. ;)
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Well, if I had the opportunity to work part-time and it'd be financially viable, that's almost certainly what I'd go for
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You know, I've been thinking about this lately myself.
I'm in my late 30s, doing pretty good as a programmer, great benefits, good salary... But how much of it was really my choice?
When I was starting high school, I needed to choose in which class to study. My parents wanted me to study in the programming class, and if that wasn't available - electronics class. Because at the time (around 20 years ago), electronics was considered advanced technologies and where the money is, and programming was considered the thing of the future. So I went into programming, while my brother, who is a bit older, had worse grades, and had to settle for electronics.
As years went by, I eventually started working in IT, did my B.Sc. in computer science, and started working as a programmer. While my brother started studying straight away, did a back-to-back B.Sc. and M.Sc. in electronics, and then started working in his field. But while I get raises, switch companies every few years, each time upgrading my salary, and haven't been unemployed for a single day since school. My brother got laid of a bunch of times, was unemployed for almost a year and couldn't find a job, and eventually settled for a downgrade in salary just to get his next job.
But life is not black & white. It's not that I'm lucky and he's unlucky. Or that I choose a good growing field of work, and he chose a bad shrinking one. Or that I'm smart and he's dumb. It's just that I really like what I do, and my brother only works in his field because he has to, and doesn't have any experience doing anything else. And he's married and has kids, so he can't afford not to work, or work at a worse paying job.
So I wonder how the choices we made, were really ours, and not dictated from outside (for example by our parents). My brother used to draw really well, and used to make these really funny comics strips with characters he made up from scratch. Maybe he just chose the wrong field of work, and if he had gone to be an artist (like yourself), he would have been much happier doing it, and would have made more money...
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The heart wants what the heart wants, who am I to tell you what you should do. All I can say is I hope everything works out and you are happy, cause in the end that's all that matters. :-)
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Yeah, I was talking to a girl on a train and she told me they don't like chilli powder. So I filled the attic with chilli powder and it went elsewhere.
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Well she put chilli powder in the food she put out for wild birds because it stopped the squirrels stealing it - apparently birds can't even taste or smell the chilli powder. The things you can learn talking to a girl on a train with her collection of tropical fish in plastic bags...
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Well she asked me to look after her tropical fish while she went to the toilet so then I asked her why she had all her tropical fish on a train and it turned out she was doing an environmental sciences degree and was on her way to a work experience placement studying invasive squirrel populations which is when I mentioned my squirrel problem.
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Round about response but gave me some perspective. Mike Rowe has some thoughts on work and passion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVEuPmVAb8o
Long story short, you can follow your passion but make sure your not missing opportunities by doing so. It's been sound advice for me
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So often when I have a few surplus game keys I hide them in a troll thread and see how many blacklists I get for giving games away. And after the Fanatical bundlefest I was going to do that today but as I have a real life dilemma I thought I'd ask a genuine question for a change. I frankly don't expect any sensible answers - but I do expect the mad responses I get to convince me that I knew best all along.
As some might already know I'm trying to be an artist and I've also bought a ramshackle house that I was intending to fix up myself. Between the art and not paying rent and some crap lodgers I can just about scrape by in life without doing anything else - although the DIY was proving far more problematic than I intended.
Last Summer I got a job at a local parcel company, working for a few hours of an evening sorting parcels. This was actually working out really well for me. I had plenty of time to do what I wanted, I had a bit of extra cash and I was having a laugh with the people I was working with.
After a few months somebody noticed that I was rather overqualified and I got moved to an admin job working afternoons which was initially pretty sweet, but since then I've been working longer and longer hours and having more and more responsibilities dumped on me. In the present climate I shouldn't really complain about having work but I have no time for what I want to do and I'm spending the surplus cash on things I don't really need to make me feel better and basically I'm back in the place I was sick of that made me want to pursue my art in the first place.
I've had a really bad week fixing the problems of ungrateful morons and I was ready to quit but I'm trying not to make decisions while angry as I always end up shooting myself in the foot when I do that. And then today an employment agency I used to work for phoned up wanting me to start part time work as a bin man on Monday morning. That actually sounds pretty tempting right now.
So where do I go from here?
The surplus game keys? Oh, I'm sure those are around somewhere, I did post this on Steam Gifts after all...
EDIT - The giveaways are ending soon. I appreciate the responses, which were unexpected in terms of their number and how helpful people were trying to be. I've replied to a number but wasn't able to reply to all. I'm still uncertain about my future but I have calmed down a lot since making this post and peoples replies did certainly help me get some perspective. I'll try not to bother people with this kind of thing again for a long time.
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