A decade mostly of juggling a day job and my passion.
At the start it was easier. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve accrued more responsibilities and things good and terrible have happened. They all add up to distract from the goal of my passions: to make a living doing what I love.
Judging from my website, what I love may be hard to ascertain. Entertaining is the heart of it. Creating things that other people can enjoy and that may help them escape brings me joy. The word escape is fraught with a sense of retreat and giving up, but in a world full of work, expectations and pain, escape is a necessary prescription at times.
10 years and some change on and I’m still working a day job. When asked by strangers what I’ve done, I can’t point to something that may have crossed their path. However, I still prefer to answer that tired introductory question of, “so what do you do?” with, “I’m a stop motion animator,” rather than a description of what’s on my W2.
A decade goes fast. Straight out of college I was making animations in my parents attic, unable to stand up straight and sweating under the heat of lighting my sets with halogen work lights. Now I have a 6-axis motion control rig, a laser cutter and a bunch of other complex technological assistants. I may not be entertaining large groups of people just yet, but I have definitely boosted my capability to do so. Within those years I’ve lived abroad, found love, been laid off during the recession and experienced unending heartbreak through the loss of my only brother. All of those things propelled and hindered the advancement of my passions in their own unique ways.
A decade seems so long. Reflecting on the last one, I can’t even begin to imagine what the next one will bring, but I hope I get to entertain some more people.
Current things:
Game – Pandemic (5/5 stars) Easy to learn and teach coop game that is harder to win than you and your teammates think.
Show – Vikings (2.5/5 stars) Really well done historical fiction that when it’s good is as good as TV gets (episodes 501 and 502, most recently), but resorts to its own tired tropes for most of the episodes. But I keep watching.
Book – Berlin, by Jason Lutes (4/5 stars) A graphic novel with mesmerizing detail in its art: Extremely realistic portrayals with a few dashes of German Expressionism and noir here and there. My only real problems with it, are that I often have a hard time reading the lettering and as there isn’t really a story, I’m having trouble remembering the large cast of characters.
Music – Punk Rocksteady, by the Mad Caddies (5/5 stars) One of my favorite bands growing up released a ska/reggae album covering awesome punk rock songs.
