Jobless Day 3

I’m starting out my third day without a job and feeling a bit down at the moment. We’ve been having the kids do some creative writing recently, and the results have been very interesting, so I decided to try a bit of it myself. I’ve always written a journal to myself when I need to think things through, but I usually don’t share it. This is a huge transition in my life though, and I don’t have a whole lot else to do at the moment, so I might as well share it with anyone bored enough to read along.

I spent day one building an entire new website for myself to show off my art and pretty much be my resume online. I’m a packrat, and I save every piece of art I’ve ever done, so it was kind of therapeutic plugging pictures in and looking back at some of my better work since the early 80s. I’ve done quite a bit and there are some pieces in there I’m really proud of. I’d hire me!

Seriously, if there’s one thing I’m guilty of, it’s not putting enough stuff out there for people to see, because I don’t think many of my previous employers knew the full scope of what I can do. Much of what I’ve learned has been self-taught. No company ever sent me for training. It was all from picking up books and muddling my way through the software, and in many cases having been using this stuff since the earliest versions and following upgrades over the years.

But, here I sit with all this ability and no employer to make use of it. I’m not much of a manager or leader – I’m a technician, and I like using my trade to produce for someone. I didn’t respect the people I was working for at the last few places, though. Nepotism was rampant. Money is such a prime issue, and yet they’ve hired every unqualified family member and friend they can find and given them enormous salaries and benefits. They shove people out of the way who actually know what they’re doing to bring a novice into a management position. That’s about all they have left there – managers, and very few people who actually work and understand the industry.

I’ve spent 24 years learning it though, and I intend to keep learning it, either for myself or one of their competitors.

I haven’t applied anywhere yet. I’m going to put a resume together from the website I’ve built and start sending it out and pounding the pavement. I’m also contacting all of my former customers, and letting them know I’m still here, and that if they’re not happy with the level of service they’re getting from my former employer, or want top quality for a better price, I’m still doing the same service, only as an independent now. I don’t have any kind of non-compete deal, and they offered no severance, and screwed me out of two weeks vacation I had stored up.

I don’t have health insurance anymore, and that sucks. My 401K did nothing but lose money over the last 2 years, so I’ll probably cash it out and take what little I have in there before it’s all taken by Wall Street.

I haven’t had a vacation in more than a year. I donated my week last year to Trish when she had her surgery, so this is my chance to spend a few days relaxing and maybe doing something fun. I have that annoying ball of anxiety in my chest though, that keeps telling me to do something productive and salvage my career before it’s too late. There’s a bit of work I need to do on the web to get caught up, and then I may take some time and maybe hang out at the beach or do something fun somewhere. We were hoping to save up and take a real honeymoon in the future, but that’s looking even further off now.

I’d still love to do more diving again. I’ve got all my gear, so it only costs me a few dollars to rent a tank of Nitrox and go to one of the springs. Trish is certified, but she’d have to rent more gear. My brother might go, but he’s pretty busy with his family. My last partner turned out to be a complete asshole, and I can’t believe I trusted my life in his hands 85 feet below the surface of the Ocean, 11 miles offshore.

I’ve rebuilt my desktop machine and almost everything is reinstalled now. My 3D libraries are a little differently arranged, so I’m having to tweak everything when I make character artwork, but it’s all there and working. Windows 7 is very stable so far. It’s still a good machine, but a new video card would be nice to improve performance. That’s pretty far down the road now.

There are lots of exciting things going on with the 3D art world though. I listen to a lot of podcasts for gaming and entertainment, and I noticed there aren’t any for digital character art. Being stretched way too thin, I didn’t have time to make one, but now I’ve got nothing but time, so maybe I’ll start giving that some thought. I don’t see it as just audio though, since speaking about visual arts and software, models, textures, lighting, etc doesn’t really convey the ideas as much as showing it. I don’t know – I’ll have to think more about that.