what would you be doing now if you weren't doing what you're doing?
what's the nearest you've come to blowing off what you're doing in favour of 1.?
what stopped you?
If you'd rather treat this in a lifetime/historical context (i.e. what I do is computers, and I've been doing it for ten years, and it's been several years since I had a good answer for 2), go right ahead.
1. tooling with computers, rather than working with them. I think "not working" would about sum up what I'd like to be doing.
2. investigating emigrating (and citizenship!) somewhere where the pay would be less, but the cost of living more than proportionally lesser, to take up a low-skill IT monkey job in order that I could concentrate on relaxing all the more.
Hm. Sometimes I say, "Running this company is my job. But what I DO is a, b, c, etc." But you're asking from the other perspective, and as I look at how I spend an average week these days, that's accurate. So...
1. 3 different kinds of answers here:
I would be doing something more creative, probably musical in nature, where projects have defined start and end points and one can look back at a finished piece of work with a sense of accomplishment, not a checklist of improvements to implement over the next 12 months (budgets, margins, staffing requirements, profit or lack thereof, etc.).
I would be traveling more, and have fewer material possessions, aside from maybe the music gear, both studio and stereo. Those are requirements. But a library card in every state and a comfortable Winnebago? Sure!
I might, in an ideal world, be raising teenagers by now instead of an infant and a 1st grader. That answer presupposes a vastly different universe than the one we inhabit, however.
2. 1991, the year I spent doing Shakespeare semiprofessionally, comes closest. Artsy/creative, check. Fewer material possessions, check; I was mainly broke all year long, my bike got stolen while we were on the road, I sold/gave away a lot of stuff so the remainder would fit into storage, you name it. Traveling, check, we covered the entire East coast, and I think played in 4 states in 4 days at one point.
I've never really been close to raising teenagers. Hmmm, if I were raising teenagers now, that would mean...well, I guess it would depend. I can think of about 5 people who could-have-been the mother of those teenagers, depending on whether we are talking about 13 year olds now, or 15 year olds, or what. One of those possible pasts is interesting. The rest would have been disastrous :) Ideally, since we are re-writing history, I would have met my beloved at least a decade earlier than we actually met, with similar results/responses at the meeting thereof. Ah well.
3. What stopped me, hmmm. The easy answer is "I sucked". More realistically, and more kindly to the old memory, I didn't get back into the company the following year, and then the rent came due. Also, that group, with 2 or 3 exceptions, and I do NOT count myself as an exception, was populated by a bunch of immature, partially sufferable, prima-donna twentysomethings with a ridiculously high drama queen quotient, so it's not like I would hold that up as a sustainable emotional environment for, like, personal growth, or anything. Not hardly.
Based partially on that experience, and my subsequent aversion to being dead broke and very hungry all the time, plus the much-later realization that carrying any debt at all really sucks the life out of you, I haven't pushed the "creative arts = job" angle in years. I was never serious enough about trance party promotion to earn a dime, never mind make a living at it...by definition, the profitable parties were not the ones I wanted to throw OR attend. I'm dinking in the studio in a more focused way these days, but even there my goals are low key; I am talking to some companies about sound/loop design work for games and got a verbal that I sold a couple of loops last week; I want to pull together some dub tunes and pitch them to a small label, probably Waveform; if the cash register ever rings on the current company, I'd like to take my guitar chops and play out in some improvisational context. But mostly, I want to spend more time with the family. Bar hopping to play a one-hour set for 12 people is just not as compelling as getting up at 7 to spend all weekend with Calvin. Not anymore, anyway.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-15 09:46 am (UTC)If you'd rather treat this in a lifetime/historical context (i.e. what I do is computers, and I've been doing it for ten years, and it's been several years since I had a good answer for 2), go right ahead.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-15 01:01 pm (UTC)1. tooling with computers, rather than working with them. I think "not working" would about sum up what I'd like to be doing.
2. investigating emigrating (and citizenship!) somewhere where the pay would be less, but the cost of living more than proportionally lesser, to take up a low-skill IT monkey job in order that I could concentrate on relaxing all the more.
3. mostly? inertia.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-15 01:14 pm (UTC)1. 3 different kinds of answers here:
I would be doing something more creative, probably musical in nature, where projects have defined start and end points and one can look back at a finished piece of work with a sense of accomplishment, not a checklist of improvements to implement over the next 12 months (budgets, margins, staffing requirements, profit or lack thereof, etc.).
I would be traveling more, and have fewer material possessions, aside from maybe the music gear, both studio and stereo. Those are requirements. But a library card in every state and a comfortable Winnebago? Sure!
I might, in an ideal world, be raising teenagers by now instead of an infant and a 1st grader. That answer presupposes a vastly different universe than the one we inhabit, however.
2. 1991, the year I spent doing Shakespeare semiprofessionally, comes closest. Artsy/creative, check. Fewer material possessions, check; I was mainly broke all year long, my bike got stolen while we were on the road, I sold/gave away a lot of stuff so the remainder would fit into storage, you name it. Traveling, check, we covered the entire East coast, and I think played in 4 states in 4 days at one point.
I've never really been close to raising teenagers. Hmmm, if I were raising teenagers now, that would mean...well, I guess it would depend. I can think of about 5 people who could-have-been the mother of those teenagers, depending on whether we are talking about 13 year olds now, or 15 year olds, or what. One of those possible pasts is interesting. The rest would have been disastrous :) Ideally, since we are re-writing history, I would have met my beloved at least a decade earlier than we actually met, with similar results/responses at the meeting thereof. Ah well.
3. What stopped me, hmmm. The easy answer is "I sucked". More realistically, and more kindly to the old memory, I didn't get back into the company the following year, and then the rent came due. Also, that group, with 2 or 3 exceptions, and I do NOT count myself as an exception, was populated by a bunch of immature, partially sufferable, prima-donna twentysomethings with a ridiculously high drama queen quotient, so it's not like I would hold that up as a sustainable emotional environment for, like, personal growth, or anything. Not hardly.
Based partially on that experience, and my subsequent aversion to being dead broke and very hungry all the time, plus the much-later realization that carrying any debt at all really sucks the life out of you, I haven't pushed the "creative arts = job" angle in years. I was never serious enough about trance party promotion to earn a dime, never mind make a living at it...by definition, the profitable parties were not the ones I wanted to throw OR attend. I'm dinking in the studio in a more focused way these days, but even there my goals are low key; I am talking to some companies about sound/loop design work for games and got a verbal that I sold a couple of loops last week; I want to pull together some dub tunes and pitch them to a small label, probably Waveform; if the cash register ever rings on the current company, I'd like to take my guitar chops and play out in some improvisational context. But mostly, I want to spend more time with the family. Bar hopping to play a one-hour set for 12 people is just not as compelling as getting up at 7 to spend all weekend with Calvin. Not anymore, anyway.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-15 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-15 05:33 pm (UTC)