1045 More Days

It was never my intention in the first place.

Nine years ago, my high school art teacher offered me a teacher's assistant position. One of the only times in my life in which I haven't been hesitant to undertake a new extracurricular, I think. Most of the work was simply doing bookkeeping and hanging up the artwork of students whose semester-long careers as artists had already come to a close. The following semester, I wouldn't have the proper study hall periods to continue. However, when the time came to renew or reject my position, he offered me an unusual compromise.

In the future, he had planned to teach a unit on Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, the two most common programs in the graphic design industry. He knew of my fondness for computers, and informed me that if I signed up for a higher level art course, I wouldn't have to do any work and he would reward me with an automatic A. The exchange being that I would spend each class period teaching myself how to use Photoshop and Illustrator so that I might teach him at the end of the semester, presumably when I had figured it all out. So of course I did it. Free A, right?

I went to Carroll College for video game design. The exciting new major was promised by my admissions advisor. When I arrived my freshman year, my actual advisor informed me that this major wasn't being offered until the following year, and that in the meantime, I should just take software engineering classes, since most will overlap anyway. I had no interest in programming; my main focus was going to be on designing the games. When my second year arrived, the fledgling program barely took off, and I was told that the design aspect of the course was "something they were thinking about in the future." For now, they were concentrating on programming. Even being extremely dissatisfied with it, I stuck with it until the game design major was disbanded at the end of the year.

Suddenly I had to select another major out of the ones that were available at Carroll. Transferring wasn't something I wanted to deal with. I went over to graphic design. I had the experience of working with it in high school, and I knew it was something I could perform decently and I was intrigued enough to continue. The decision was rather rushed, and ultimately it felt like I was just putting a band-aid over the wound.

I stuck with it, and I graduated in pretty good time considering I had to start over mostly from scratch my junior year. I even had the time to double minor in art and theology. I immediately found work... and hated it. It was so psychologically demoralizing that my hatred for it was impossible to hide. While searching for a new job, I stumbled across an ad for MY job. So I quit, rather than get fired. I was offered my a job at a friend's place of employment afterwards. Despite the constant drama and poor management there, I didn't hate it quite so much. I stuck around for the better part of a year, until they laid me off essentially so they could hire their friend (I found out later.)

Then I found my current job. It's pretty easy, and I have a lot of freedom. I was hired to work exclusively on a project that is so gargantuan in its undertaking that when the project comes to a close it will be just short of 2013. In addition, two of the eight people in my department are planning on retiring at that point. As far as graphic design goes, I feel as though this job is best-case-scenario. Regardless, I still don't find myself terribly fond of it.

Now that I've begun my curriculum to get my dog-training certification, I've felt a tremendous sense of relief lately. The last item on my task list for this giant project has a due date of December 7th, 2012. After that point, my job isn't guaranteed. My certification should be done early next year. I can make significantly more money as a dog-trainer than as a graphic designer, even at the start. Depending how much I charge per hour and how much business I get, I could make up to about $170,000 a year, not even working 40 hours a week. But I could also make $0 if I get no business.

My immediate plan is to use that two years to hopefully build a client base and see how much interest there is in my services at that point. If I feel like I can live on dog-training alone, I would be glad to never touch graphic design ever again.

1045 more days until I get to start over again. I can't wait.