not going to be a starving artist

When you want to be a full-time creative, but aren't there yet, there's some stock advice that you always get. 

Brandon Sanderson worked nights at a hotel (clerk, I think) while writing the entire time. Genius, right? When you take his class, he'll tell everyone that it's better to have a job that isn't cognitively demanding so that way all of those mental resources can be diverted towards writing. 

But I don't want to live off of a clerk's salary. 

I figured, coding is the most profitable passion that I have, so it would be kind of dumb to not major in it? I didn't like the look of the art minor (it was very hands-on; I prefer digital mediums) so I went ahead and did the animation emphasis, too. That was a brutal pre-major and application process. This is why I have very little sympathy for business pre-majors. They take Excel and accounting classes whereas we're doing discrete structures, calculus, Newtonian mechanics, and getting our art roasted brutally in drawing and 3D graphics. 

75% acceptance rate for Business Management vs. 45% acceptance rate for CS Animation, not counting all the kids who get weeded out in Computer Systems. Read it and weep. 

I also kept the creative writing minor as I really felt that I needed the English education, and it was one of the best decisions I've made. I added on the math minor too and I'm also really glad I did that. It wasn't the best for my GPA but differential equations was one of the most interesting classes I've ever taken. 

I'd rather be tired and force myself to write after work, than be hungry and wonder when I'm going to get published. At least now I can have an existential crisis while in a nice apartment. 

The tradeoff is that I'm not really aiming for FAANG. After losing DreamWorks, all the spark went out of me. I now prioritize stable 9-5 roles where I can work remotely. Eliminate all time spent on commuting, which is a major waste of resources. Avoid on-call or weekend work so I can stick to an actual creative schedule. I don't care about management. And I don't like surprises. I'll sacrifice salary as long as I can make enough to make the California move work. I don't care about getting a house right now and I'm definitely not going to do the gigantic time-sink of having kids anytime soon, if at all. I try to optimize every minute of my day when I'm not working, but you've got to have fun and unwind too, so I schedule in water park time. 

You'd better believe I love coding, though, just as much as I love writing and art. Nothing about my goals or schedule with code studies would change if I was a full-time creative. I just don't want to debug someone else's architecture at 12:30 AM for work, with work again at 8 AM, because that sucks. 

I want cool art on my walls, a nice gaming PC, a powerful laptop, lots of trips to ride roller coasters, DoorDash so I don't have to waste time driving to get food, theme park season passes, a gym membership, race fees, video games on Steam. I don't want to have to live ascetically. So this is the price I pay. 

We'll see if the gamble pays off. But I'm not going to live like a monk for my art. Instead, I'll fight through the soulless corpo grind until I can finally get out of it. At least coding is one of my favorite things to do, so as long as I have time to write and draw on top of it, I can handle a full-time SWE gig without too much issue. 

But I'm not going to be one of those devs who just writes for fun, either. I'm publishing, full-time or not. 

If I can find somewhere stable, without weird hours, then I'm just going to plant my ass down and stay put. 

ps. still mad that BYU didn't let me minor in Design (it was basically an Illustration minor with some Animation and Photography optional electives) and then removed the minor after one semester. Given full reign, I would have double majored in CS Animation and either Mechanical or Electrical Engineering, then minored in Creative Writing, Math, Information Technology, and Design/Illustration. all that and I still don't want to debug broken code in prod at 12:30 AM? correct, yes. very correct. 

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