Moving Away
If I'm still living in Michigan when 2011 comes around, I will be very surprised. This is one of those blog posts in which I'm upset and stressed about income.
To lighten the mood, here is a really fun song on this topic by a band that most of us like. I listen to it a lot. :)
It's been about three years since I had a real job that has a real income (if you count the tech company I "kind of" worked for). Since then, I've had illustration odd jobs, a quick temp job once or twice a year, and made the equivalent of lawnmowing money from PodDisc.com. I don't qualify for unemployment, because none of my past employers ever paid into it. If it weren't for food stamps, I don't know what I would have done.
From time to time I make the rounds of minimum-wage jobs, only to find they don't want someone with a degree. I'm outcompeted by numerous and desperate candidates with retail experience.
The professional want ads continue to ask for qualifications I don't have.
I've been living off of student financial aid all year. This terrifies me. With every expense, I know I'm just stealing from my future self. I have this vivid realization up and down my spine that every penny I spend on rent, on phone, on gas, on groceries, is destroying my future in a downward spiral. I have frequently started to feel sick when this happens.
I am only barely sold on the concept of education as a way of upward mobility. It's almost ten thousand dollars now! Even when I had a full-time job I lived hand-to-mouth, so how on earth am I going to pay it back?
I finished my motion capture certificate. It was a highlight of my life so far, but I question whether it was a worthwhile financial investment. There is so much competition for work in motion capture animation, that those companies staff themselves almost entirely with unpaid interns! Everybody wants a fun job. Unpaid interns are so talented and so abundant that the companies have no reason to ever turn more than one or two of them into actual paid employees.
Now I'm continuing to get my web development certificate. I don't know what that job market is like. I don't know how well I'd perform, either. All I know is how to register a domain, switch DNS to a webspace, write code, and write markup. There is so much more that I need to know, just to be able to keep my own website running. Administrating a server, a database, a virtual environment, a version control system, SSH, and the shell. I am just now taking a class that is finally going to get beyond programming to teach even one of these things. (I'm pretty excited about it.)
Oh, and don't worry too much about my site. I'm just migrating to the latest version of Wordpress. J is helping with the other skills I listed, when we have time. Next we'll put up a portfolio website for me.
Right now J's depending on me to support her long enough so she can get one of the out-of-state jobs for which she's interviewing, based on the degree she just finished. Then when she's on her feet, she's going to be able to help me, or at least that's the idea. I'm sure she will do so if she can, but her own student loan lifeline ran out.
My plan focused on the one thing I knew how to do: if I can't make money, I can at least spend as little of it as possible. But I'm paying her expenses with some of my student loan! Then when it comes due, I can't use that surplus debt money to pay back the debt. This means all my scrimping and cost-cutting and sacrificing was that much less effective.
So I'm going, because she'll pay for me then just like I'm paying for her now. Where I live is little more in my control now than when I was a child.
Comments
jodybrai on Sep. 17, 2010 11:07 PM
So, when do all us overly smart surplus mouths move to the countryside and start an organic farm? Or how about an urban commune, I hear those are all the rage.
The more I look at the current system, the less I understand how it's supposed to work. All the goods and services that our entire population needs can be produced by a fraction of the population. So what are the rest of us supposed to do? It comes down to service jobs, basically acting as servants for the rich folks who own the production facilities, passing the dollar we get from them around among ourselves, then handing it back to the rich in the form of debt payments.
I'm not advocating for revolution, but I'm not sure how anything else will really make a difference at this point.
netmouse on Sep. 18, 2010 6:24 PM
Have you spoken to a counselor at school about making a plan for finding work in your chosen field?
I have been surprised you stayed in Michigan this long already, given how you once told me your dream was to be a disney imagineer and Disney has no properties or offices here.
A willingness to relocate will almost definitely improve your chances of finding meaningful work that can be built into a career you might enjoy.
Are there people in the field you think you would enjoy working with? I highly recommend finding mentors who inspire you and seeking to work with them.
matt-arnold on Sep. 19, 2010 2:42 AM
I haven't spoken to a counselor at school. I'll do so! Thanks for the idea.
I've always known the "neer" part would prevent me from being an Imagineer. One of them told me as much once. In order to move somewhere with a Disney facility, I'd have to have somewhere there to sleep. Relocation normally requires two things: savings with which to pay the landlord a deposit; and a job at my destination with which to pay rent.
So far, the only potential mentor in animation who I know is a teacher. Talking to him, it's clear work in the field is next to nonexistent. That's why he's teaching.
Do you have suggestions for meeting mentors? And some way to make them into a mentor? Why would they do that?
netmouse on Sep. 21, 2010 5:41 AM
'once' is not now. That's why you get more edumacation - to qualify for positions for which you did not previously qualify. And because it's fun and interesting, hopefully .
If you want to give up without even trying, that's up to you. You have an extensive socialnetwork that includes people lime me with large social networks. If you got a job someplace i bet you could find a couch to crash on for a couple weeks until you got a paycheck to pay a deposit onrent. Or if you got someone excited about hiring you, you could negotiate for and advance or hiring bo us or even for them to pay relocation costs, which can in lude time ina hotel while looking for a place.
I wouldthink your penguicon and gamecreationexperience should be something you can use to your advantage.
To find a mentor. Do research to fi d out who is doing projects you find exciting and seek them out. Do you know who is using motion capture in games? In movies? The credits on digital effects at tbe ends of films these dayz are reallyong. That doesn't look like ne t to nonexistent work to me. But you have to de ide if you're willi g to go somewhere new, possibly alone, and work your butt off to make it happen. You're already used to living on a shoestring budget, so that's an advantage. Unfortunately you hate camping so living out of your car or z campground for a whileis probably not an option.
As to why someone would menyor you, well, you gotta think about thst. What can you offer that's uniwue?
Ultimately, peoe mentor because it's rewsrding to help people and to collaborate. Cheep la or's good too, but seriously, who would you like to work for or with? Look tbem up and gben ask ybem ig it could happen andif so, how.
matt-arnold on Sep. 21, 2010 4:53 PM
I really appreciate your widening my perspective on this. You live in an employment universe that I wouldn't even know existed if you didn't tell me about it. Sometimes I wonder if it's realistic, but clearly it works for you, so it must be real.
It's not that those credits don't exist. It's that the number of people applying for that work is so huge. Did you know animators get paid by young animators to mentor them? A fellow student told me about that.
I wouldn't mind living out of my car for a while if I had to. That's a clever idea. I don't go camping for recreation, but that doesn't mean I can't sacrifice. It's a matter of figuring out how to take showers without having a gym membership that I can't afford.
I would think your penguicon and game creation experience should be something you can use to your advantage.
I've thought about that for several years. There are endless social advantages, but so far I've discerned very little employment advantage. My involvement in Penguicon did result in a brief quasi-job with a flaky fly-by-night company a few years back.
Yesterday I went to talk to my mocap teacher, Alan. Good news and bad news! The bad news is that the company is only looking for unpaid interns to do greenscreen and 3D cinematography. I don't know those at all. I've never had any interest in cameras.
The good news is that Alan says the effects company will actually hire their interns as employees. They need to put anyone with decent skills into a supervisory role over the interns.
The reason Alan is still in Michigan is that every time his bags are packed, he gets another gig. Not in motion capture though. There's still precious little work in that around here. He has always painted a picture in which the entertainment industry is full of fraud, and they'll form an LLC just in order to dissolve it when the project's done so they don't have to pay anyone. I'm still trying to make that picture jive with the more optimistic one he painted yesterday.
I'm far happier doing motion capture than what I was doing before, and I would never turn down mocap work, but there is no question that motion capture does not drive my passion very much. It's not animation, just prosthetic makeup. Live-action films are the projects that need to capture realism, instead of animating movement. I'd greatly prefer to work in animation, particularly in modeling or rigging. My Maya teacher, Lamar, says there's no work in modeling because they pay pennies to people in South America to do it. And yet Alan told me yesterday that they tried to hire a decent modeler around here a couple of years ago and couldn't find one who was worth crap! I don't know what to believe now.
One of the big problems is that are almost no employers I would turn down, but there's no one I feel enthusiasm to work for (or with). Disney is a slimy company that stopped doing interesting things after their short-lived renaissance in the nineties. Now they're antithetical to everything worth doing.
I've spent my life almost entirely excited by things that make no money at all, and in which no one is employed. Who I would like to work with is a very interesting question, and one to which I have no answer as yet, but I'll keep looking.
eevee4 on Sep. 21, 2010 10:12 PM
I totally understand your situation. I haven't had much luck with work in my chosen find of computers as you know. I think part of my problem is that I chickened out of the engineering degree due to the 2 semesters of calculus. So I went with the business degree in IT which doesn't do much for me because I'm not a coder.
I've managed to survive somehow on clerical and retail work but I know I will need to find something more fulfilling soon. I'm thinking that a medical billing course would be a good addition to my skill set and I am starting to plan to take it in the spring. I figure if I want to stay here in Michigan, I'm going to have to evolve or there will be no career options for me.
thatguychuck on Sep. 23, 2010 1:00 AM
"The professional want ads continue to ask for qualifications I don't have," was followed by "...those companies staff themselves almost entirely with unpaid interns!"
People seek out internships for two main reasons: 1) Gain experience, 2) Network within the company and hope to be hired when the internship ends. I don't know anyone who went after an internship expecting to get paid well.
If you can find a place that would give you an internship and pay you *just* enough to live on eating Mac & Cheese, do it. At the end of 3-6 months, you'll have a better idea on how to do the job, and you'll have the chance to cultivate some valuable networking.
If it turns out you think you can make a living at it but it's really not your thing... do it anyway until you're financially in a spot where you can pick and choose.
Unrelated to internships: when it comes down to applying for jobs you're wildly overqualified for, I'd see no reason to list a degree. If you're going for a management position, sure. But a person with a degree applying to be a ditch digger tells the boss, "This guy is going to split the SECOND he gets a better job." Though that may be true, he doesn't need to know it.
Good luck, Matt.
matt-arnold on Nov. 10, 2010 10:05 PM
Chuck, I never said I expect an internship to pay well. I said they are almost entirely staffed with unpaid interns. That indicates these internships are not a step on the way to somewhere better. If a company staffs itself almost entirely with unpaid interns, it has no incentive to pay more than a few of them, ever. Those it does pay will be worked too hard and paid poorly because there is a throng clamoring to replace them. (I hear this story all the time.) Therefore my gains in skill and networking would lead nowhere. It is therefore the wrong industry to go into. The supply of workforce vastly exceeds the demand for workers in the entertainment industry. There is probably no financial future there.
users on Nov. 10, 2010 10:12 PM
Actually, that's not particularly accurate. Many (MANY) companies use unpaid interns as a way to farm for talent. Saying there's no incentive to hire because you can get unpaid interns assumes that the work unpaid interns do is of genuine value...and it is rarely of value at all.
thatguychuck on Nov. 20, 2010 6:00 PM
The #1 reason for getting an internship is to gain experience that you can put on your resume. You've already said, "The professional want ads continue to ask for qualifications I don't have..." If you need experience but can't get a job without it, an internship will give you the experience you need for a very well paying job.
"That indicates these internships are not a step on the way to somewhere better." This indicates says this is something based on what you believe is true. In your experience, all facts point to this. But your experience is minus a significant data point. There are others with more experience (having been an intern) that strongly believe they are worthwhile in building experience.
If you want a job but cannot get it due to lack of experience, you have to choose between giving up on that job or getting experience.
My mother-in-law tells a story about a lady who said a lack of job experience prevented her from getting a good job. MiL suggested an internship to build her resume. "I can't afford to take an internship," she said, to which MiL replied, "My dear, you can't afford not to."
matt-arnold on Nov. 21, 2010 4:03 PM
You keep insisting that I am talking about all internships. I hear and understand what you are saying, but I never disagreed with it. I think internships are usually an excellent idea. What I have said has never conflicted with that position. I spoke of a specific industry in a specific company, and tried to make that explicitly clear, but you don't seem to hear my words. I will not continue this conversation under those circumstances.
thatguychuck on Nov. 24, 2010 12:08 AM
You're right. I was talking about an internship not realizing you were referring to a specific industry. It'd been a few months since the original comment and I haven't kept good track.
I was wanting to help and since internships were something I knew about, I offered what I could. I'd like to help in any way that I can but I don't know how. (And apparently, that doesn't stop me from trying anyway. ) You've got my moral support.
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