Making a Change
Last October I started a program of artistic study with an artist named Andrew Ameral in Oakland, CA at a school called the Golden Gate Atelier. Nearly two years previous to that I moved up to San Francisco from Los Angeles with my girlfriend. It is all a part of my journey to try to find my way in life, and now after almost 9 months of art school, I’ve decided to start this blog to try to take a step in mapping that journey out as it continues on from here.
A little background about me. I graduated art school with an emphasis on Film and Video (Media as they called it) from UCSD in 1998. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but the internet craze was well under way at that time so I landed a job at a small agency doing animated Flash email ads for music releases. I got another job later at a bigger agency and my career seemed to be going great. I was doing graphic design and motion graphics for the web and it was fun. Then the big dot com crash came and reality set in. The long hours were taxing and while it was okay for a little while, even kind of exciting, it began to wear on me, and I began to really wonder if it was worth it. I came to a pretty solid answer that no, it wasn’t worth it. And it wasn’t just the long hours. The long hours helped me to realize that I didn’t personally have enough connection to the work to keep myself truly interested and putting my best foot forward. I eventually became a freelancer, wanting more freedom, and that has been great in that it has given me plenty of room to explore other paths and interests.
Near the beginning of my time as a freelancer, I took a good six months off to travel in South America and Asia hoping to find something new to put myself into. It was a wonderful journey and I learned a lot about myself and the world, but it didn’t end up being the explosive life changer that I had hoped it would be. I came back to the U.S. and found myself once again in the interactive design world.
I do believe however that all of this has been part of a slower process of growth. When I look back now at the changes I made, I realize that they all in their own way have set me on a path in a different direction. Rather than propelling me into a whole new world, they have been more like ways of adjusting my trajectory slightly, while it’s been up to me to keep myself moving forward.