Well in light of the new post in the "what should we do with this tribe" thread, I'll go ahead and throw my hat in the ring here. :)

In 1998 I became a computer programmer and although I enjoyed it I was never successful in it as a career. I had the outward appearance of being successful because I put out a lot of work and was part of groups like Team Macromedia and the Adobe Community Experts which were both small invitation-only groups of people who are very involved in the developer community who are given some perks in exchange for helping others in the community by answering questions, giving presentations, etc. I even spoke at two conferences over the years... and yet, I worked for a lot of companies that went out of business, I didn't get interviews for a lot of jobs because I fouled up whatever opportunity I might have had to get a Bachelors degree when I was young and I got fired from a lot of jobs because I'm unusual and often unpopular. In 2001 I split up with my ex and because (I'm told) the boss I had at my job at the time lied in court the judge awarded an enormous child-support award that was based on about twice the amount that I actually make annually -- not because I haven't had higher paying jobs but because in the past decade I've always had higher paying jobs with companies that end up having financial problems or going out of business or that I get fired from, so that all the time I've spent out of work means I've only made an average of about $20-25k over the years, working side by side and often being the "go to guy" to answer difficult questions and help solve tough problems for people with bachelors degrees. But a state official a few years ago finally informed me that when you're fired from a job the state assumes that the reason you've been fired is because you've found some way to earn money under the table that pays you better than the job, so apparently they believe I'm off somewhere sipping champaigne and the end result is that my child-support arrearage is now $70k. So a couple months ago I decided to quit programming. Here's a pasted entry from my blog about the decision:

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In recent months I've made one very important decision in my life. This may be the most important decision I've ever made in my life.

No compromise.

Unless you're a bellhop, you can't get anywhere in life by carrying someone else's bags. That's what you're doing when you accept what other people say you need to do or even that you should or aught to do. If you genuinely want to do it, if you believe it will do you good, then it's good to do. If you're doing it because someone else demanded it then all you're doing is handing your power over to them.

This is the reason I've decided to get back to the things I trully enjoy in life among them being illustration. I've also decided because it's something I've fantasized about for years that I'm going to find an apprenticeship to become a tattoo artist as well. So a couple weeks ago I started walking my portfolio around to some of the local shops and talking to the tattoo artists about my work and how to find someone who will apprentice me. I've also started working on more illustrations with the intention of creating "flash" that can be translated into tattoos because many of the techniques which work well on paper don't translate very well on skin. Crosshatching for example for creating texture and shadow on paper doesn't translate to skin.

Thanks to a new tabloid-size scanning bed I picked up a couple weeks ago (and my 10 yr stint as a computer programmer), a few of the new illustrations have also gone into my cafe press store, along with scans of some of my previous illustrations of which I intend to have prints made to put out locally here in Austin at restaurants and the like. I'm actually happy to have the tribe.net site because it gives me an easy way to host some intermediate versions of these illustrations that I can use in the section headers of the cafe press store, because the preview images on Cafe Press are often too small to really appreciate the image.

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Since I posted this blog entry I've decided to pursue syndication as a comic-strip artist creating a surrealist comic strip for newspapers with some similarities to Gary Larson's old Far Side series. A single-panel strip -- just one big string of one-liners with very few if any repeat characters. I built up a portfolio in a week that's large enough to submit to the syndication companies, although I haven't submitted it yet -- I'm waiting a bit longer to see if I can make the submission material a bit more compelling. The comic strips can be found on my Cafe Press store and some of them are also now on Deviant Art. smolderingremains.deviantart.com I started doing the comic strip because I realized that I need some kind of residual income to make any of these other projects like the tattoo apprenticeship work in the long term. Anything being possible I could theoretically get an actual job working for a local tattoo artist who'd pay me to be his apprentice, I even read a bio for a guy recently who did that here in Austin, but I'm not going to put all my expectations into that basket -- if if happens for me, awesome. If not then I'll have something else.

Thus far I've found quitting programming to be about as difficult as quitting smoking. :) I've continued to work on some freelance programming projects to pay the bills Although interestingly enough last week I bumped into someone on Tribe out of "coincidence" who I think might be able to help me get one of my long-term programming projects funded so the past few days for the first time in months I've been programming on my own project again, and I'm remembering all the things that excited me about this project and why my own projects were always more compelling (for anyone, not just for me) than the jobs I'd had. I may yet program as a part of my living, but it will be on my projects and my terms.

Any suggestions, advice, critique, criticism, encouragement or other forms of feedback welcomed. :)