How can I make a living from doing something reasonably interesting?

craner

Beast of Burden
"Nice boots", surely. Are you looking to be no-platformed, T? That's no way to get a job.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I'm not sure if Matt was being serious, but I was trying to be serious with my advice. My life, until the age of 35, was a series of catastrophic mistakes, but now I have a job I love, live by the sea, and own a house and a car. My love life is still a disaster, but that's always been the case. I was only trying to offer some pointers from what I've been through. Luke and I have diametrically opposed views as to what constitutes a successful or happy life, but we're still pals and agree on many other things. I just know I couldn't have continued to live in a London bedroom at the age of 40 writing prose poems nobody read and smashing cheap bottles of Bulgarian wine. I would have probably killed myself. There's no afterlife, you have to make something of and with what you have. Etc.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I thought about it at the age of 29, it sent me insane for a while, I made destructive choices that in the end proved creative, and came out OK. You have to think about the future, in lots of ways. One of my calculations, for example, and this was even before my father's young wife dropped dead unexpectedly, was, how will you take care of your elderly parents if you're on a crap wage and they need full time attention? Life gets more complex. What about if you fail to do yourself in with booze and fags? Do you want to be a destitute wreck with no income aged 70?
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Luke always knows when I'm posting drunk. And yet, I always manage full sentences with exquisite punctuation. And usually make more sense than when I'm sober.
 

droid

Well-known member
We all know when youre posting drunk - every Friday night!

(And FWIW I wouldnt have it any other way)
 

vimothy

yurp
It's sounds like you're already doing something reasonably interesting. You're literally a rocket scientist. But can you get a job fiddling around on Ableton all day? No! Do you really want one?
 

vimothy

yurp
Incidentally:

A new poll for YouGov of almost 15,000 people found that 60% would like to be an author. The news may come as a surprise to the bestselling and critically acclaimed novelist Sebastian Faulks, who this weekend expressed his wish to find a job, writing in the Spectator that he has “now spent almost a quarter of a century alone in a garret staring at a blank wall, and I think it has driven me a bit mad”.
 

luka

Well-known member
It's sounds like you're already doing something reasonably interesting. You're literally a rocket scientist. But can you get a job fiddling around on Ableton all day? No! Do you really want one?

Grass is always greener
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
It's sounds like you're already doing something reasonably interesting. You're literally a rocket scientist.

Not any more, I would be dole scum if I was getting any dole.

Having said that, I was working on satellite parts a couple of years ago, so that was nearly rocket science.

But can you get a job fiddling around on Ableton all day? No! Do you really want one?

Yes!

Never mind, I know it's not going to happen. And I'm fully aware that lots of people with creative jobs (I mean actually creative, not writing advertising copy or crap like that) live pretty much hand-to-mouth and spend more of their time worrying about paying bills and rent than people with boring desk jobs who nonetheless have a contract and a salary.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
What do you do, vim?

It's starting to sound almost like it's just a case of waiting a certain number of years for a good, or at least better, job to turn up. But I'm fairly sure one isn't going to land in my lap without me actually going out and looking for it...
 

vimothy

yurp
Developer.

For me it was about figuring what I liked that was close to what I did, and trying to move in that direction.
 
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