Change (and guilt)
It is amazing to me how we humans get hooked on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly routine in our lives. We seem to live by a certain rhythm and when that gets interrupted abruptly and permanently, there is a great deal of difficulty dealing with it. I can attest to this with considerable, recent experience. I have also found that as we get older, we get mentally stiffer and rather unbending and it makes it harder to go with that flow of change. Change is constant, someone once said and that has certainly been a fact of life for me for quite some time. The constant and accelerating momentum in computer graphics has been a dizzying ride throughout my artistic career, a ride that I have recently gotten off of.
As the oldest child in our family, I grew up with a considerable sense of responsibility and an overwhelming burden of Catholic guilt. Only another Catholic can really understand this monstrous millstone that is wrapped around our necks. (By the way, I am pretty sure that C3PO was Catholic, as shown by my little sketch below, you can see the guilt on his face). Despite my recent consuming desire to toss everything aside and just work on my own personal projects, I must completely assure that my life and that of those around me are not dragged down by my non-profitable artistic urges and that requires a job with suitable income. In reality, this is not going to happen, I have spent the better part of the last year applying at over a hundred artistic positions without success. The one thing that I have learned from this is, that if you loose your job over age 55, you are completely screwed. No one will hire you full-time, period, end of sentence. I do have a part-time gig at half my previous salary and along with social security that will start at the beginning of the year, I will be bringing home about what I did with a full-time job. So some of the guilt is taken care and some of the artistic desire is also dealt with. I do have a little time to do my own creative projects now. But, since everyone else in my family is working full-time, the heavy burden of guilt requires me to keep the house clean, (and repaired), do the laundry, take care of the yard, shovel snow, (not a problem so far this year), do the shopping, make dinner and clean up afterwards. Then, if there is any time left, work on my projects. Do not get me wrong, it is a labor of love in many ways and without the guilt, it would even be a pleasure. But, in terms of time available, it is all rather like having that full-time job that I used to have. Taking the long view, perhaps nothing really has changed.
