Quit Your Day Job: What’s this craft thing?

November 3rd, 2008

Last Daughter of Krypton - Supergirl 2008 Markers Lee Sargent

Simply put your craft is whatever you are passionate about.  It doesn’t have to be creative (it often is though), it can be anything.

My craft is probably visual storytelling, this encompasses a range of things from writing to illustration.  Behind each of the markers pictures that I’ve been doing there is a story.  Marita picked up on one of them and put exactly into words what I put into a picture. 

“I love how she is sort of smiling. The I’m out here enjoying the wind in my hair and the sun of my face kind of happy look.”

It is this really simple statement that just makes my day because Marita just happened to get exactly what I put in.  Of course it doesn’t matter what the story is that the viewer does take away, it’s a personal thing and you may get something completely else, like when Arjan and I were discussing what Dr Doom was screaming.

So that’s my craft.

Your craft might be making model trains, collecting stamps, programming, reading novels, writing novels, the list is essentially endless.  Your craft could be simply (although simple is not the word I’d use) your family.  That’s your passion: your family and that’s what you do when you’re not at work.

The key to the concept of Quit Your Day Job is that when you walk out the door of your day job you leave it all behind and reward yourself with practising your craft.  Stop thinking about work and start thinking about your own stuff.

Work will still be there, surprisingly enough tomorrow will march on and you’ll find yourself back at work in no time so there is plenty of time in your working hours to think about it.

So what is your craft?  What are you passionate about?  It doesn’t have to even be something you’ve ever tried, you might just want to try it.  Like those little Warhammer figures, I think they’re pretty cool but I’ve never actually painted one, I’ve never built one of those little castle things that they are always building.  But I think I might enjoy it if I did.  Which brings me to another very important point about your craft, it doesn’t have to be lifelong and it can changed on a daily basis.

I’m one of those people whose attention is extremely limited.  I may be passionate about Lexx today and tomorrow I might be back into Stargate Atlantis (giggle).  That can still work though, but it means that you have to be acutely aware of what is taking your fancy that day and ensure that you don’t waste your time and more importantly your hard earned money.

You could for example wake up tomorrow and decide that today is the day that you will paint a Warhammer character, if you have a day job then there is a chance that you have a little disposable income (which is why we have the day job in the first place) then go buy that Warhammer figurine and a couple of paints - don’t go overboard though.  Buy a small one and a couple of paints.  Give it a go, it won’t be perfect but you’ll know from there on that you dig it or you don’t.

Leave a comment and tell everyone what’s important to you! What’s your passion?  What’s your craft?

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Quitting your day job - not literally

November 2nd, 2008

People are often confused about this blog’s title, I know I get a few hits off people looking for get rich quick on the internet schemes or magical work from home ideas so they can avoid the daily grind of going in to a job they hate.

This isn’t that kind of site.

Not that I don’t encourage the idea of leaving your day job to pursue your craft but the sad reality is that not everyone can do it and still survive.  I love illustration but there is no way that I could support my lifestyle on it alone.  Not that I don’t want to but I’m a realist.

This site is not about literally quitting your day job, it’s about setting the artist free.  It’s about not letting your entire life being engulfed into your day job no matter how much you love that job (or hate it).

Say you work in a call centre doing customer support.  It’s a drag, I’ve been there and I know.  However the company you work for are buying your time not your soul.  So do the absolute best job you can at that day job but then when it comes to quitting time leave the work stuff at the door and focus on your craft.

Your life and your craft are like a coat that when you come into work in the morning you remove and replace with your work coat.  At the end of the day you need to remove the work coat and put your life coat back on.  All too often we forget to get that life coat back and wander out the door still wearing that work coat. 

How can you tell?  There’s lot’s of ways like you spend time thinking about work, you go through the motions in a bit of a daze, you eat dinner just to eat something, you spend half the night getting ready for work tomorrow and you do this every night.  Obviously most of this stuff is necessary, you should be ready for work and you definitely need to eat and sleep!  But it shouldn’t be your focus (unless of course your passion is cooking) and you certainly shouldn’t spend your time thinking (worrying) about work.  You’re wearing the wrong coat.

One of my close blogging buddies Dan is taking the month of November off from blogging, to recharge his batteries, read and watch some stuff and generally come back all refreshed.  It has inspired me not so much to take a break but to refocus a little.

My original intention was for the site was to encourage myself to stop the day job from over running the rest of my life, to discover my passions and to share them.  At the same time I wanted to encourage others to do the same.  I think QYDJ has really helped me in my life and I’m a much fuller person for it (with a long way to go still), but I really want to encourage others more and so I’m going to be taking a little more time out to write about ‘quitting your day job’.

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Quit Your Day Job: Two year anniversary

October 20th, 2008

Wow.

It’s now officially more than two years since I first started Quit Your Day Job (my very first post was about the Sarah Connor Chronicles).

This site has honestly been an absolute delight to write and made more so by you guys, especially those who leave comments (come on you lurkers - why not say hi!).

Thanks a lot everyone!

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Have a cup of coffee and a catch up

September 5th, 2008

Well it’s been a busy week in the camp this week, applied for three different jobs, I’m focusing on Government jobs because thats what I’ve done for the past fifteen months or so.  Government jobs mean bloody selection criteria, selection criteria leads to frustration, frustration leads to anger, anger leads to hate and everyone knows where hate leads to.

That image really cracks me up, no one considers the nameless Storm Trooper’s hopes and aspirations.  I was talking about selection criteria though and unfortunately that has been sucking up my time.  I have been posting over at my posterous site though generally everyday, had to suplement old stuff in with the new stuff:

  

I’m really happy with the Iron Man pencils and I’m going to add ink to them after I finish my hot cup of java and chatting to you.  The Robin drawing is my background for Twitter too.

Speaking of Twitter, I had a major culling of people I follow on there.  I got sick of seeing conversations that I wanted to contribute to and then being ignored so I just got rid of them.  I also noticed that there were such a huge number of ‘how to blog’ people on there that I was following and frankly there is only a certain number of ‘make movey writing good titles’ posts I can read before I wonder about these people who blog about blogging about blogging.

I am of course not infallible so if I dropped you from my list I apologise and if you send me a message I’ll add you back straight away, anyone who comments in here will get added automatically generally too.  I do also want to send a big word up to janetwheeler, kathleenjoy (permission required to view) and gamerbabe360 who always converse with me despite neither reading this blog to my knowledge.  They are good salt of the twitter earth people.

I had to set aside the speed reading book, though I have increased my speed by about 75 words per minute, job applications come first unfortunately but I’ll try and finish the activities by the end of the weekend.

I have been playing World in Conflict though whenever I get the chance, picked the game up for $8 at K-Mart!!!  It is brilliant, fun and challenging, if you like RTS then I highly recommend it!

Still reading Saga of the Seven Suns book one - it is really really good.  So much detail and so many characters.  No I will not be going over to fantasy books though, it’s as close as I get (which isn’t that close!).  Trying to track down a copy of City of Ember but Australia doesn’t seem to stock it so it is off to the import shops.

Started watching the new 90210 series, I can easily get hooked on this, I’ll write about it when I finish the two part opening episode, found myself grinning though when the ‘revamped’ 90210 theme played over the credits.

Upgraded Wordpress to the latest version, had to go through and remove all the weird generated characters.  

Also have officially made Chrome my default browser.

Well that’s about it for me, finished the coffee, I hate instant coffee but it went down alright, how was yours?

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QYDJ: The soundtrack

August 26th, 2008

This is one of those posts that you think up the title and the general concept and then realise that you have no idea how to actually flesh out your clever idea.

The was if I were to choose music from and inspired by the blog Quit Your Day Job what would I want on that soundtrack?   Since of course I see this site as a natural extension of myself then the soundtrack would have to be a soundtrack of me.

Knowing this I also decided to make this a volume one.   There are just too many songs in my life for just one 12 track CD!   And thus in the future there may be more instalments.

All my songs are old!?!

I like contemporary music, I really do, but then I liked plenty of music only to regret it later on, so when I tasked myself with narrowing the songs down I looked at the bigger picture, not simply what is moving me right now.

The song listings are as much of a mix up as this site , as I am.   I like all kinds of music, which is probably why I’m drawn more to compilations/soundtracks than artist albums.

So why not gather the tracks far and wide and stick them on your MP3 player and step inside my head for a little bit (just remember to pick up after yourself).

  1. Paranoid Android - Radiohead (1997)
  2. Kiss - Tom Jones with the Art of Noise (1988)
  3. Everybody Knows - Leonard Cohen (1988)
  4. You Could Be Mine - Guns N’ Roses (1991)
  5. Every Rose Has Its Thorn - Poison (1988)
  6. Oh Yeah - Yello (1986)
  7. The Ship Song - Nick Cave and the Badseeds (1990)
  8. The Cosmic Shame - Tenacious D (1997)
  9. All You Need Is Love - The Beatles (1967)
  10. Iron Man - Black Sabbath (1971)
  11. Intergalactic - The Beastie Boys (1998)
  12. Spider-Man cartoon theme - Bob Harris (1967)

So this isn’t a meme but feel free to do it on your own site and be sure to link back!

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OMFG - I forgot our anniversary!

October 30th, 2007

I can’t believe that I let the day pass me by without saying a thing!

No one reminded me.

Actually no one realized.

Quit Your Day Job is over a year old now!

On the 3rd of October last year I wrote my first post, all about how I thought Tara from Buffy the Vampire Slayer should be cast in the upcoming Terminator Sarah Connor Chronicles as Sarah because she bares more than a passing resemblance to Linda Hamilton. She wasn’t, of course and the woman who was cast is quite good so what do I know!
Now I can use the ‘Last Year’ widget in the sidebar! Unfortunately it seems to be playing up and won’t let me change it from the whole month to just the week. I’ll tinker with it but for the time being you can revisit the first month in QYDJ history!

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