I’m taking my talents back to the East Coast.

With all due respect to those who call California home, it is not for me. Or rather, SoCal is not for me. I won’t talk trash about it, out of politeness to others, except for saying that the lifestyle is too fast, living is too expensive, the traffic does get on my nerves a bit, and I’m really just not cut out for pursuing a creative career here. I COULD if I had absolutely no other choice, but I was happier in my first job on Hilton Head (even if HHI itself kinda sucked balls).

I guess I’m a simple tiggie, with simple ambitions and the desire to pursue stability, tranquility and happiness. I’m busy all the time, yes, but with furry art, videos, music, fursuiting, basketball, my friends, my mate, personal stuff that I truly love. One of my Culver City, CA friends works 70 hours a week at $10/hr, with hospital bills and huge student loan bills, and he counts on every bit of overtime to make ends meet until he can get hired on full time at a higher position… 3 years from now.

I can’t do that.

My other friend is constantly worrying about how he’s going to pay rent, IF he can pay rent and buy food because he depends on freelance and it’s either feast or famine with that.

I can’t do that.

And many more people I know are all filming independent movies, managing payrolls of actors, dealing with shooting times and the demands of all the people working with them, fronting costs and working like crazy while also working a real job to pay bills and maybe doing their movie a day per week. Even though the movie bit itself sounds like fun, that’s too much trouble to me.

I can’t do that.


I’m a simple tiggie. I have small scale ideas and small things make me happy.


When I pretended for a while to have this great ambition to struggle in CA for a while then use the experience on my resume to land an awesome job because everyone would be impressed by my LA experience and awesome skills, I was kidding myself. It seemed like the thing to do, to constantly strive for greatness. That’s why I went to college right? That’s why I paid for that expensive education and bought this Mac and programs and everything! That’s why I came out here, so that maybe, at some point later, life would be good again!

I was kidding myself.


Granted, I don’t fully “regret” coming out here. Or at least I won’t once I get back on my feet. For now, it’s been an extended (if not stressful) vacation during which I’ve seen many sites, gotten to do things I wouldn’t normally have gotten to do, took my Kitty to see and do things she wouldn’t have gotten to do, met and hung out with a few awesome people, played in my awesome punk band, and most importantly, removed the “What ifs” from my life, regarding California and my career.

Expanding on that some: my friends here are cool, and I’m privileged to know many of them, but I have friends back East too who I miss VERY dearly, and I can’t afford the money or time to even see my friends out here because everyone is 30+ minutes (and $10 worth of gas) away. I have a couple friends I play basketball with, a couple I have grown closer to at the occasional furmeet, but very few that me and Kat can both hang out with on a whim and talk for hours with, nor would we have time to really. That is unfortunate, but those are the circumstances in a busy, spread out place such as SoCal.

My band I enjoy a lot, and I wish I could take it with me, but for something that greatly influenced my decision to come to LA in the first place when I could have gone anywhere, we really haven’t done much. 3 shows and maybe a total of 15-20 practices in 8 months. Everyone is so damn busy we can’t afford to concentrate on the band. People gotta make rent and eat, so the band suffers. It’s too bad. I wish we could do more with it, but I have to leave it. It will be the thing I feel most guilty about, but I hope my friends will understand. I hope they can continue and do well without me (though I don’t know how I’d feel if they somehow became somewhat famous).

And the most important thing, I’ve done a lot of self-discovery. I’ve answered a lot of questions about who I am and what I want in life. I’ve found out what would happen if I came to California and tried my luck and my skill in the production capital of the US. I found that it’s not really my passion to be the absolute best media designer in the world, nor is it to spend all my time trying to figure out how to learn everything about my profession and climb the ladder to become creative director and manager of a company. Don’t get me wrong, I do want to succeed, but it is to earn a good living and be happy. I want to work to live, not live to work. And working all the time is very stressful (I seriously don’t know how  buckhopper does it, but he has certainly earned his paychecks) and a stressed life, even with money, is not a happy and fulfilling life to me, personally. I’ve been at a company making crappy local commercials and hawking cell phones and cable service at people, and I’ve been at a company that has won awards and made notable commercials and worked with many pseudo-famous individuals… and I find I prefer the life I had making crappy commercials. Because things were less stressful. Simpler.

Maybe that means I like taking the easy way out. Maybe it means I’m just lazy. I don’t know, I like to think that it means I prefer a balanced life, where work and life were kept separate. Where I can have some stability and a bit more pleasant surroundings (without being rich) and can relax without constantly having to step up my game on my own time to avoid being replaced. I do want to be productive and learn, gain experience, but at a pace I’m comfortable with. I don’t want to be talked down to and criticized right and left, but instead feel like I’m valuable.

It took me a while, but I’ve finally realized that I can find success and a comfortable living in my field in a lot of different places, not just the most oversaturated place for it. There are jobs on the East Coast, in big cities, small cities, big companies, small companies, tons of places that I didn’t fully explore because I had my sights set on one place. Because I wanted a band and, while I was at it, seems like there’s plenty of opportunity for success here if I try for it. Well that didn’t really work out and I’m ready to go back “home”… my second home. South Carolina, North Carolina, Savannah, any of those places where I can find decent work, where Kat can find work (because there is NONE here at all) and we can be comfortable and happy. (it wouldn’t hurt that I’d actually be able to afford to go to a con again without someone having to pay for my room….)


But back to matters at hand… the nitty gritty details.


We’ll be moving, for now, to North Carolina. We have to move in with my mom at first, which is fine because both Kat and I really enjoyed being with her for those few months before we left to come here. We can regroup, I can job search, save a little money (though not much if I don’t have anything coming in…) and hopefully get a job in Charlotte, or Winston-Salem, or Greenville, or Columbia, or Charleston, or Savannah, or hell, even Bluffton again (so Kat could work at the place she used to work at, where she actually enjoyed being there). The goal is to get a job soon (which, theoretically would be easier than here) save up a bit and get some debt down, get our own apartment (which is SO much cheaper there! What we pay for a studio/closet here gets us a 2 bedroom up there!) and then we’ll be in a place that not only can we see our family at will and our friends from Savannah area and North Carolina area, but also it puts us within 10 hours of at least 6-7 furry cons, and we will be able to afford to go to some in time. I’ll even consider flying back to Further Confusion, or Califur, or maybe try out Rainfurrest and hopefully Furry Fiesta again. But mainly, we’d feel like we’re back home, somewhere we belong and are happy. It will be good to be happy again.


How to get there is not that easy though.


I found out that we need a 30 day notice for our apartment. Well, I told them today we might be getting out as soon as possible, since I just mailed the rent check in and would have liked to use that money to pay for our move. They told me I will be paying for 30 days regardless, so we might as well leave at our leisure now. Though every day we sit here is a day I’m not putting myself in a position to get a job and make money (unless I look for freelance, which I’ll put a bit of effort into among other things). I’m not really sure where some of the money will come from, but I’m looking into unemployment possibilities (the job only lasted a few weeks and was not full time, so basically like a freelance job here) and I’ll probably need to take commissions, and Kat will too. I’ve also got a little project with a friend that’s been in the works since I got here that could be bringing me a little income, and I’ve got a little bit of credit card space. I was counting on having this job a little longer, maybe til the end of the month or something so we’d have enough saved up, but now it’s going to be tough.

We’ll be driving across country again with some essentials and the cat (is the cat essential? ;) ). Unlike the first time, I’ll be storing my stuff here until I can afford to pay for it to be shipped out, which will be shortly after I get my job. Also, I’ll be applying for jobs in that area before I head out, but I’m not expecting miracles (having a job waiting for me would be pretty groovy… oh Job B…… whyyyyy?! :( )

Originally I was hoping we could last through May so we could attend a couple of furmeets then end with Califur in early June, but I don’t know if that will be possible now. If we’re here anyways, we’ll see about popping in, but it’s highly unlikely due to funds. That saddens me, but there’s not a lot that can be done.

There are a few more things I’d like to do while I’m here, and people I want to see, as well as some questions, but I’ll cover that in the next (and final) chapter to this story…





*please insert next tape, and we will continue with our story*

-JT


Part 1 - http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2314310/
Part 3 - http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2314384/