"Wow, I did it. I worked hard and stuck with it and I'm actually living my dream. But what happens when it turns out your dream sucks?"

Imagine in the fifth grade, you took a field trip to a graphic art studio. You saw the people at work, making art... and something just... clicked. You thought "This is it! This is what I want to do with the rest of my life!" That field trip would make a deep, lasting impression and start a lifelong devotion to art.

So when you got to college, completely set on getting a degree in computer science (because let's face it, you've always been fascinated by computers too), you suddenly went spearing off on a tangent and instead went for an art degree. You took the classes, put in the work, even got a job at the art lab helping others learn about art and make their own. When you got out of college, you scored an internship at an art studio and got to watch the professionals at work and help out now and then.

As a career, you ended up in and out of art... never quite being able to keep a hold of it, always ending up in computers instead. But you still attended conventions, did artwork there at the cons on a totally volunteer basis. Maybe you weren't getting paid, but you were so happy to be there and doing what you loved, and working with a tight-knit group of comrades.

After your second career reset... success! You get hired at an art production house! Not as an artist, but as supporting staff. And for years you'd pal around with the artists and walk past their design room and peer enviously through the windows at all their great tools and gear. And there would be the mandatory detour through IT and engineering, but suddenly there's a seismic shift at the company and you're offered not only a position in the art production group, but as the lead artist! Needless to say, you accept.

It doesn't take long to figure out things aren't the same. Part of that seismic shift is that nobody will be hand-drawing art anymore. Instead the artists build scenes by selecting from a library of clip-art, putting it where it needs to be. Sure, every now and then there's a request for a clip that doesn't exist, so you get to sketch out something new... but those times are few and far between. Day to day, it's all clip-art into the scenes, then sending it to a plotter to let the machines draw out the finished product.

And those conventions? Haven't been able to go back to them and draw art. There's just no time... the work keeps you from getting any time away. But... at least you're making art...... right?

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That's my life in a nutshell. Except of course, instead of graphic art, it's television. I trained for years on my chosen instrument, starting in school on a Grass Valley GVG-200, working with a Sony DFS-700, or a Panasonic AV-HS450n or a Ross Carbonite at conventions, and now in the presence of the granddaddy of them all, the Sony MVS-8000G, Except the days of hands-on, "playing" the keys of the switcher are over. Instead you program the shots ahead of time and sit there, George Jetson-style, pressing the button to advance to the next shot.

And my experience is not a fluke. There is still at least one station in town that has an actual director running a switcher. I could apply to work there, they're looking for a director. But why bother? That station is looking at automation as well. The people who took the time to go to school and learn a craft or a trade are being pushed aside by machinery that makes less skilled people able to do nearly the same job at a fraction of the compensation.

I have to think this is how the loom operators felt when the first punch-card power looms hit the scene. The inevitable march of progress, running over you until you're crushed to death under its wheels.