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scroll for tldr (recommended)
ok so you all know my story really by now
1) alcoholic and smoker for 15 yrs (nonstop years of crippling anxiety, psychotic breaks, blackouts (even a seizure), drinking until i fall unconscious and piss myself twice a week for years on end, taken to hospital once, pretty much on a certain and fast track to an early grave)
2) lived on £6/hr wage as a carer for dementia sufferers for 5 years (not fun either)
3) tried the past 5 years to wean myself off alcohol (let alone anything else) which was literally an impossible task for like 2-3 years but very very slowly i kept trying and trying and started to see some progress as years went by
4) somehow got an opportunity to a pathway to my 3rd attempt at university which i managed to, by the absolute skin of my teeth, complete last year (like i literally done 70+ page thesis in what was it 2 or 4 days without sleeping?)
5) after 7 years at 3 different unis/colleges (that's gotta be a record) i got a degree paper and applied for jobs and miraculously gave a not-shit interview and got hired
6) i wouldn't have thought life could ever be as shit as when i was alcoholic but i managed to break my £1500 car and spend like £3000 on fixing it and on taxi/transport fares, putting it into a different garage four times because who would have guessed people who work at garages are buttfuckers, and bumped the back of a hire car which the company says will cost £2000 to fix but they'll only charge me £1050
7) all that time i'm doing my best to try to figure out a job that i'm way too stupid for (programming) and literally unable to even speak 2 words to people at work before choking up on the verge of tears (wtf) . that's how bad your self esteem gets after being an alcoholic friend-less loser for 15 yrs, you literally can't physically speak to anyone and cry in the car on the way to work (that's after the car got fixed lol)
8) finally quit smoking for the 60th time and haven't had a cigarette for 5 months now excluding at christmas staff party (where i got blackout drunk and was apparently shouting at people whoops yeah i felt good about that) and new yrs eve
9) just ran 5k in 30:00 and have been gyming again for 2-3 weeks now (almost done 1 pullup today. this is after what like 2000 tryhard gym sessions since 2011 (i have the logs, the post count, and nothing else to show for it)
10) today i also gave in my 6 weeks notice at my new job. i'm not smart enough by far to do programming and, more importantly, i have absolutely no interest in becoming a better programmer. trying to do a job you're not smart enough for is MISERABLE AS SHIT let me tell you (you're trying to prove your worth and instead you just can't fucking do this shit no matter what, 40 hours a week sitting in silence only every hour you have to ask your colleague the same dumb question coz you're too dumb to do it yourself, 8 hours a day with 1 hour sitting in your car wondering wtf you're even alive for, 5 days a week with weekends to just do nothing but wait for the next week of sitting in silence and misery and pointlessness to roll around).
i knew programming wasn't for me, i knew exactly what it entails (i'm actually pretty smart when i want to be), and after succeeding this last chance at university degree i had to get a job in it to make back some of the fuckton of money and years of pain and disappointment i owe to my mom. and i've done it, i've gotten through the most dire shit in my life, even as dire as the most dire shit that you won't even know unless you've been so fucked up like i have for so many many years, and finally i got out the other end.
11) i managed to save up some money (after wasting so much on fucking repairing and crashing cars and gorging on takeaways for i gave up on everything except survival) . i'm gonna give some of it to my mom and use the rest to fund accomodation and food for ~10 months so i can train to be an artist
12) i managed to save up in 5 months at this job more money than i've seen in the last 15 years working as a care assistant to the elderly, which is pretty disgusting if you think about it. i literally sit in silence and click all day long and make like a minimum wage workers yearly savings per month. just because i work for rich healthy people instead of poor sick people (or something)
13) i had a quick look and you can get accomodation for like £250/month if you head north. that's not bad at all. i don't have much (if any) experience in learning to draw but my basic plan is :
a) Learn to Draw
b) Learn to Color
c) Learn Stuff to Draw
d) Learn Tools
e) Become really good and fucking love what I do
f) Make money producing art, environments, characters, animations, objects, whatever I decide I enjoy specialising in, for video games and other content creators (and a few other ideas I have), possibly get into streaming and teaching and helping people too
g) Be happy ^_^
14) So yeah i gave in my 6 weeks notice. It went well, everyone is so nice to me there. They are a great bunch of people, they really are. Just the job is not my thing. I can understand how some people love programming, I mean I like it too, but I'm not smart enough nor do I have the will to take it to the next level. I like my art, I know that. Hell i like my talking and my comedy and my teaching, but where i'm at right now isn't anywhere near those things .
15) yet again, i set sail
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/vnaakdi.jpg)
tldr: alcoholic anxiety-disorder hermit for 15 yrs living on minimum wage in squalor and misery, finally quit drinking after 5 years of trying, finally passed university after 7 years of attempts, got through nightmarish 5 months at first "big" job as a programmer, suddenly gave in my notice after saving up and in 6 weeks time will be moving to "somewhere really cheap" to train to become an artist (drawing), with distant plans to produce content for video games such as environments, and so forth, and on a ~10 month clock to succeed (before having no money again) (will definitely be stacking shelves somewhere 2 days a week to keep things going)
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Best of luck! Keep us posted.
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sounds like you're burning the house you've struggled to build in order to struggle to build another one
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United States10241 Posts
On February 16 2016 07:01 BeStFAN wrote:
sounds like you're burning the house you've struggled to build in order to struggle to build another one
i agree with this. i understand that programming isnt your thing, but maybe stick it out and just try to get better at it. this is one of the best opportunities you have right now and you're giving it up for another idea that is just that, an idea. who knows where you'll go with it. But you had a stable job and now you don't.
Obviously, I wish you major luck in whatever you plan on doing, and definitely keep us posted. I hope everything works out.
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It's awesome how far you've come... but your plan is to go from basically no experience in art to making living money off it in 10 months? Seems like a huge risk and if you don't succeed there's a good chance you go back to your old, bad habits... Could you program part-time to make living money and do art? That might be a better life balance.
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Yo if you want I can give you some basic info on art for games and stuff and good principles of drawing to start with.
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Good luck on following your dreams man. However I don't know why you can't code for work, and draw in your free time?
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If you are in the states you can move to Montana. Cheaper here, no sales tax  . Most importantly it is beautiful, which would be nice if you want to draw landscapes.
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Good luck. Make sure to have a back up plan if it doesn't work after x amount of months. You can fall back into the deep end pretty fast if you have financial trouble.
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I respect the road you've travelled, but I question the direction you're headed now.
ICT is a good place to work. You say "you can be smart if you want to" and your employer saw that too (or he wouldn't have hired you). So if programming is not your thing (for reasons unclear to me: if you were doing if for 5 months without getting sacked I'm sure you were doing fine, according to other peoples standards) your employer would probably have helped you find another position in the company that suited you more. He might let you do frontend design stuff, which is a good step towards a career in Art.
But, to each his own. Seems you're the "struggle and emerge" kind of guy. I hope you find a place that makes you happy 
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On February 16 2016 08:53 Scarecrow wrote:
Could you program part-time to make living money and do art? That might be a better life balance.
nope, i'm shit at programming and hate it (hate the lifestyle) and my job is very specific in the sense that i don't develop any abilities in anything other than what my very specific job is . no work with web or common programming languages and practices as such. its sort of "use in-house code to construct things" , which means there is a massive barrier to entry between my role of "construct things from the in-house code" and "write the in-house code". during periods of downtime i've suffered greatly staring at other people's code for 8 hour, week long periods trying to understand it but completely incapable and feeling like i should just walk out the door then and there numerous times.
anyway to answer your question, no i can't program part time, i hate it and i'm shit at it. that's not bad attitude, that's me sitting in silent existential crisis for 8+ hours a day for the past 5 months (to be fair i've felt like that most of my life)
On February 16 2016 09:03 Zambrah wrote:
Yo if you want I can give you some basic info on art for games and stuff and good principles of drawing to start with.
thankyou, i'll send you a msg nearer the time!
On February 16 2016 16:00 MysteryMeat1 wrote:
Good luck on following your dreams man. However I don't know why you can't code for work, and draw in your free time?
i get home every day at 8pm after gym and on weekends watch tv and crawl out of bed to practice my guitar that i'm shit at. i just don't have it in me to be that guy who is just good at everything and full of energy. i'm not that guy! of course that is all besides the point, i can't do this job any longer, its a waste of life (in my opinion). of course my opinion might differ if i had a girlfriend/wife, mortage to pay; if i actually wanted to buy things like a car or phone contract or whatever crazy things people like to spend their lives procuring. i will be way happier stacking shelves 2 days a week and doing something i believe in with my precious remaining time alive
On February 16 2016 16:21 reps)squishy wrote:If you are in the states you can move to Montana. Cheaper here, no sales tax . Most importantly it is beautiful, which would be nice if you want to draw landscapes.
yeah my bro is actually in an azn country so i did toy with the thought of going over there. air fare isn't as much of an issue as would be finding a part time (2 day...) job somewhere like that to give me enough relative income. it would be riskier than just staying where i am and getting a good old supermarket job and just being able to focus on training and not have any other worries. teaching english in a foreign country for the first time 2 days a week? it just sounds a little too much of a stretch even for me.
On February 16 2016 16:26 RvB wrote:
Good luck. Make sure to have a back up plan if it doesn't work after x amount of months. You can fall back into the deep end pretty fast if you have financial trouble.
i'll give my mom a good chunk of my savings to put her at ease and , well, also that
On February 16 2016 16:37 _fool wrote:
So if programming is not your thing (for reasons unclear to me: if you were doing if for 5 months without getting sacked I'm sure you were doing fine, according to other peoples standards) your employer would probably have helped you find another position in the company that suited you more. He might let you do frontend design stuff, which is a good step towards a career in Art.
i've been very very lucky in that the guy sitting next to me at work has been unquestionably fantastic in putting up with my endless hourly questions and helping me to understand their innumerous complex systems. i also had good reason to persevere, and i'm reasonably bright (just not bright enough to want to take this to the next level ... i'm more bright in a "creative" sense than anything else...i use my fingers to count sometimes and put +X at the end of code sometimes so i don't have to do the math (lol i'll remove it later)), and i'm very honest, and i try. so that's why i didn't get the sack i guess. but none of those things will ever add up to "programming is my thing".
same with graphic design. we have graphic designers in the office and their job is very very similar to mine. sit in silence and click, all day, every day. forever. what's the point? it's not for me, life is toooo short :D (actually at one point in my misery i did keep toying with the idea of asking if i could switch to train as a replacement graphic designer but the reality of it is that a company doesn't hire people who "want to switch to graphics coz they can't stand programming and are shit at it and think photoshop stuff might be easier", they hire experienced qualified confident professionals with portfolio and industry experience. anyway like i said , graphic design looks like it sucks pretty hard tbh, who wants to sit there 8 hours a day endlessly making squares and logos and aligning textboxes as a way to spend their life? not me :D
(ps i know digital art is largely about clicking in silence all day lol but the reason and belief you have behind doing something is what makes it worthwhile.
what is worthwhile to you? for me its doing something i believe in)
thanks for the support and comments everyone
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I would agree with what some people have posted, maybe slowly work into art, go from programming to frontend development (ie, HTML, CSS, JS) which gives you the ability to do some creative work. That in turn could lead to doing more design then implement work and then just design work (if you are doing really well).
Also instead of stacking shelves while working on this you could spend some time doing freelance coding work to help keep you afloat. Just some thoughts, also if you are ever interested in the frontend dev. stuff PM me I work as a full stack dev but do a lot of frontend stuff and could point you in the right direction.
Hope all goes well it is pretty awesome to see what you have done over the last few months. Keep at it even when the going gets tough dont go back to old habits and always always always reach out to others when you are feeling down even if you feel stupid doing so.
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On February 16 2016 05:59 FFGenerations wrote:
1) alcoholic and smoker for 15 yrs (nonstop years of crippling anxiety,
3) tried the past 5 years to wean myself off alcohol (let alone anything else) which was literally an impossible task for like 2-3 years but very very slowly i kept trying and trying and started to see some progress as years went by
both my parents are hard core alcoholics and both smoke.. those are 2 tough habits to break.
i know a guy who has been trying ot quit smoking for 10 years. He has tried and failed 6 times. In those 10 years he only smoked for 3.5 of those years. So that in itself is a victory for his health even if he has not completely kicked the habit. Now on his 7th attempt he has not had a cigarette in 9 months.
On February 16 2016 05:59 FFGenerations wrote:
2) lived on £6/hr wage as a carer for dementia sufferers for 5 years (not fun either)
i worked minimum wage retail jobs from age 15 to 20 and defrauded every single employer along the way. minimum wage jobs are brutal... no idea how i would've gotten through it if i didn't illegally pad my income.
On February 16 2016 05:59 FFGenerations wrote:
4) somehow got an opportunity to a pathway to my 3rd attempt at university which i managed to, by the absolute skin of my teeth, complete last year (like i literally done 70+ page thesis in what was it 2 or 4 days without sleeping?)
took me and all my classmates 4 2/3's years to get a degree.
so 7 years isnt much longer.
good work man.
On February 16 2016 05:59 FFGenerations wrote:
5) after 7 years at 3 different unis/colleges (that's gotta be a record) i got a degree paper and applied for jobs and miraculously gave a not-shit interview and got hired
it is no miracle. you earned it. you put yourself in that position to get that job.
On February 16 2016 05:59 FFGenerations wrote:
They are a great bunch of people, they really are. Just the job is not my thing. I can understand how some people love programming, I mean I like it too, but I'm not smart enough nor do I have the will to take it to the next level. I like my art, I know that. Hell i like my talking and my comedy and my teaching, but where i'm at right now isn't anywhere near those things .
there are many different forms of intelligence. i'm a brilliant software developer and a great coder. i'm also really good at office politics. i'm garbage at everything else. i had a gf in university who had no sense of direction and could not handle the easiest of math courses. she was labelled a "dumb blonde". however, put a musical instrument in this woman's hands and look out.
she is currently at the instructor level in both piano and voice in the royal conservatory of music. michael buble is one of her voice students; she makes a gazillion dollars an hour as a piano teacher ; 5 gazillion dollars an hour as a voice instructor.
who gives a fuck that she can't code for shit?
back to the quitting smoking and drinking theme...
attempting to quit smoking and drinking can be really hard on your self esteem. i recommend a book about self esteem in order to nurture yourself in tough times.
check out : the six pillars of self esteem by dr. nathaniel branden.
http://www.amazon.ca/Six-Pillars-Self-Esteem-Nathaniel-Branden/dp/0553374397
i also recommend nightly journalling.
good to read that you are relentlessly moving forward...
should you continue ... unabated by temporary setbacks and failures.. and continue to persevere through it all... you can build yourself into what i call an ...
IMMOVABLE MOVER
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On February 17 2016 05:28 YourGoodFriend wrote:
Also instead of stacking shelves while working on this you could spend some time doing freelance coding work to help keep you afloat. Just some thoughts, also if you are ever interested in the frontend dev. stuff PM me I work as a full stack dev but do a lot of frontend stuff and could point you in the right direction.
Hope all goes well it is pretty awesome to see what you have done over the last few months. Keep at it even when the going gets tough dont go back to old habits and always always always reach out to others when you are feeling down even if you feel stupid doing so.
*oops i deleted my reply*
yeah there's nothing saying that if training to draw doesn't work out then i can't just go back in a years time and apply for programming jobs again and try to come at it from a different, more conventional and personal-development-friendly angle (like web programming rather than the pretty specific thing i'm doing now)
On February 17 2016 05:28 YourGoodFriend wrote:check out : the six pillars of self esteem by dr. nathaniel branden. http://www.amazon.ca/Six-Pillars-Self-Esteem-Nathaniel-Branden/dp/0553374397i also recommend nightly journalling. good to read that you are relentlessly moving forward... should you continue ... unabated by temporary setbacks and failures.. and continue to persevere through it all... you can build yourself into what i call an ... IMMOVABLE MOVER
thanks i think i will actyually read up on self esteem or some shit coz god knows i actually could benefit from it
yeah or i will become an immovable mover of stacking shelfs lol
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most people do not know what self esteem is.
you can not hit a target that you can not see.
self esteem contains 2 components... self-confidence and self-respect.
self-confidnece is the feeling we are capable of tacking the fundamental challenges of life.
self-respect that we are worthy of the happiness we create for ourselves by rising the said challenges.
you need both to have self esteem.
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Japan11286 Posts
I hope you succeed at art but 10 months to go 'pro' from scratch seems like a stretch though. Still, I'm looking forward to the progress you make due to the similarities in our situation i.e. programmer (still in college though) but likes art/wants to improve at art.
Best of luck there yo.
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Well done man, sorry it's been a struggle, but you've already put the worst behind you, so things are looking up
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Hi just wanted to wish you the best of luck. I really enjoyed the story.
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So you don't drink at all now? Meaning you don't have a drink ever? I am asking because I have been abusing alcohol now for about 3 years and I am having trouble stopping. It has begun to affect my health now....noticeably. I went 3 weeks without a drink but on July 4th had a few....that was a mistake. I haven't been able to stop since. I am more of a binge drinker, not a traditional alcoholic.
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EPT
