Long days and dreaming nights
Wide eyes take in all the sights
A little wonder goes a long, long way
Learning where to go and what to say
Isolation has been a good time for reflection – some valuable, some not so great. There’s far too much time to think and it’s challenging for everyone. Personally I’ve been frustrated with being trapped in Canada – effectively on my own now – missing and wanting to be with people back home. But I’ve been focused heavily on how fortunate I am to be able to continue working, earning money, in a safe and clean environment and in good health. Many have lost their entire world and the flow-on effects in the months and years to come will be enormous.
Most people facing hardship right now are in that situation through no fault of their own. I am fortunate mostly due to pure luck – I work in an industry willing and able to shift me home. And even the elements I might attribute somewhat to my personal wisdom or success (having skills to remain employable and savings to cover hard times, for example) have their roots in the luck of the past – where and when I was born, and the example set by my parents and their priorities.
My first win was being born in Australia. I grew up the third of four children to two working parents. I shared a bedroom with my two brothers in a fibro home in Guildford, New South Wales – Sydney suburbia. They were paying 18% interest rates on their mortgage of that home. Dad worked a lot, and I was 16 before I even realised mum was working two jobs. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I had an awareness of how challenging this would have been. We weren’t hard done-by by any stretch, but they certainly weren’t made of money, so a lot of the bells and whistles of travel and going out which I’m afforded these days weren’t available to them. But we were loved, so we always felt lucky. I had the best childhood. Santa still spoiled us at Christmas despite mum warning us at the start of every December he might not have much to give. My parents sent us to private school, not because they had money, but because education was their priority and they felt that particular school was the best choice.
But it also meant I went to school with a lot of kids I couldn’t quite relate to, and some I found to be quite awful, so my later teenage years weren’t as much fun. I also developed a healthy distaste for religion. But in those years, I learnt how to entertain myself, inventing projects for myself.
And that time was where my career was born.
I was fortunate that dad worked at The University of Sydney, and that he brought his work home. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s that I realised just how big an influence he had. He worked long hours on something he loved. He could have found money elsewhere but he loved teaching at University. He also kept a regular exercise routine in the 80s before it was cool. He has passionate opinions, and making someone laugh is always the noblest goal. I’d like to think I subconsciously picked up some of these things.
There is a high chance I would not be enjoying a career in visual effects had it not been for dad’s job. Two key pieces of technology sparked my interest –
- a PC he brought home so he could work evenings and weekends; and
- the internet, thanks to the fact that Universities got into that world earlier than most.
The PC in particular blew my mind. Thanks to dad bringing his work home, I was able to discover PC games before most of society even knew what they were. I loved Sierra adventure games. So much so that I had dreams of one day working there. Unfortunately the company fell apart by the time I was 15 so that dream evaporated with it. It’s quite fascinating that something I was so obsessed with (games) became mostly a bore to me beyond the age of about 17.
We got the internet around 1993, age 10. Shortly afterward, I was reaching out to find other fans across the world. I made a fan website to catalogue absolutely everything I loved about Space Quest – learning to code JavaScript and HTML by picking apart other websites and reverse engineering them. Then, when I wanted my website to look better than the rest of them, I learnt PhotoShop and Paint Shop Pro. And once I had catalogued everything there was to know about Space Quest, I set out to make my own content.
By the time I was seventeen most school days were spent looking forward to the end of the day so I could go home and work on and learn 3D – modeling, animation, lighting – the whole thing. That way I could set about remaking the old Space Quest games from the 80s with new 3D graphics. It kept my mind busy more than school. I did very well in school but always saw a lot of it as “a thing I had to do” much like brushing my teeth. Computer graphics, PhotoShop and website design and coding excited me.
I still can’t believe I get paid to do this, even at times when it’s not so glamourous. There are valid complaints to be made in some circumstances but I find that most in my field who complain just come across as precious and entitled – just like some of those kids I went to school with. I have no time for that. They don’t know how lucky they are. This is not a “real” job.
My first job was working at a pharmacy delivering medicine to little old ladies. Then I worked checkout at Coles for about 5 years while building my own website business. It wasn’t until I got my first VFX job at 23 while doing a post-grad animation course with other like-minded friends that I felt at home and those later teenage years found meaning.
A shitty situation one year can lead to incredible things down the road.
I trust that this pandemic solitary time will find meaning.
We just don’t know what that is yet.