time for change

[egypturnash]

So here's the seriousness I hinted at yesterday, but substituted a joke about skiltaire bungholes for instead.

Ashy's moving out.

This means I'm moving out, too; I'd been failing to keep up my half of the rent (and this is part of why she's moving out) for much of this year, and there's no way I can do it by myself right now. Maybe if a union-rate Flash job dropped in my lap, but I'm not holding my breath.

I don't know where, yet. I need to ask a few people who might be willing to have me for a while, in LA and elsewhere, and see what the options are.

Elsewhere? Yeah. Ashy's moving back to the Bay Area. San Francisco, Silicon Valley, all that. A lot of my online friends and acquaintances are up there, enough to make life interesting. Just the night before kattything was making me drool with some talk in IM about how casually freak-friendly and compact SF is. And a little earlier I was thinking that it's weird that I live in LA but have this cluster of people I know well, and almost never see, up there. And that it's supposedly a lot more freak-friendly than LA. Ashy was suggesting that I might do well to move up there myself, though not necessarily to live with her again.

I'd let myself see how tired I am of LA when there was a possibility of going to Canada for some Spümcø stuff, and I had to kinda put that away when that fell through. It's often fashionable to hate LA, but I don't think I ever have - it's just boring and ugly and not-green, and rather tedious to get around without a car. The only reason I ever came here was my "career", which I put in quotes for a reason. And what's a little more change at this point?

I'll miss her.

Comments

[slinky-treecat.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear that things are all up in the air for you.. I hope you can find a new home soon. It sounds like it might be a good opportunity to, perhaps, look for somewhere that's not in LA, if your "career" isn't really going too well that is.. and it sounds like it likely isn't... *urf*

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Ack! Change! Good Luck.

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

[looks up from working on an animatronic human hand]
[lifts his welder's mask]
We fear change.

[ovon.livejournal.com]

Wherever you go, here's hoping you find somewhere cool to live, and near to cool people. Best of luck!

[martes.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear that. Well, here's hoping at least a job will turn up.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

*waves a shiny thing in front of you*

Coooome... to.... the... Bay Area....

Joiiiiiin... us.....

Joiiiiiiin... us.....

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

SF is a beautiful city! The rent is completely berzerk, but boy, if you want freaks, there they are. ^_^

[electricgecko.livejournal.com]

And that it's supposedly a lot more freak-friendly than LA.

Ohoho yes... a good 50% of the customers who come through at work are gay, a large portion of those very flamingly so. I also see a handful of transgenders on a weekly basis, but those are just the clockable ones. No one really bats an eyelash when two girls (regularly) come into the store with full-spectrum rainbow hair and neon-psychedelic wardrobe to match. (We call them the Rainbow Brite twins.) One coworker of mine lives at Infinite Kaos, the nuhippy art-performance collective where I go and spin poi every week, and another lives in a house full of strange, kink-ridden artists who put giant rubber tentacles in their entryway, painted their bathroom black and added glow-in-the-dark stars to the walls. Outside said house, in the alley, they also have weekly fire-spinning practice. And that's just things somehow pertaining to where I work. :>

So yes, be careful of coming here, 'cuz SAN FRANCISCO WILL OWN YOUR FREAK-LOVING SOUL.

However, in all job-related seriousness, if you're still hunting for animation gigs, SF proper is not the place to be looking. Our economy is getting better, but there's not much need for animators, as there's not much production of animation that I'm aware of. Of the handful of animators I used to know around here, all were laid off and/or unable to find steady work, and at least one moved to - yep - LA, in search of better prospects. >_<

You might be better off looking for work down the peninsula (San Jose, etc.). If you're interested in game design or more generic graphic design jobs, I see ads here and there for companies in the south bay that need people for those kinds of positions.

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

Cripes. Now you're getting me tempted to move out there. On one hand, the rest scares the living hell out of me, since I don't even have animation skills to fall back on -- but on the other, if I can survive out here in the Yuppie Swamp Boston, the Bay couldn't be that much more scary, and the social network would probably compensate for it a little.

Hmm.

Hmm.

*glares at postrodent, easily stuffable into a suitcase*

But anyhow... Good luck, Peggy! We might be using you as a scout someday. :)

[baxil.livejournal.com]

Obviously we need to stampede there en masse and start up some sort of Freak Collective to drive rent costs down for the fluorescent crowd. I'm in!

[electricgecko.livejournal.com]

That already happened, actually. The freaks came, en masse, but they were richer than the people already here. Large influxes of people create shortages of housing, and shortages don't drive prices down, they drive them up. >_< Damned Silicon Valley economy and its overnight millionaires.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I'm looking for animation any more or not. LA economy of animation's probably nothat much better - there are the TV studios, true, but that's mostly shipping boards overseas.

I think most of the people I know who live in the Bay live in San Jose, so I'd probably end up there to start with, at least.

...but... um... that description of some of your co-workers' living situation makes me wet. Tentacles in the entryway.

[eselgeist.livejournal.com]

good luck wherever you end up. moving around is hard enough; feeling you have no choice in the matter is only that much worse. lean on your friends, i say. and send out new address info when appropriate. i do hear that san franciso is nice.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

It sounds like a logical move to me. From what I've seen in the job markets between both cities, there's as good a chance of getting art/animation work in the Bay Area as there is here in Los Angeles. (Though I suspect that a lot of it will be Flash work, and you've said things to me in the past suggesting you'd rather avoid that.) And at least you'll have the chance to see Ashy on an occasional basis if you go.

Whatever you choose, I wish you the best of luck.

[trikotomy.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Well, I'm opposed to the constant exodus of cool people from LA as it reduces the odds that I'll ever meet anyone interesting in person, but I certainly sympathize with the oversized, boring and ugly and not-green thing. If you can realistically leave, do it.

[baxil.livejournal.com]

Not going to give unsolicited moving advice here ... but it's funny you should mention S.F. I've been coming to the growing realization that that's probably where I'm going to end up in the next few years, after I get my finances in order out here in the boonies. It does seem to have that aura about it, doesn't it?

Of course, in my case it helps that (A) I went out there to cheer on February's gay marriages; (B) I grew up in the East Bay and am broadly familiar with the region; (C) I'd FINALLY be within commuting distance of FurCon and BayCon and their respective staff meetings. And the community has quite a lot to speak for it.

Costs, of course, are atrocious. But you knew that. And you can probably beat it down to something more affordable (meaning, about what you're paying now in LA) if you're willing to flee out to the outlying areas and commute in to the city when necessary. BART (http://www.bart.gov) is your friend.

Sorry to hear about things splitting up down there. I think things will work out for you, but it's tough adjusting to forced change. Good luck.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

From what I hear, the rents up there are about as bad as they are down here. LA's pretty pricey.

Yeah, change is a pain... I'm probably going to explode in a ball of stress at some point.

always protect yourself

[doctorpinkerton.livejournal.com]

Careful Peggy. Moving that far from your current situation is a Big Thing. I hope you will send out some job feelers before taking this leap... you've never had to live in pure 'survival mode' and I suspect you wouldn't like it if you put yourself in that situation.

Re: always protect yourself

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, I'm only going to go up there if I know I at least have a friend to stay with for a while. Writing this entry, with the possibility, is the first step in putting out a few feelers to see what I could find up there...

Besides, I moved to LA with next to nothing in front of me.

Bay Area

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Hey,

Sorry I've been offline the last few days. I've been studying. Anyhow, offer of my garage still stands. It's not a fantastic place to live but it's better than a box under a bridge (marginally) and I am a decent cook and my work situation is fairly stable. Also the garage is detached from the house so it has some autonomy from my insane ranting and babbling. (The downside of this is that you have to go outside to come into the house to use the bathroom and such)

I could take some photos for you if you like. Also clean so that there's much more room. You'd be limited to wi-fi for net access though. I think we have some spare cards if your machine doesn't have one.

Anyhow... Offer's there if you need it.

Re: Bay Area

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. Also, my house is about a 10 minute walk from the Caltrains line which goes straight to San Francisco. Also, there's an old beater motorcycle in the garage that I'm supposedly trying to get running, plus my partner's bicycle which are available for use. (I'm riding mine daily) We've been talking about getting her a new and lighter bike anyhow and this would be a good excuse. (It's a lead frame, I think) anyhow, Caltrains and most of the buses and stuff let you take bikes on board so you can get pretty-much anywhere that way. San Jose is very flat, San Fran is very not-flat.

Re: Bay Area

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was going to ask if the offer is still there. More in e-mail.

[ultraken.livejournal.com]

Bummer. :(

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It's been looming for a while. Every time it almost came to it before, some work would pop up for a while.

[ultraken.livejournal.com]

...and this time it didn't.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Some might have, but nothing's caught yet. And I don't think anything's likely to happen with Spümcø, which's where something usually appeared from in the past.