it's not that it's impossible, but more that it isn't feasible for me to do anything other than office work

and don't get me wrong, I enjoy office work, lol

my current job, office atmosphere and bonkers upper management aside, is work I genuinely like

but I've always been one of those people who from an early age wanted to have ten million different jobs in ten million different disciplines because I have a wide array of interests and no real ability to focus that

I don't have a "dream job" anymore and I don't like the concept of dream jobs at this stage in my life, but I suffer a lot from wanting to try things that I don't have the... ability to?

I've never fully been able to give up on making legitimate money doing art or something creative-- but I have no experience or training and absolutely do not have the ability to get the kind of training I need or the self-discipline to teach myself properly and hustle to compensate for lack of education

also now that I'm working I can't sacrifice work to study full-time (and don't want to even if I could)

but it's always just. incredibly frustrating because I think that I could genuinely be good in creative fields if I had the tools to learn; I think I have a decent eye for design but obviously no practical experience beyond designing some theatre posters

I don't think I'll ever be the kind of artist that companies look for re: illustration/concept art, even if I were to really put my nose to the grindstone and practice properly

but tied to the ever-present desire to work in a creative field is the ever-present desire to work in video games, which as we all know is an absolutely bananas industry on many levels and for many reasons

I mean, to be clear, I am going to be proud as fuck when I finally finish my AA even though associates degrees don't mean a n y t h i n g

and I'll have my full microsoft office specialist certification, even if it's for office 2010

AND quickbooks certification, so I'll probably be able to look at accounting positions in the future

those things are practical and useful and I'll be glad to have them

but I always wish I could be doing something else, I guess

I've been looking at various job postings on various sites and I want to be one of those "well just write a really good cover letter and apply anyway" people but I'm not, in most situations

and I'll probably be at lumens for over a year despite everything (unless I get a good offer from somewhere else or there is an unexpected round of layoffs in my department) but even with that it's still looking like I'm going to get stuck in a cycle of not having enough experience or education to do things

also I keep telling myself not to be mad about the person who was hired alongside me w/ similar experience being promoted to a department lead

but I am a little mad

realistically, I haven't been present enough to do outstanding work, but I also haven't been given a chance to do outstanding work... I think. we don't receive feedback here so there's no way to know what outstanding work actually entails in this position

I work at a good pace (the only feedback I've ever received...!) and am thorough with everything but I don't really know how to, uh, perform better, when the entire job is literally just data entry

I haven't been there long enough to be a PIM expert or really know the ins and outs of how stuff works but also I think my lack of comprehensive training is showing itself

which is something jessica got that I didn't; I ask a lot of questions now where she doesn't have to, but nobody had time to train me and I was explicitly told this

I've been learning as I go for five months, lol

I also was shunted around between departments a few times where she started in furniture and stayed there until the department dissolved and now she has to be moved into home décor with me

I started with bath/deco plumbing and then had to do some lighting and then some furniture and now I'm permanently in home décor (which is what I was supposed to be doing the whole time)

anyway, I'm just looking for new jobs and wondering why I can't stop wanting things I can't have, lmfao

I get so exhausted and downtrodden because I don't have a good enough education and no way to get experience

I'm tired and feel like I'll never get anywhere that feels successful

I'll never make enough money to feel secure, I'll never be at a job that is both one I like and in an environment that isn't unhealthy and overtly stressful

that kind of thing

we keep talking about trying to make steps toward getting to go to japan but it's been years and now even though I'm working it feels like I'll never be able to save as much as we decided we need

I mea I can't even afford to go back to the east coast once a year to see my family, let alone taking a trip out of the country for a week just for fun

I've been really upset about vacations lately lmao

but it's just the easiest outlet for my frustrations with being underpaid at lumens

I have leverage to ask for a raise..................... at my yearly review next year

I'm just very tired and sad but I'm going to keep doing my best

I'm sorry dude :c stuff like this discouraged me from looking for other work while at Genentech a lot. Like, oh, look at all these qualifications I don't have. I'm still applying for jobs like that anyway because I have no choice, but it's hard to get your foot in the door and stay

I do think that if you wanted to get into illustration, you do have a good proven body of your fanwork and there are several video game/entertainment companies with locations in the bay area, and it might be worth applying to any entry-level positions you see with your portfolio

even if it wasn't done in a professional environment

you could also do some research on what they look for in concept designs and just do that on your own watch to add as a portfolio piece for jobs like that

I do have a pretty nice-looking portfolio site! but I think that stylistically I don't mesh well with a lot of companies and I'm not great at style-matching (which is something I could work on) so I'd have to do a lot of practice to become more... appealing for that kind of work

again, not impossible, just difficult

I know a lot of people have had to make "fake work" for themselves as portfolio pieces for the sake of being more appealing which SUCKS and I'm doing some of that myself now, but I've heard?? It helps? I'm obviously not seeing a lot of results lmao

yeah I gotcha 8C

I do sort of wonder if consistently designing for merch has any value