Adopt or perish

You’ll find that there are times in life where the idea is great. But the timing is just wrong.

You might have built a company too early. Great idea, but the world simply isn’t ready for it.

Your company perishes without anyone remembering it. Well, ten years later, some jerk has the same idea and becomes a billionaire.

Fair?

For one, who said life is fair? For another, anyone who thinks life needs to be fair – I can guarantee you that they’re not someone you want to be friends with.

On the flip side, I tend to jump on the bandwagon as the wheels have already begun to fall off. My Classical music is outdated by over 100 years. Long before I learned to orchestrate, I was in one Metal band after another.

I got into the Bay Area Thrash Metal scene several years after it peaked. I took pride in being able to play guitar 100 mph. Which is lame because you had fast guitarists on every street corner back in the early 90s.

When we played shows, the babes talked to the singer and I always got some pimply faced male teenager saying “whoa! You play fast!”

Well, the scene dissolved very fast and at the end, we ended up playing for our girlfriends and the other bands and their girlfriends. In other words, we didn’t make shit.

I got so frustrated that I sold all my musical gear and decided to never touch a musical instrument again.

That lasted over a decade

I became a father and that became my priority. Be a good husband and a good father and make as much money as I can so I could send my son to decent schools.

Just another middle class family. We had one child because that was the memo at the time – one child per family. You rarely saw parents with kids (more than one).

Which is at least better than nowadays. The last apartment complex we lived in, the foreigners had kids and the Americans had dogs. Sadly, there were very few exceptions to this.

Anyways, I got back into music in 2007. I met a girl who had a tremendous amount of talent. She was heavily into music and had a strong passion for singing.

So I decided to buy some guitars and synths and write some tunes. We tried to record an album but she had a poor work ethic. By the time she got to the studio, the band already had the guitars, synths, bass guitars, and drums recorded. All she had to do was nail the vocal parts. Which she failed at.

She thought that all you have to do to be a rock star is show up. She lacked the work ethic to succeed.

So early 2009, I left her band and started my own.

Well, eight years of constant lineup changes, I think we sold under 30 CDs total between every lineup. Yet another failure.

My Opium Tales EP already outsold that former band. The EP is just me with a bunch of session musicians. I got another EP coming out this year as well.

Cartooning leads to art

Anyways, early 2000s, I started doing cartooning. I had a co-worker who wrote for Hollywood TV shows. One day, we started talking about his resume. Very impressive as he constantly had sales in TV shows you’ve heard of.

However, we also started talking about how much you can make as a writer. No wonder they went on strike.

Los Angeles isn’t exactly the cheapest place to live. Most of the writers have day jobs because they don’t get paid that much.

At the time, it was something like $5k for a half hour show and $10k for an hour show. Which is horrible because that means you have to sell a lot of shows in order to make ends meet. Or have a day job. (Keep in mind – not every episode you write gets picked up and you only get paid for what you can sell).

When I got into cartooning, I knew no way in hell would I be just the writer. I’d produce the entire thing myself because that’s where the money’s at.

Well, I underestimated the sheer amount of work. My first cartoon was a comedy with a dorky lion, an asshole dog, a lady-killer rabbit, and a hot chick. I got buried in work and threw in the towel.

Then I had the idea for Opium Tales. This time around though, I’d be just one of the artists. But the main writer and also producer.

I would need money, so I hired a guy to get money for me. Unfortunately, he failed at the task so that was yet another shelved project. I still own the episodes though and you can even read them in short story form. When I become a famous artist, I’ll actually produce these as animated cartoons.

Allie and Roxy

Enter Allie and Roxy, two girls I met by pure chance. Allie worked with a friend of mine and I met Roxy even more randomly than that. She was this cute girl who would hang out in some of the places that I did. I just started talking to her and lo and behold, we became friends.

Allie saw my cartooning and asked me to draw her. Roxy then saw how I drew Allie and wanted me to draw her too.

I transitioned from cartooning to art very quickly. Cartooning is great because it teaches you to exaggerate expressions. Thus, emotion in art is super easy for me. It’s my strength.

I noticed a year ago that even liberals and socialists are getting sick of this all bodies are beautiful nonsense. I’ve had sales across the political spectrum. Which is a great thing as I strongly believe politics has no place whatsoever in whom I’m friends with.

Agree? Disagree? Great! More power to you. Let’s go get a drink.

The all bodies are beautiful actually plays in my favor. It’s alienating a lot of heterosexual men.

Before the scamdemic, I sold several paintings for a nice chunk of money, got into two art galleries (both of which I had to pull the works because they were forced to close), and got tons of real solid compliments. I sold enough in prints too that my prints alone sold for more money than I ever made in music, despite the fact that I had guitar students.

The timing couldn’t possibly be better. I’m painting beautiful women and my competitors keep painting fat, short-haired mermaids with hairy armpits. Then they tell me that I must be lucky to get people to pay that much for my paintings. These morons seriously have no introspective ability whatsoever.

The moral of this story

So my friends, keep developing skill sets. Yes, I failed in music. So what? I can now play both guitar and piano, two skill sets that don’t just disappear if you don’t make money doing it.

The cartooning? It may have failed but it morphed into art, of which I’m about to have a very successful career at.

And whereas I may never even break even doing music, I love it. Some things are simply more important than money.

I’ll continue to produce music. If it doesn’t sell, so what? I can look at myself in the mirror and be proud because I know I’m getting better and better every year.

And those guys who started businesses too soon? Well, they learned about starting businesses. And do enough of them, one’s eventually gonna stick.

2 comments

  1. “Keep developing skill sets.” I also came to that conclusion after sulking about my shattered hacker dream. Thanks to college, I have a Computer Science and Engineering skillset. Now I am developing the art skillset cause I want to make comic books.

    1. There’s a lot of money to be made in Computer Science and Engineering. It’s a great skill set to have.

      As for comic books, your timing couldn’t possibly be better. Regular people are getting sick of the woke nonsense that is plaguing the comic industry right now. Make characters that regular people can relate to and you’ll get a following.

      You’re going to have a good life ahead of you.

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