{"id":15518,"date":"2010-06-01T08:43:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T12:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/hameblog\/2010\/06\/01\/how-i-got-here\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:50:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:50:17","slug":"how-i-got-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/2010\/06\/01\/how-i-got-here\/","title":{"rendered":"How I got here"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got a letter from someone in response to “DIY Book” — a young guy who’s making some really lovely little books. He’s talented, and right now the world isn’t exactly heaping rewards on his head, ’cause I gather he’s not so far into the game of “find out who’ll will pay me to be me”.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This reminded me of my early twenties in Toronto, which was a time full of earnestness and art and discovery and… difficulty. Here’s how I described to him the path from there to here:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

——————————<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

For a time in Toronto I sold greeting cards I’d made by hand. I’d left acting some time before and couldn’t stomach any more waitering. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I hand-made the paper for the cards with a blender in the kitchen (I lived with my best friend, who was tolerant of the splashes on the walls). Then I cut out a window and stuck in little cartoons I’d drawn. It was do that or go on welfare, and one visit to that spirit-crushing office with all their humiliating questions was enough to convince me to go it alone and live by my abilities. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

That kept me going for a few months until the next thing presented itself — working with computers, since friends had chipped in to buy me one to help me reproduce my cartoons for the cards, and I discovered I had a knack for making computers do stuff. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

That led to me doing graphic design, which led to me being able to design my first book and to the multimedia job that transformed into a job as a full-time copywriter. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

And here I am, twelve years later, very happy, and making a good living. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

So you never know. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

p>
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got a letter from someone in response to “DIY Book” — a young guy who’s making some really lovely little books. He’s talented, and right now the world isn’t exactly heaping rewards on his head, ’cause I gather he’s not so far into the game of “find out who’ll will pay me to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}