...when I had coffee with this one local (animator) a few months ago:
1) She says because I'm free and owe nothing to no-one, I can probably do more interesting work (including on scholarly topics).
2) She pretty much has given up on animation, because computers can do stuff so quick that it just isn't worth it anymore, so she's re-focusing on handmade goods, instead.
She also says that back in the day, if you did something interesting, you could always find an audience, but now with the internet there's a glut of content and not enough eyeballs, so it's slog to chase to chase eyeballs, and she can see that as a reason to re-focus on scholarly topics and not go after popular writing and venues like I used to be able to find even just five to seven years ago.
3) Once again, she strongly recommended keeping my income low enough to get Medicaid, which she swears by.
. . .
It's so interesting to hear a perspective like hers.
Like, over the past number of years, I've had 3-4 different people I know tell me that I should try to start a YouTube or TikTok or whatever on some fun scholarly topic that I get enthused about, which I've never found viable since it's a huge time-suck with no clear payoff (what's the thinking -- some magical hope that I'd go viral, or a rough plan that I'd be able to monetize after several years of all my energy going into that? -- it just seems like a get-rich-quick scheme, where you're left holding the bag of wasted time and energy of years of wasted effort, if nothing panned out).
Instead, she's like, the writing is on the wall, the ground has shifted, change with the times and re-focus, and most of all don't kill yourself chasing these new methods in order to try to make the old ways work.
Just refreshing. Like, when I talk with an artist-type like that, they say useful stuff that makes you think, even if you don't always agree with it.
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