Wow, so it's been a long while since I've posted anything on here. It's been nearly a year, and a lot has happened since then. When I last wrote, I had just been accepted to a position in California and was taking my steps into the industry. In March, I married my wife Briana and we continued to live in San Jose.
Shortly after that, I experience one of the true big experiences associated with the industry - "restructuring". I was promptly, unceremoniously, and without any prior warning laid off. I could be more forgiving it weren't for the fact that corporate had already hired replacements downstairs. The company broke our contracts, though through a legal loophole, there was nothing we could do. Our contracts stated that we could not be fired or let go unless we broke company policy for at least a year - but because they "restructured", our positions were no longer financially viable or available, thus they were able to hire cheaper workers for "new" positions. But I digress, I hold no grudge against the managers of the office there, only against the corporate offices.
But with that being said, things have somewhat taken a turn for the better. Getting laid off is somewhat scary, especially in a place like Silicon Valley where everything is more expensive than you can afford. Luckily, Briana had a few connections and I managed to get a consulting job with a large communications company, and I started working as a contractor for them, animating various videos and odd jobs that needed doing. This worked pretty well at first. And it was pretty nice being able to work from home. But what was first stated as a 40 hour a week gig, slowly waned to 30, then 20, then to a as needed basis.
First lesson of freelancing, always be searching for clients. Briana luckily for me, managed to find me many clients, and we began to work together with her reaching out to clients and then me doing the animation and graphics work. This is a formula we've pretty much stuck to to this day. Work managed to trickle in well enough. I started diving into explainer style animations. But California was getting much to expensive to maintain on this lifestyle, and without a reliable steady client to count on, we had to bail.
Our options were dwindling, so we decided to look back to some of our previous plans before we jumped to Cali. South Korea. We decided though, that we weren't up for teaching this time, we just really didn't want to deal with the kids that much. But, due to the nature of how we were working now, there was nothing holding us to any particular location, so long as we had an internet connection, we could do what we wanted. So we looked and found a house sit in South Korea and began on our new adventure.
We left California in August, and traveled back to Florida. Here we left our cats and a few belongings such as our cars with our parents. We spent two months (very long months) traveling Florida, working, getting our medical papers up to date, and other various international necessities.
We then left the US in October, spent a day in Dubai, and then landed in Seoul. Now we're living and working in Songtan, South Korea. The work has been somewhat steady, admittedly lighter than would be preferred, but it has allowed a wonderful experience of the country. We started a blog documenting our travels: http://marriedwithmaps.com/ . We'd like to spend longer here - actually the more we are here the more we feel that we could live indefinitely here - but our visas only allow us 90 days here.
I currently am talking and interviewing with a studio in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia as a character animator. So in January, that will be our destination. Whether it will be fruitful or not, we don't know, but it is not a worry to us. We seem to managing just fine, and we'll just proceed on to the next destination.
I plan on being a bit more active from this point on, I have a few projects that I've worked on that I plan on talking about. But that's all for this particular post.
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