Wherever you go, there you are.
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Don’t stop dancing.
Many of the people who I raced sailboats against (and were soundly defeated by) were in their 70s & 80s. Keep moving, stay active, pick low-impact activities.
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Where do you live now? Besides your work situation what do you like/dislike about your current location?
As far as going back to school… if you have a bunch of money saved and no debt, it ¡might! be worthwhile. I would say depending on your current connections in the professional audio engineering/music world, paying for/going into debt for a degree in that is at best risky AF. This is all assuming you don’t have substantial money/resources as a safety net. If you’re 39 and doing ok and just kinda bored/unhappy I don’t think your chances at being happier grinding out a potential happy existence as an audio engineer are very good. I know it’s demoralizing and maybe I’m too cynical or negative. Good luck to you either way.
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So Uber Eats offers free ASU online tuition as a perk for drivers with 5000 trips. I am looking into their Urban Planning major as that is a subject I realized I have a lot of passion about. Funnily enough I think being a delivery driver has exposed me to so much urban design that it ignited it further.
I live in Baltimore, MD. I still depend on doing deliveries to pay my bills, and it’s only a little better than being stuck in a rut as I’m making progress digging myself out but I have almost no disposable income and it’s hard to decide how to use my free time being so financially restricted and “back to zero” on all the things I’d been working on. If I was in school I could in theory work entire days, instead of just the rushes, doing reading assignments etc while I wait for orders during the slow periods and thus make more money while getting a degree, which to me in this case is about 1) getting knowledge on a very deep subject, 2) providing some kind of jump-off point for networking, and 3) getting the degree, which I imagine is more of a prerequisite than the tech field, which I don’t have nearly as much passion for. Also doing it online actually seems better than on-campus as I feel like campuses or beautiful surroundings would actually just be a distraction for me.
Also I am no longer as desperate to leave Baltimore as I was. A lot of people from out-of-state have been steadily moving in over the past few years and bringing an injection of money and “profession” (don’t know a better word for it) and when it boils down to it I chose my friends semi-poorly. (As with anything it’s a mixed bag.) So maybe I could find new friends during my rounds or the odd event, or maybe through online interactions. I’ve really fallen off the train so I need to have something going on, some kinda orientation in life, and I think studying something might be it.
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While you are making up your mind, consider going deep on youtube and other free training. There is a lot of crap on youtube, but there is also a ton of good stuff on urban planning, architecture, logistics and other fields that you might find interesting. If you go deep enough, you may find that you are able to apply for a Masters program with a full scholarship with the caveat that you finish up however many credits you need to complete your undergrad.
The thing I like about tech is that it provides a great deal of leverage. You can build out a model city in Blender and then move that over to Unity or Unreal and automate and animate agents interacting within that city. The jump from a model like that to real world implementation requires effort, but perhaps much less than you might imagine. Regardless, if your goal is to gather as much knowledge about a subject that interests you and has real world impact, it will only be a matter of time before enticing opportunities open up in the tech world. Back when I lived in the SF Bay Area, at least 50% of my Uber & Lyft drivers worked in tech in some capacity and drove for networking, idea generation and to get away from the desk.
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Really? How did they use their driving for networking? Just talking about the stuff they saw driving around?
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After the pleasantries, the driver usually makes some kind of casual comment about the work they “actually” do. If we were both in the same field, it could turn into a competitive hiring discussion. (me: “oh cool, send me your resume!” them: “no, you send me YOUR resume!”). Otherwise the driver would usually give an entertaining narrative about their thing or what they aspired to do and close by asking if I know anyone they should talk to.
I think part of why that works is that if you are in a rideshare in the SF area, you are spending >$50, so the odds are good that you (the passenger) are in tech or an adjacent field that pays well and keeps you busy are pretty high. Also, if you see someone dressed in business casual with a nice messenger bag that they are treating gently because it has an expensive macbook inside, odds are further in your favor.
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Oh ridesharing! Of course! My bad I misread. Unfortunately, I stupidly sold my Corolla years ago and only have a 96 Odyssey that’s falling apart, otherwise I’d also be doing rideshare. I wonder sometimes if I should take out a loan and get a used hybrid, expand operations …
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That’s the problem, no? Gig work is designed in such a way that you’re hustling with little time for any other employment or thought and certainly not enough to pay the rent in the area…
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I’m lucky enough that working 20-25 hrs a week I can cover my living expenses. So I have free time it’s just been deciding how to use it.
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I would approach that decision with a lot of research and caution.
I think they want you to have a car that looks fairly new if you are doing rideshares. Electric cars - hybrid or pure - have the ticking time bomb that is the battery system. Batteries wear out and need to be replaced, so you’d want to have fairly deep understanding of how those lifecycles work out. Additionally, there is a two-sided political angle. There is the usual rideshare vs. taxi thing. Some cities have resolved the issue to everyone’s satisfaction, others have not. The other issue is that California has been making noises about completely outlawing internal combustion engines in the next decade. This is impossible - California’s power grid can’t handle the electric cars they already have, and there doesn’t seem to be any sign of activity to expand the grid. But other states may follow what they think California’s lead is.
I’m treating our '04 Corolla as our last car. I don’t want an electric car unless it is roughly comparable to a Kei Car, and I don’t want an autonomous car until they are good enough to not need steering wheels - which may be never.
From a business perspective, I wouldn’t want to invest in a road vehicle unless I was highly confident that it would pay back in 4 years or so. Beyond 4 years it’s just too difficult to predict which ways the political winds will be blowing.
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I have designed three online courses, but there’s a lot to be said for the give and take of a classroom, especially one that’s relatively small. You’ll be twice the age of your classmates, so I doubt there will be much distraction or desire to hang out on campus. There aren’t a lot of jobs in urban planning, but “college degree” is often a generic job requirement, and there are some transferrable skills that employers would look favourably on (e.g. experience in contemplating interrelated complex problems, or in crafting realistic solutions to intractable situations). It’s best to study what you’re most interested in; hopefully you can sustain your passion through the often soul-killing senior-level classes.
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I know several people with audio engineering degrees. None have audio engineering jobs but they do know how to operate equipment they’ll never be able to afford to purchase or rent.
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My point is that “gig work” is not structured in such a way that it leaves the same mental energy and stability that other “beer money” part time jobs would. It may still work for your scenario, but it’s exploitative and far from ideal and could easily counteract any promise of getting a degree alongside.
A friend got his Full Sail degree and was only offered porn gigs with their great “intern” forwards, so he documented ICP tours and moved his way up slowly from reality gigs to some primo spots.
Naturally, the degree didn’t do him a mess of good, he needed to network outside of their reach.
Yeah, wear, upkeep, extra insurance, there’s a lot of additional costs involved in that.
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That’s so funny. Full Sail must be partnered with the porn industry as I’m pretty sure my friend was also offered a sound editor position with one of those “studios”. The closest he got to something like that was as a grip or boom operator, can’t remember which, on set for True Blood. Funny enough ot was during one of the many orgy scenes for the show. Said it was very awkward, and the lead actress wasn’t the warmest of people. Not sure if that’s what pushed him to take the desk job at Warner’s main offices.
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I’m in Baltimore as well. Things can be boring here but there’s an interesting underground to things but has been slowish since Covid. I get the feeling of wanting to move for sure, however we do have some advantages, it’s cheap, the city is changing and there’s always some weird shit happening if you look hard. Not sure what neighborhood your in, but sometimes a change of pace here can be as simple as picking another neighborhood.
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Well blow me down! Hello there fellow Baltimorean. Actually it’s not the city itself but how things went down for me in the particular scene I fell into after moving into a warehouse on Falls. Made a splash without even meaning to and that messed with my head and when COVID hit I moved in with some people who I came to realize weren’t on my wavelength at all… wolf pack mentality whereas I think my personality is more like a cat. (It wasn’t all bad, and I learned a lot, but I’m a different person… worn down and less positive.) Anyway drama managed to happen despite me actually being a pretty nice guy and I’d been feeling like I needed a blank slate.
On second thought though yeah it is kinda boring. People here are soft.
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I enjoy it, I can immerse or insulate at will at this point. Sometimes I do think of moving but that would just be to Parkville or something. I’m in Waverly which is pretty chill but walkable.
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Exactly. I do think you can find something to enjoy here. I live in Charles Village, which is an odd mixed-up place. May I ask what attracts you to Parkville? I don’t know much about it
The Parkville thing is more of, a well if I was going to go suburban, that’s about as far as I would unless I just go rural. It’s quick to zip down to things but has yards basically. It’s not entirely serious in this housing market.