About ◦ Contact ◦ Archives ◦ Hom

A Free Life

July 4, 2009

In my case, as with many others who emancipate themselves from the 9 to 5 work schedule, there had never been a choice. I had to be free to choose how I would spend my time and how I would live my life. Perhaps I had been born that way, but if not, twenty years of working on a farm from before dawn until after dark and almost as many years of being told where to go, what to do and what to think in school had given me a feverish need to escape the 'normal' work world and make a living elsewhere.

Although I might have been willing to accept any way of making money to earn my freedom, the way that I preferred was to be paid for my creative work. I already knew there was no pleasure for me as great as creating. No other satisfaction could match the feeling of drawing, and of writing poetry. These pursuits, however, offered no viable income. The route toward making a living that so many fine artists and poets have taken since World War II-earn an MFA degree and become a college professor- was not available to me. I could not stand being in school any more than I could tolerate working in an office. In both worlds, there is a boss, and I was done with bosses.

Then, when I was twenty five years old, I found a possible solution: become a cartoonist. It literally occurred to me while walking down the street. Someone made the cartoons in the newspapers and the magazines. Someone was paid to do it. Maybe I could also be one of those fortunate people. Immediately I began writing and drawing cartoons. I studied what was being published. I refined the work. The first submission came quickly. The first rejections came even more quickly. For six months there was nothing but rejection. They did not matter. I had no other choice, and because I had no other choice I eventually broke through. Within two years I was able to quit my job and become a fulltime cartoonist.

The great writer, Henry Miller, spoke of the need for a writer to pursue his work with the desperation that only comes when you are backed up against a wall and have no place to escape. Such is the way that many feel who have the drive for freedom. It is not necessarily heroic to want to know what the world is like when one can move through it at will, without an eye on the clock, but surely the heroes of history have felt the need to break away from what oppresses them. Oppression of a race, of a country, or of an individual invariably can be reduced to the inequalities of conventional wisdom.

In 21st century America, the conventional wisdom is that a person must have the stability of a paycheck which arrives in your bank account every two weeks. In order to have this stability, people in our society are willing to cede their freedom to those who can provide the paycheck. One of the unforeseen blessings of the current depression is that more and more people realize that such stability, when being provided by an outside entity, such as a corporation or a manufacturer, is an illusion. People have been forced to scramble to earn money on their own, to become entrepreneurs, because the illusion has been punctured. Such puncturing is the rudest kind of dislocation, a chaos that I would not wish on anyone. When the economy improves, however, and the corporations and manufacturers begin to hire again, there will be a significant number of eligible workers who do not offer themselves up again. They have found freedom in pursuing their own capacities for earning money at home or with their own business.

This freedom takes the simplest forms in every day life. The need for money is still present. No one short of being rich enough to live on their savings can do without making money. Being free does not mean you do not work. The free, in fact, work harder for themselves than the outside employed work for others. Freedom is having the choice when to work. It was not ordained on high that humanity is most productive from 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, as it was not ordained that school is the only place to learn about the world.

I wanted to know what happened in the world when everyone else was at work. What was it like to be on the highway when there was no rush hour traffic? What was it like to be in a grocery store without long lines, at the fitness club when a workout machine was available, in the middle of the woods when the paths were unclogged. Many others feel the same way. The reasons they give to themselves for not finding out-I will not be able to make a living, I will be unproductive if no one tells me what to do, I will be lonely-turn out to be fears without a basis. The day begins. Others rush off to work, the free go where they please, when they please. Once the propaganda they have been taught-there is only one way to live your life, there is only one kind of stability-begins to break up like an ice floe in the spring-they realize that the work police are not coming at any minute to break down their door and arrest them for non-conformity. They begin to realize they can do as they please with their time.

Once the realization comes, the free cannot go back. Nor do they wish to go back.

Category: Freelance Living, Cartoon Income, Fiction Income

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted through the All Content Network at: andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Does the Medium Change the Message?

-Andrew Grossman

May 20, 2009

No doubt in the first years of the content for fee model, professional online content will be dominated by properties that are well known in the offline world. When people download fiction on their e-reader they will favor such names as Stephen King, John Grisham and J.K. Rowling. When they look to license a cartoon they will gravitate toward Dilbert, Baby Blues and other features at CartoonResource.com. Well known columnists in the hard copy newspaper world are, and will continue to be for some time, the names that people seek to find in their Google and ALOT searches.

The internet will spawn its own properties and famous creators. These creators will understand the specific characteristics and aesthetics of the internet, and even more importantly will understand in what ways the human brain, spirit and attention span have been changed by search and surfing. Also of prime importance to a creator is the main fact of the internet, and perhaps the single biggest fact to be considered in contemporary human society: the internet offers the potential to reach every single human being in the world right at this moment in time.

If every one in the world, every member of every race, religion, tribe, country, political belief and economic condition, will eventually be on the internet, why not create properties for them now? Internet creators have already accepted one condition: faith. Ten years ago, if you were spending precious work hours doing web development for e-commerce sites, it was because you believed that the potential of the internet would become a reality. Believe that still for the vast tracts of the world that lack the technology adaptation and political leadership to have access. The barriers will fall. Consider the importance, then, of creating an online novel, comic strip, music and movie library, that will provide a welcoming appeal to those who will soon meet us here.

Consider also the following characteristics, their connection to information and to the collective subconscious of humanity:

1. Hyperlinks between all knowledge, emotion, human experience, between all humans.

2. First hand accounts of life in all parts of the world, therefore avoiding a media filter.

3. Open space of close communication, and within the openness created by one-on-one communication,

the tantalizing chance at endless space provided by one-with-and-among-four billion communication.

This is a new universe we are creating.

Category: Kindle, Blogging

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted through the All Content Network at: andrew@andrewgrossman.net