Don't really know how to start this but I'm at a point in my life where I need to make some major decisions and figure out what path I want to take...
As some of you know, for the past few years I've been working in Fort McMurray, Alberta in the oilsands industry, making some ridiculous money for someone my age ($110k/year and I started out there when I was 20 years old.) I started working out there December 2007. The schedule was 14 days on, 7 days off. I live in Cambridge, Ontario, which is a 4 hour flight from Fort McMurray. So I would fly to work, work 10 hours a day for 14 days straight, then fly back to Ontario for 7 days off, all expenses covered by my employer. So as you can see, I was making a shit ton of money but at the expense of basically giving them those years of my life, since I was always away from home and couldn't really do anything to set myself up for my home base back in Ontario. To add to that, my actual job up there is only really relevant to that specific industry on that scale in that city. It is not a transferable skill and in no way benefits me back here as far as trying to get a similar job using that experience.
So basically what happened is I went out there when I was 20 in December, intended to work until the following August to bank a bunch of money and then come home to go back to school and get my diploma in Computer Science (which has always been a field I've really enjoyed and to this day would still love to be doing it for a living.) I applied to school and got accepted to everything I wanted. Late Spring/early Summer comes around and it's time to accept my offer/figure out what I'm going to do. I hadn't really put away any money because despite how well I thought I was managing my finances and keeping track of things, my budget turned into more of a tracking tool than a budgeting tool and I still managed to spend all the money I made without feeling like I had changed my lifestyle at all, as I've since learned seems to be the norm with everyone. I had already done one semester of Computer Science at a university in Ontario and hated it, but mostly because of how the university system is setup compared to the college system which are details I won't bother getting into. Either way, this made me really second guess my decision to go to school, especially considering that even after graduating I would be making less money than I was in Alberta. So eventually I decided the smartest thing to do was to invest my money into a house and get a mortgage while I made enough money to qualify, work in Alberta for a few more years and play it by ear while taking advantage of the opportunity to make that kind of money and try and get a head start vs every other student my age.
Fast forward to December 2009. My project is supposed to finish in June 2010 so I am pretty much guaranteed a job until then as long as I play my cards right, so I budget and plan for everything as if I'll be working out there until then. My car would be paid for in February (18 months to pay for a brand new 2009 Toyota Matrix, not bad!) and my little bit of credit card debt I'd racked up with a few toys and some traveling was going to be all taken care of by the middle of the month. I am home for a week off, taking it easy getting ready for Christmas and then fly back on December 7th. I get to work, work a couple hours then get pulled into the HR office where they try to fire me for something I didn't do with no proof. I call them out on it asking for proof, they have none, disappear for 20 minutes and come back and lay me off instead of firing me. Basically, my boss had it out for me and didn't like me because he knew I was only there for the money and had zero passion or care for my actual job. Everything was a total shit show up there and no matter how much effort I put in, none of the problems could be fixed. So eventually I took the Office Space route and just went to work, did whatever I was asked to do and no more, just taking care of my responsibilities and doing enough that no one could really give me a hard time about it because I wasn't doing anything wrong. Understandably, this isn't the type of employee anyone wants to have, it's certainly not the type of employee I would want working for me, but what can I say, I didn't give a shit and I couldn't bring myself to give a shit, it just meant nothing to me and I had no passion for what I was doing.
Regardless, this layoff came and fucked me in the ass big time when I really wasn't expecting it, as I had been doing everything necessary and they had no reason to FIRE me, but I didn't take into account that really they could lay me off any time, especially since we were 6 months away from project completion and a lot of departments were starting to wind down. I had a $240k mortgage with $1300 monthly payments, an $800 monthly car payment, $800 in utilities/cable/internet/phone bills monthly plus my car and home insurance which works out to a little over $3k/month total in bills. Needless to say, unemployment wouldn't cover this and the $700/month I get in rent from my roommates doesn't contribute much either. I juggled a few things around, consolidated some bills and got things to the point where it is manageable, but I have enough money to pay my bills and buy myself groceries at the wholesale store, but that's it. Honestly, that is enough for me and I am very thankful that I can do that for about 6 months max where I have some time to come up with a game plan, hence this thread.
First and foremost, I realize this a forum of mostly kids my age who don't know anything about life just like me so don't worry, I am not putting all my trust into an audio engineering board to set me up for life
but I do have a lot of respect for a lot of guys here and I wanted to get all of this out of my head hoping that some people here would be able to help out and give me any advice or opinions on my situation that they might actually have. So here are basically all of my options...
1) Take advantage of EI as long as possible while putting all of my energy into the studio, praying for a miracle and hoping that somehow in 6 months I can spread the word enough to be making enough to cover my expenses. This is the proverbial dream of course, and I would love nothing more than to do this but of course it is by far the most dangerous option. I am fortunate enough to live with a member of a successful touring band who I'm sure can help put me into contact with younger bands who need recordings and if I'm lucky that will give me a bit of a foot in the door to try and spread the word. Unfortunately, since I've been in Alberta for 2 years I have not really had the opportunity to put as much time into honing my skills as an engineer as most people would. Being home for a week at a time means having enough time to run all the errands I can't take care of while I'm gone and look after the house, not really a hell of a lot of time to do any serious recording as much as I did try. I still have a lot to learn and a long way to go so this option scares the piss out of me.
2) Start an apprenticeship as a tradesman. This was one of my plans for after finishing in Alberta to begin with. I was going to start an electrical apprenticeship so that I could make some money as an apprentice while learning a valuable skill that will make me employable anywhere in the world. The problem is it's a 5 year apprenticeship and I am not sure that I am going to enjoy it at all. If I can't stick it out for the full 5 years I am wasting my time, and I don't want to end up doing something for a living I don't really like anyways, so as much as this is probably the smartest thing to do financially, you only live once and I don't want to waste it living "safe" and regretting it all when I'm 65 realizing I never pursued any of my dreams.
3) Go back to Fort McMurray. I have a contact who can probably get me out there on another project starting in February/March. It would be a little bit less money but still a lot, but on a worse schedule (20 on, 8 off). This is the safest option because I can go, make all the money I expected to make on the last job and then either come home and try and do something from a more stable financial standpoint or stay out there and make more money. The problem is I've been doing it for two years and I fucking HATE that lifestyle. I have a home, friends, family and a girlfriend that I miss way too much being out there and it's hardly worth it. I feel like being laid off was life forcing me to be a man and take advantage of the opportunity to make something of myself back home with the people I love instead of being trapped out in Alberta by the golden handcuffs, and I'm afraid if I go back I'm not going to have the balls to come home and I'll end up like all the miserable old fucks out there who threw away their whole lives for a paycheck. I hate the sounds of this option but I might have no choice if I have bills to pay and my job experience only qualifies me out there
4) Figure out a way to go to college for Computer Science, do it for two years and get a decent job doing something I actually at least enjoy. I would love to go back to school and do this but figuring out how to actually do it is tricky. Like I said, $3k in bills every month, a student can't exactly afford that. I could rent out my whole house to a family, hoping that it will cover the mortgage and let them pay the utilities so that my house is no longer an expense, move back in with my folks and take out a bunch of student loans, but that is very complicated to arrange and would require a lot of luck on my part. Plus I do not want to end up in even more debt over something like that, and as much as I would love to be a computer programmer, more and more I hate the idea of working for "the man" and relying on a paycheck. Every successful, happy person I've talked to and every book I've read on the subject has made it very clear that being self-employed and running your own business is the best way to be successful, where you are making money for yourself, and not working for someone else and helping them make money so that you can receive a check every other Friday.
5) Figure out a way to make my own money without relying solely on the studio venture. This would be great but it's a bit vague and obviously challenging, otherwise it's what everyone would be doing. But in the last year or so, I have become very seriously passionate about strength training, fitness and nutrition after always being out of shape and overweight my whole life. I am willing to bet I spend twice as much time researching fitness as I do even thinking about audio engineering. I would love to get into the fitness industry somehow, so maybe that's something worth considering. I have a friend who shares the same passion who has talked about opening a gym, sort of a barbaric, raw, powerlifting style gym without fancy machines and equipment, where the focus is on stuff like tire flipping, pushing prowler sleds, sledgehammer training, etc. This type of stuff is definitely starting to develop a bigger fanbase in the mainstream fitness world with all of the MMA hype in the last few years and there is nothing at all like that in our area so it's an untapped market and might be worth looking into. That would definitely be another dream of mine, but I don't think funding it and developing is very realistic for me right now, although I would love to be proven wrong.
I think that exhausts any options worth considering. The only ones that will make me happy are options 1 and 5, but they are just too risky for me to justify doing.
Anyways, that's basically my story guys, any input/advice/suggestions are appreciated. I'm in a rough spot right now but like I said, I am concentrating on seeing it as an opportunity, no "woe is me my life is over" bullshit going on here. I just need to figure out which direction to take it in, what goals to set and how to achieve them. I have always been a really bright dude but the educational path is just not something I am passionate about... I want to build my own life and not rely on making someone else happy to pay my bills, I just need to figure out how to do it.
As some of you know, for the past few years I've been working in Fort McMurray, Alberta in the oilsands industry, making some ridiculous money for someone my age ($110k/year and I started out there when I was 20 years old.) I started working out there December 2007. The schedule was 14 days on, 7 days off. I live in Cambridge, Ontario, which is a 4 hour flight from Fort McMurray. So I would fly to work, work 10 hours a day for 14 days straight, then fly back to Ontario for 7 days off, all expenses covered by my employer. So as you can see, I was making a shit ton of money but at the expense of basically giving them those years of my life, since I was always away from home and couldn't really do anything to set myself up for my home base back in Ontario. To add to that, my actual job up there is only really relevant to that specific industry on that scale in that city. It is not a transferable skill and in no way benefits me back here as far as trying to get a similar job using that experience.
So basically what happened is I went out there when I was 20 in December, intended to work until the following August to bank a bunch of money and then come home to go back to school and get my diploma in Computer Science (which has always been a field I've really enjoyed and to this day would still love to be doing it for a living.) I applied to school and got accepted to everything I wanted. Late Spring/early Summer comes around and it's time to accept my offer/figure out what I'm going to do. I hadn't really put away any money because despite how well I thought I was managing my finances and keeping track of things, my budget turned into more of a tracking tool than a budgeting tool and I still managed to spend all the money I made without feeling like I had changed my lifestyle at all, as I've since learned seems to be the norm with everyone. I had already done one semester of Computer Science at a university in Ontario and hated it, but mostly because of how the university system is setup compared to the college system which are details I won't bother getting into. Either way, this made me really second guess my decision to go to school, especially considering that even after graduating I would be making less money than I was in Alberta. So eventually I decided the smartest thing to do was to invest my money into a house and get a mortgage while I made enough money to qualify, work in Alberta for a few more years and play it by ear while taking advantage of the opportunity to make that kind of money and try and get a head start vs every other student my age.
Fast forward to December 2009. My project is supposed to finish in June 2010 so I am pretty much guaranteed a job until then as long as I play my cards right, so I budget and plan for everything as if I'll be working out there until then. My car would be paid for in February (18 months to pay for a brand new 2009 Toyota Matrix, not bad!) and my little bit of credit card debt I'd racked up with a few toys and some traveling was going to be all taken care of by the middle of the month. I am home for a week off, taking it easy getting ready for Christmas and then fly back on December 7th. I get to work, work a couple hours then get pulled into the HR office where they try to fire me for something I didn't do with no proof. I call them out on it asking for proof, they have none, disappear for 20 minutes and come back and lay me off instead of firing me. Basically, my boss had it out for me and didn't like me because he knew I was only there for the money and had zero passion or care for my actual job. Everything was a total shit show up there and no matter how much effort I put in, none of the problems could be fixed. So eventually I took the Office Space route and just went to work, did whatever I was asked to do and no more, just taking care of my responsibilities and doing enough that no one could really give me a hard time about it because I wasn't doing anything wrong. Understandably, this isn't the type of employee anyone wants to have, it's certainly not the type of employee I would want working for me, but what can I say, I didn't give a shit and I couldn't bring myself to give a shit, it just meant nothing to me and I had no passion for what I was doing.
Regardless, this layoff came and fucked me in the ass big time when I really wasn't expecting it, as I had been doing everything necessary and they had no reason to FIRE me, but I didn't take into account that really they could lay me off any time, especially since we were 6 months away from project completion and a lot of departments were starting to wind down. I had a $240k mortgage with $1300 monthly payments, an $800 monthly car payment, $800 in utilities/cable/internet/phone bills monthly plus my car and home insurance which works out to a little over $3k/month total in bills. Needless to say, unemployment wouldn't cover this and the $700/month I get in rent from my roommates doesn't contribute much either. I juggled a few things around, consolidated some bills and got things to the point where it is manageable, but I have enough money to pay my bills and buy myself groceries at the wholesale store, but that's it. Honestly, that is enough for me and I am very thankful that I can do that for about 6 months max where I have some time to come up with a game plan, hence this thread.
First and foremost, I realize this a forum of mostly kids my age who don't know anything about life just like me so don't worry, I am not putting all my trust into an audio engineering board to set me up for life
but I do have a lot of respect for a lot of guys here and I wanted to get all of this out of my head hoping that some people here would be able to help out and give me any advice or opinions on my situation that they might actually have. So here are basically all of my options...1) Take advantage of EI as long as possible while putting all of my energy into the studio, praying for a miracle and hoping that somehow in 6 months I can spread the word enough to be making enough to cover my expenses. This is the proverbial dream of course, and I would love nothing more than to do this but of course it is by far the most dangerous option. I am fortunate enough to live with a member of a successful touring band who I'm sure can help put me into contact with younger bands who need recordings and if I'm lucky that will give me a bit of a foot in the door to try and spread the word. Unfortunately, since I've been in Alberta for 2 years I have not really had the opportunity to put as much time into honing my skills as an engineer as most people would. Being home for a week at a time means having enough time to run all the errands I can't take care of while I'm gone and look after the house, not really a hell of a lot of time to do any serious recording as much as I did try. I still have a lot to learn and a long way to go so this option scares the piss out of me.
2) Start an apprenticeship as a tradesman. This was one of my plans for after finishing in Alberta to begin with. I was going to start an electrical apprenticeship so that I could make some money as an apprentice while learning a valuable skill that will make me employable anywhere in the world. The problem is it's a 5 year apprenticeship and I am not sure that I am going to enjoy it at all. If I can't stick it out for the full 5 years I am wasting my time, and I don't want to end up doing something for a living I don't really like anyways, so as much as this is probably the smartest thing to do financially, you only live once and I don't want to waste it living "safe" and regretting it all when I'm 65 realizing I never pursued any of my dreams.
3) Go back to Fort McMurray. I have a contact who can probably get me out there on another project starting in February/March. It would be a little bit less money but still a lot, but on a worse schedule (20 on, 8 off). This is the safest option because I can go, make all the money I expected to make on the last job and then either come home and try and do something from a more stable financial standpoint or stay out there and make more money. The problem is I've been doing it for two years and I fucking HATE that lifestyle. I have a home, friends, family and a girlfriend that I miss way too much being out there and it's hardly worth it. I feel like being laid off was life forcing me to be a man and take advantage of the opportunity to make something of myself back home with the people I love instead of being trapped out in Alberta by the golden handcuffs, and I'm afraid if I go back I'm not going to have the balls to come home and I'll end up like all the miserable old fucks out there who threw away their whole lives for a paycheck. I hate the sounds of this option but I might have no choice if I have bills to pay and my job experience only qualifies me out there
4) Figure out a way to go to college for Computer Science, do it for two years and get a decent job doing something I actually at least enjoy. I would love to go back to school and do this but figuring out how to actually do it is tricky. Like I said, $3k in bills every month, a student can't exactly afford that. I could rent out my whole house to a family, hoping that it will cover the mortgage and let them pay the utilities so that my house is no longer an expense, move back in with my folks and take out a bunch of student loans, but that is very complicated to arrange and would require a lot of luck on my part. Plus I do not want to end up in even more debt over something like that, and as much as I would love to be a computer programmer, more and more I hate the idea of working for "the man" and relying on a paycheck. Every successful, happy person I've talked to and every book I've read on the subject has made it very clear that being self-employed and running your own business is the best way to be successful, where you are making money for yourself, and not working for someone else and helping them make money so that you can receive a check every other Friday.
5) Figure out a way to make my own money without relying solely on the studio venture. This would be great but it's a bit vague and obviously challenging, otherwise it's what everyone would be doing. But in the last year or so, I have become very seriously passionate about strength training, fitness and nutrition after always being out of shape and overweight my whole life. I am willing to bet I spend twice as much time researching fitness as I do even thinking about audio engineering. I would love to get into the fitness industry somehow, so maybe that's something worth considering. I have a friend who shares the same passion who has talked about opening a gym, sort of a barbaric, raw, powerlifting style gym without fancy machines and equipment, where the focus is on stuff like tire flipping, pushing prowler sleds, sledgehammer training, etc. This type of stuff is definitely starting to develop a bigger fanbase in the mainstream fitness world with all of the MMA hype in the last few years and there is nothing at all like that in our area so it's an untapped market and might be worth looking into. That would definitely be another dream of mine, but I don't think funding it and developing is very realistic for me right now, although I would love to be proven wrong.
I think that exhausts any options worth considering. The only ones that will make me happy are options 1 and 5, but they are just too risky for me to justify doing.
Anyways, that's basically my story guys, any input/advice/suggestions are appreciated. I'm in a rough spot right now but like I said, I am concentrating on seeing it as an opportunity, no "woe is me my life is over" bullshit going on here. I just need to figure out which direction to take it in, what goals to set and how to achieve them. I have always been a really bright dude but the educational path is just not something I am passionate about... I want to build my own life and not rely on making someone else happy to pay my bills, I just need to figure out how to do it.
Best of luck!!!!
