My Adventures in Adulting

25 Years

25 years in the tattoo industry.
Is it an industry? I suppose I hear the term all the time. However, no matter what they call it, I've been doing this twenty five fucking years man.
I am very proud of the fact that I have been working with my hands in such a way as this, to feed my family and paying some bills. I've been making a living for this long, doing what I do. Making your imagination work for me and interpreting your words into a reality on paper or skin.
But hey, it wasn't all that.
I feel blessed that for so long life gave me this purpose to fill a day with. I could have done anything in my life but there was nothing else that came along that I would have loved as much as this and I will let you know that there were jobs before this, that I did love.
I did work that I can still see today.
I did work that you cannot.
Living in my travel trailer today, I wish I was home to take photos of the photos I do have of those times. I hold onto them dearly.
In Deadwood South Dakota I can see my work in a casino that used to be really big but now it's all divided up into different casinos. But my friends and I helped build that into what was at one time, Deadwood's biggest casino. I built the walls and the ceiling.
In the ceiling there are fiber optics which make the ceiling look like stars in the night sky. Some of them even have constellations in them. That was pretty dope. I guess I have always loved working on a crew.
After a workweek, on Friday, we would get our paycheck and buy up some beer after work and go jumping in the lake at a lil swimming hole called Jenny Gulch. I remember how hot and grimy we could get working in those conditions and how the lake water would wash that away after the first jump.
Maybe I liked working with those guys then. Some of us are still friends from way back when.
I used to work on a crew doing exploration gold drilling. Talk about dirty. I loved dragging back 500 lbs pipe. There was something manly about it. My favorite job on the drill rig was the roost on a core drilling rig.
I was 40 feet above the deck moving 300 lbs pipe over to a stack by rolling the top of the pipes into position. We did use cranes.
I'm not that strong.
What was cool about working this kind of job was that we were making all kinds of money but had no time to spend it. We didn't get time off until our hole was drilled and so I wouldn't have a day off for six weeks. But that was three paychecks to spend. Instead of saving it. . .
I traveled on it. The best things in life.
These jobs aren't in order by anything other than my favorites. Kind of in order.
I worked as a t-shirt artist a couple of times before I was a tattooer. Silkscreens. I did like that job and if I didn't mess up, I got to use the extra shirts to make my own designs. Which honestly, for as shitty as my art was back then, I was still proud to wear it.
Moreover, during all of these things I was into escaping. Maybe I have always been this way.
I have always escaped through some porthole.
Reality really hasn't been my thing ever maybe.
The reason I love tattooing. The number one reason, I love tattooing so much, is probably rooted in my childhood. It's just you and the coloring book.
Humming along to tunes in your head. My favorite job of all time.
Doing something that makes people around me happy, while all the while, not being present.
I check in here and there but for the most part, I escape into the present. Yeah, I'm present in the the present at the moment there is nothing from yesterday and there is no dream further than the present. I can focus solely on the task at hand.
I'm not gonna be cocky and say every client has been happy with my work. Hell, even I am getting stuff lasered of my body for ten years now. But fuck you if you think nobody's been happy.
Regrets?
What is a life without regrets?
Work wise, I feel I gave every request a solid effort at least within the realm I'm comfortable in. I've made up for my mistakes with people if they ever let me make up for it.
I wish I created more stuff. More paperwork. More canvas art. I wish I had the work to show for all those years of tattooing. I kept the sketchbooks. I have those at least.
I had a job once at a franchise called Golden Coral.
I loved this job. I was a baker and in this position, I was able to work by myself in a small kitchen bakery away from everyone else. I liked it cause it was an easy job and it made people happy while I did my brainless job. Not that I didn't have to think.
But I didn't have to create anything either.
Our bakery in there had me, and I didn't follow recipes to a T. When I made that crab salad, it was like no other crab salad you ever had at a Golden Coral. I know. Cause I made a lot of it my way. Jajaja
The way I remember it, I was young... and people would just come from miles around to just eat plates of crab salad. And some did.
They would wait for me to make up a batch and that's all they would eat there.
I know they came for the meat loaf. They have some pretty consistent meatloaf, cause no matter where I am In the country... it tastes the same.