Gday everybody.
Often I wish I could simply sit and create page after page of my comic every day.
Unfortunately I have to go out and work a ‘regular’ job to pay the bills.
Personally I teach children at schools and resorts here in Australia how to draw cartoons.
I also ‘advise’ on health insurance with Combined Insurance (started in 1922 by WC Stone) and occasionally sell computer-based educational packages.
I have also done landscaping, roofing, ‘Parkrangering’, general labouring, illustration work for marketing material, tutoring and was a newsd cameraman for a breif stint.
So what do you guys and gals do for a day job?
Or do you have a rich benefactor that pays you to sit at home and draw all day?

I am a substitute janitor for my old school district. People call off, then they call me in to clean their section. Sometimes work is booming and I'll get 5-6 days a week, others it's dead and I'll rake in 2-3 days a week. Job is easy as fuck and pays good too.

Usually the sections are absolutely tiny and can be finished up in 5-6 hours, leaving me with 2-3 hours to sit around and read. Some take even less time than that (some as short as 2 hours!). No, it's not cause I'm lazy. They literally ARE that small. 15-20 minutes a classroom and an average of 10-15 rooms per section. I've never gotten a single complaint from a teacher after I finished a section either.

Plus they're gonna be hiring full time people soon and they got so many full time openings that I'm all but guaranteed one.

I work in the copy center at OfficeMax about 3 days a week to cover the bills that I can't pay with art yet. It's not a bad job. It doesn't pay well, but it's low-stress and is at least semi-related to comics (I've actually learned quite a bit about printing and pre-press while working there). At the very least, it beats the deli I used to work at.

lol!

Good on you Rich! I wish you luck with that man. You're doing well there! :)

My real job is my artwork. That's my comic stuff and whatever else I do.
-It's not how I make my money, but that's not important. I make my money through all sorts of ways…
Doing booking admin for a healthcare company, some freelance graphic design, and illustration. Sometimes web design…
In the past there's been more graphic design, teaching digital animation, sometimes even comics and and artwork! :)

I'm a full time college student. It's kinda hard getting a job when I have to compete with 20,000 other people.

i do database software support for about 300 AIDS research labs. about 1/4 of them are international - africa, china, south america and a few in europe. the rest are here in the US. We are responsible for collecting and analysing data from these labs and keeping the software working so the lab techs can use it.

Been job hunting for many months. No job yet… A Masters degree is completely worthless, as it turns out. :-/

I'm a Dietary Prep Cook at a HCF nursing home.

HCF is a gaint company of nursing homes around the country, they also own GFS food. *Very nasty, generic, nasty, cheap food.*

I'm not a cook, what I do really is make small foods, small meals, drinks, snacks, and cheap up the kitchen and dinning room. Its very hard, stressful work. *If I mess up on a food item, I could actually kill someone. @_@* Plus a little deperssing seeing as everyone that lives there can DIE at any time. @_@

But, I get to have free shots, medical care if something happens, and every thanksgiving, they give out free turkeys! =D

I teach English and German. And I'm half-heartedly trying to finish college on the side (this is possible here because of specifics of our education system that I won't bore you with). I love my job and I've been doing it for six years, which in most any other field would be reason enough to just quit college, but if you're in education, well… you can't really do that forever without a proper degree. That part kinda sucks, but I'm thankful I've found a fulfilling job that I can see myself doing for the rest of my life. It also pays fairly well here in Switzerland, so that's good.

office worker for well known company.

I'm a… um.. Rent-A-… er… a security guar… no… a Security Officer. Not a great job. Pay is very VERY low, but a lot of people end up hating you because they can't do what they want to do (like get drunk in front of a grocery store then scam shoppers for more money to buy more beer so they can get more drunk and… you get the picture). I'm out looking for another line of work though.

TheMidge28
office worker for well known company.

I don't know it.

kennatsu
I'm out looking for another line of work though.

Porn star. ;)

ozoneocean

TheMidge28
office worker for well known company.

I don't know it.

um…yeah…because I didn't tell you. ;)

OMG! WTF? Really? o_O
What do they make/sell/offer/provide/mine/farm/design/destroy?

I'm a high school English teacher. It's only a 0.5 position though so I don't know where I'll be next year.

I also used to teach art at a small private art school. I miss being there. :(

I work at a used CD, movies, and games store. I've been working here for over a year now, and it's a good job. It works around the life of a college student, and I get to be surrounded by things I love, so that makes up for the low pay.

Such is the life of a register monkey. :3

-W

ozoneocean
OMG! WTF? Really? o_O
What do they make/sell/offer/provide/mine/farm/design/destroy?

well mr sassy pants, they sell stuff.

Full time college student and part time office b*tch at a little law firm. Stressful schedule, that's for sure.

fulltime data entry/office clerk and part time auto apprentice.

WingNut
I work at a used CD, movies, and games store. I've been working here for over a year now, and it's a good job. It works around the life of a college student, and I get to be surrounded by things I love, so that makes up for the low pay.

Such is the life of a register monkey. :3

-W

Stop lying. You're a C-list actor, and you know it.

Cthulhu

WingNut
-W

Stop lying. You're a C-list actor, and you know it.

That's true actually. I liked him best in Boob Vacation 3, it was WAY better than the first two with Corey Haim, (that guy isn't what he used to be).

My job is to find out if threads have been duplicated.

Who here can find the irony in my post? It includes me somehow.

Yeah… I remember that one now! Heh. That one depressed me because of what Skool wrote about working in instructional design. Man I studied that as part of my post grad work a few years ago! All the papers and studies I had to read about that stuff, ugh. A friend who owned an instructional design company even offered me a job in it. What would life have been like if I took her up on it? I'll never know…
-prolly would have had more money for one thing!

When I was in high school, I worked part-time at a travel agency. That agency closed and I kept all the airline ticket pamphlets and those awesome model planes.

Now, years later I work at a local radio station.

I work for IT at the University that I also attend.

I'll most likely get a full time IT job here too, instead of getting a full time art job which is what I'd prefer :/

I'm a fulltime cameraman for the local network around here, called RTV13. ‘Here’ is in Tilburg, which is in the Netherlands, which is in Yurp. Zomg, internationality, right!?
So yeah, if there's news around here, I film it. \o/

I'm planning on starting an English study though, to eventually become an English teacher.

I work the night shift at the front desk of a popular hotel.

(I draw and watch movies for eight hours, then go home.)


It's my favorite job out of all the ones I've had so far. I wonder why?

I have a rich benefactor who pays me to sit at home and make comics all day.

Seriously. :-D

We're both hoping it'll eventually turn into something I can at least make $10,000 a year or so from, but my wife makes enough money that she can comfortably support us probably indefinitely, so over about the past two years I've created MWWT (nine months of writing, outlining, research, etc.), interviewed and hired artists (about three more months), and gotten about 31 pages illustrated plus promotional materials (nine more months). That's all been full-time, and currently I'm primarily involved in promoting the project and getting a 13-page sample penciled/inked/colored so we have something to send off to Image and whoever else as a pitch for a regular paper-and-ink bimonthly.

BEFORE I went mad and decided to try to break into the low-paying and insanely competitive comics field, I was an IT specialist making $32/hr. to monitor a 66-workstation network at a public school. I have yet to make a single penny on MWWT, but I am foolishly optimistic. ^.^

barking_frog
I have a rich benefactor who pays me to sit at home and make comics all day.

Seriously. :-D

We're both hoping it'll eventually turn into something I can at least make $10,000 a year or so from, but my wife makes enough money that she can comfortably support us probably indefinitely

Dude… you're the luckiest guy on the planet no doubt.

Soldier for another year and a half.
After that I have no idea.