utter randomonium

This week’s WoW we’re talking about taking risks. More specifically:

What’s the riskiest thing you’ve ever done? What risky thing would you like to do? What’s a risk you’re just too afraid to take (although you really want to?)

I’m not much of a risk-taker. I suppose the riskiest thing I did was offer to support my husband financially while he followed his more artistic dreams. We were living together but not married, and he was absolutely miserable at his umpteenth tech support job. And he was making me miserable. Eventually I told him that I made enough money to support us both, and I offered to pay for him to go back to school so he could devote himself to his recording studio full time. “If this is what I have to look forward to,” I said, indicating his general unpleasantness, “then I don’t want to marry you.”

Granted, it wasn’t a very difficult choice for him: job you hate versus woman you love. It was tough for him to get used to not “pulling his weight” financially, but eventually he got into a groove and now works regular hours on both his recording studio and his web comic. He’s happy and I’m happy. And as an added bonus, he does all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, yard work, and grocery shopping. That alone is worth it to me.

A risk I’d love to take but probably could never do would be to make a drastic career change myself. Don’t get me wrong – I like image science just fine – it’s just that I’ve always wondered how I would do in a more arts-related field, like working in graphic design or writing magazine articles. I wonder what I’d do if I were to pursue an MFA, for example. But I don’t see myself doing that. Financially it doesn’t make any sense (two artists under one roof can’t make the mortgage payments), and honestly, most things I want to do I can do while working full time – they just take longer. So I continue to do what I always do: work on stuff in my free time, and hope that one day they start paying for themselves.