When I left school, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and I took a year off to put off any decisions. Well that year turned into the rest of my life and for a while, I became a shoemaker. How on earth did I make such a weird career choice, you ask? I didn't, it just kind of happened. I have a natural aptitude for craftsmanship and pattern making so I didn't need training and I just figured it out as I went along. I have very short, wide feet and it has always been difficult for me to buy shoes that fit. An acquaintance sold me a set of leatherworking tools and I decided to make it a project to make myself a pair of shoes that fitted. The result was not bad and I started taking orders. Eventually, I started selling my wares on flea markets. The living was rather precarious but I survived. This was in the early 1990s. Today, we take the cameras on our phones for granted but back in the day, taking decent photos was a expensive and complicated process and I don't have any pictures from those days.
The picture below is of pair of shoes where I had to hand carve the soles from wood. Not too difficult, but the challenge is to make the left and right of the pair closely resemble each other. When there's an angle grinder, there's a way
I get bored rather easily and I had gotten tired of doing flea markets and I was frustrated earning so little for skilled work. Luckily, my craftsmanship started to catch the eye of a couple of local designers and I started working on fashion shows and film shoots, making all sorts of leather items besides shoes and I also did upholstery. It was great to give up selling on flea markets in 2004 because the commissions were much more interesting and technically challenging and I got to work on projects that were shown internationally. This often entailed working crazy hours under very high pressure but was it fun at the time, apart from designer egos and coke-head film-industry people who weren't very good at planning.
The global financial meltdown of 2008 saw many budgets slashed and work dried up to a trickle but I carried on doing the odd bit of film work. At the age of 40, I decided it was time to stop being a luddite and embrace the tech world. I stopped being computer-illiterate, learned Drupal, Wordpress and content creation and found the complete break from the past quite refreshing.
After 45, I found my tolerance levels for coke-heads and drama queens significantly reduced and stopped doing film work. I still do the odd commission but I can't say that I miss it that much because working in those environments generates a very high-level of burnout and destroys interpersonal relationships. I've worked freelance my whole life so I'm used to the financial ups and downs. Steemit is a project I'm enjoying, trying to be creative at my own pace at home instead of struggling with crazy people.