One of the biggest struggles I've had over the years is that the regular American job market attempts to strangle and pigeon-hole everyone into predetermined slots. Personally, I can't stand that. It's not who I am.
As a creative personality, I have to be motivated intellectually and artistically by whatever assignment comes my way or I start to feel like I've lost a sense of purpose. It's this quest for creative challenges that drove me into the commercial art field where I've done everything from Art Direction, advertising and marketing, gameboard design, comic books, and recently dabbled with creative web design. That same drive for intellectual stimulation is why as soon as I felt my creative instincts waning I took a break from the art field and entered law school.
Law school trained me in how to research and write persuasively, which are great compliments to artistic training. Law school also afforded me the opportunity to become a Legal Research and Writing instructor, which is hard work but I continue to enjoy doing it while continuing as a full-time commercial artist and occasional writer/editor. In the last 4 years alone, I have written well over 100 pieces of fiction and non-fiction, a slew of reviews, edited a few books, and produced literally hundreds of illustrations for books, magazines, and games.
I'm always looking for a new challenge.