tossing coins on the Cha Ching

Whooee, baby.

I just did something I was threatening to do, dreading to do, dreaming of doing, for ages.

I just placed a large order at Amazon.com. By my standards a VERY large order. Here's what I ordered:

1) iMac 24" -- Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.4 gHz, 1gb RAM
2) Adobe CS3 Design Premium -- includes Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, and Acrobat
3) Adobe Fireworks CS3 -- rounds out the web capabilities of the above
4) Nikon D80 digital SLR camera body -- not only for those occasions when a client may need photos taken, but also for photography as a potential side career, and definitely as a serious hobby again, one I drifted out of after it became too expensive to constantly buy and develop film

Why did I just blow nearly $3500 of my retirement fund payout on this stuff? Simple: Because I need it--I've been needing it for years--and now, for one rare chance, I'm able to get it.

Let me elaborate. In my opinion, the last 7 or 8 years of my life have set my career back in certain ways. I suppose I did well from an experience perspective, compared to the cruddy layout work I was doing for the magazine in the '90s; I mean, I got to do a lot more different kinds of design projects, even if after a while the work got boring, stale, and I got tired of the job environment. But there were two big problems.

The first problem was initially an advantage for this longtime blinkered Mac snob: the place was all PC. After a year of unemployment, I figured that it was probably a hindrance to not be able to claim PC proficiency on my resume. Thankfully, the scales fell from my eyes after I actually got to use PCs instead of simply bashing them. No, by the Windows XP era, PCs were demonstrably not automatically pieces of crap. My Windows 2000 machine at work was in fact the most stable, trouble-free computer I'd ever used, and it worked great for graphic design. Best of all, I was able to build my own reasonably powerful PC for home, for about $600. I'd intended to eventually use it for freelance design.

Meanwhile, I got left behind by the rest of the design world. Mac OSX had been introduced right around the time I was laid off from the magazine, so I never got a chance to use it at work, and I could never afford to buy my own. My old beige G3 Mac from the magazine (I inherited it at the liquidation sale, intending to use it for freelance design) soon became obsolete. Being a Mac whiz doesn't have a lot of pull when the last version you used was OS 8.6, and in the meantime you've forgotten almost everything. Those rare times when I fire up the old beige G3, I forget that the Apple key is not in the same spot as a PC's Ctrl key.

The second big problem is that, in a decade when the web is the place to be if you're a creative professional, I got to do no web work at my most recent job. None. The organization hired two other guys in succession to do their web work. I have nothing against either of them--the current guy is amazing and I'm very lucky to have him as a friend and mentor. My beef is that I was never given the opportunity to even try to work on web stuff...even to help. I was kept on the print side, getting more and more frustrated and bored, my growth stagnating.

I have several threads of jumbled thoughts at this point, but let's flash (no pun intended) to the present. I quit my job and relocated to New Jersey. You know that. Once again, I have my mind set on freelancing. But of course, that takes time. I need to find a job in the meantime. There are plenty. But, as luck would have it, they all, with rare exceptions, list Mac OSX and web experience as job requirements. If they're in a more specific mood, they want people who know Flash and Dreamweaver, sometimes Fireworks. All requirements that I don't meet. How do I meet those requirements? Gotta do it myself, on my own time. Only one problem: I don't have a Mac. I don't have CS3 (includes InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks)--so not only can I not teach myself all the web software that will make me marketable, I don't even have the software I need to do freelance work to try to make ends meet. And up until very recently I didn't have any money with which to buy all this crap. Yeah, I was set up real good.

I'm sure no one really did think this, but it's tempting to believe that someone, somewhere, was satisfied that another lower-middle-class riff-raff got run out of the design business due to lack of money and lack of the right job/connections/savvy. All is yet right in the world. See, I think there's a reason why designers love Macs so much, and why Macs and graphics software are so expensive: they're gatekeepers to The Club. There's no one that hip people with money like to hang out with more than other hip people with money. And there's no one that hip people with money like to hang out with less than the unwashed masses...the kind that use PCs. The kind who only think they're designers because they figured out how to add flower borders and twenty different fonts in Microsoft Word. Real Designers Use Macs. So it was Written, So it shall be done.

Okay.

One good thing that did come out of my last job, however, was that I built up a decent sized retirement fund. Screw it; I'm cashing out. It's my money, and I have a very good mind what I want to do with it.

So basically, I see this large purchase as an investment. We poor folks aren't supposed to be able to invest anything in anything--we're just supposed to slave away for peanuts and look pathetic compared to the hip trust-fund babies who ape our look. I see this as putting the jump on The Man...a little bit of payback, chewing the rope around my wrists with my teeth in order to start hammering at the other guy's balls. I'm tired of being a penniless peon. If I have to make a little sacrifice in order to take control of my life, so be it.

Besides, Macs aren't bad computers. But neither are PCs. And that's okay.

Note, by the way, that this huge purchase also represents something of a return to my roots. After all, I've spent most of my creative years on various Macs, and my first and favorite camera was an old Nikkormat FT2 with which I lensed many wonderful images.

UPDATE--I had to put off finishing this rant till today. My CS3 has already been shipped, and the iMac is supposed to be delivered today. I'm also in a slightly less vindictive mood. Maybe I was ranting a bit above. But dang, did it feel good to get that shit off my chest.