Medicine is all-encompassing.  Make sure you have a hobby and protect it!!

October always marks an anniversary that makes me smile.  33 years ago, a remarkable computer program called Autodesk Animator appeared.

I started drawing cartoons in grade school.  Soon, I had a whole cast of characters and the goal was to make them funny.  I was constantly getting into trouble because I was doing them in class.

In 3rd grade, my father instructed me on a way to create easy flip books for animation.  Thus, animation became my next obsession.

In high school, I tried 8mm movie film animations.  Animation is extremely tedious.  Yet, I still loved it. As the years went on, I advanced to using clear acetate sheets with acetate paint, converting them to Kodachrome with a Super 8mm Minolta camera.  Again, very time-consuming, but also very therapeutic.

Meanwhile, after High School, I found the educational process of Pre-Med and Medical school extremely stressful.  I remember being terribly depressed with the pressure cooker atmosphere of Pre-Med in particular.  Late in my third year of Pre-Med, drowning in the preparation work of MCAT’s, Organic Chemistry and Quantum Physics (Yes…I was a Physics Major), I decided to create a daily cartoon strip for the UVA newspaper.  I was soundly rejected, but I kept trying.  After a lot of months of daily cartooning, I was accepted.  Somehow, the extra side work of cartooning actually made me do better in classwork.

Then, I got even more foolish.  I started work on two short animated Super 8mm sound films.  They were lame, but were also a tremendous learning experience.  Over time, even during the ordeal known as medical school, they improved.  (https://youtu.be/rrX60i5Yvy8)

Internship and Residency, however, with its 36-hour shifts, managed to crush my animation hobby, though I still contributed cartoons to a magazine called “Resident and Staff Physician.”But, then, in October of 1989, Autodesk released an extremely well-written and revolutionary MS-DOS art program that even worked on an Intel 286 chip: Animator.  For the first time, I bought a computer and started learning and drawing.  It was life-changing.

Now, 33 years later, it is laughably primitive.  I currently use Toon Boom Studio on machines of astonishing power.

I also learned something early on with my hobby.  Many people have approached me to do work for pay.  Typically, it involves books or television commercials.  After attempting a few of these, I decided such projects were very bad for me.  It made my hobby transform into a new drudgery that I liked even less than a bad day in healthcare.  Nope!  I learned my lesson.  Keep your hobby a hobby.  Draw what you want.  Animate a story you like.  If others like it, great.  If not, you don’t have to look at them!

But, please don’t pay me to do my hobby.  With all the crap happening in healthcare, I need the escape!

My YouTube channel is pretty disorganized: Steven Mussey – YouTube