This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Up next, we bring you Jim O'Brien, a Pittsburgh native, a sports journalist, and the author of the Pittsburgh Proud series of books. Today, Jim brings us a story about Steelers legend, the chief, the founding owner of the franchise, Art Rooney Sr. I'd like to tell you a story about my favorite person in all of pro sports. He's like the grandfather that I never had.
My grandparents were all gone by the time I was a little boy, so I guess I needed a grandpa. And Art Rooney filled the bill. He was the nicest guy that I ever met in the sports world. I met him when I was a teenager and I went out to see the Steelers practice one day at the fairgrounds in the South Park area of Pittsburgh.
Boy, was that a dump. They had horses out there during the week and sometimes the players had to watch where they stepped on the grass, but somehow the Steelers back in the 50s managed to practice there and Art Rooney was normally on the sideline. I met him one day on the sideline and talked to him and he told me who some of his favorite players were and some of his favorite sports writers. And just to show you what kind of a man he was, the next day he sends me a postcard and he apologizes for having the temerity to tell me who his favorite sports writers were.
Now I was a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh. I was 19 years old and Art Rooney's apologizing to me. You know, I was the sports editor of the student newspaper and he's apologizing to me, but that's that's what a humble man he was. And Art Rooney is responsible for the reason is responsible for the reason that I go to so many funerals today. He says you can't miss a funeral of a friend or an acquaintance. You've got to show up and if you never hear another story about Art Rooney, this one should suffice to tell you exactly what a wonderful man he was. I went to the funeral when his wife Kathleen died.
I was covering the Pittsburgh Steelers at the time for the Pittsburgh Press and she had died while we were in Seattle. And a couple days later they had a funeral at what they called the Rooney Church, which was St. Peter's on the north side of Pittsburgh. The reason they call it the Rooney Church was for twofold. One is Mr. Rooney was always seated in one of the first pews in that church on a daily basis.
And secondly, no one in the community gave more money to St. Peter's than did Art Rooney. So his wife Kathleen dies and the funeral was held at Devlin's Funeral Home also on the north side of Pittsburgh. And just about everybody in Pittsburgh showed up for the funeral and just about every priest when they had the mass at St. Peter's, just about every priest showed up for the funeral. George Young, a good friend of the Rooney's and at the time the general manager of the New York Giants said that nobody in Pittsburgh, no Catholic should be dying at that particular time because there wouldn't be any priest to offer the last rites.
So a friend of mine, Dan Lackner, who owned a paper company in Pittsburgh and of course had the Steelers account, he was a good Catholic and he had worked for the Steelers when he was a teenager at Central Catholic High School in Pittsburgh, a school well known for later producing the likes of Danny Marino who went on to become an All-America quarterback at the University of Pittsburgh and then an All-Pro quarterback for the Miami Dolphins. So Art Rooney is at the door greeting all of his friends and acquaintances as they come through the front door of Devlin's Funeral Home and offer their condolences for the death of Kathleen. And Art Rooney was almost dismissing most of their comments because they were usually the same and my friend Dan Lackner showed up and Dan was getting in line getting ready to talk to Mr. Rooney when all of a sudden somebody to his left went, hey Dan, Dan. And Dan looked over and it was a fellow named Joe McNamara, been a classmate of his at Central Catholic and Dan said, what are you doing here? And he said, I'm here because my father died and we have him in the back room here. He said, I didn't know you were here.
I didn't know what to do. He said, we don't have many people left that still knew my dad. My mom's been gone but I thought I'd have him here for at least a day. I didn't know that Art Rooney's wife was going to be at the same funeral home but we're doing the best we can. And since Dan Lackner had to wait a while before he could get to see Art Rooney, he said, come on, I'll go in the back with you to offer my condolences. And you're listening to author Jim O'Brien, a sports journalist, a Pittsburgh native, and the author of Pittsburgh Proud, a series of books about his hometown telling the stories of the legendary Art Rooney Sr. You can't miss a funeral, he said. A friend anyone you know or care about, you've got to show up.
When we come back, more of the story of Art Rooney Sr. is told by the man he considered Art Rooney Sr., his grandfather, the grandfather he never had, here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns.
But we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.
Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop, but for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business day is piping hot, and I stay cool and confident. See, they're small business owners too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious, and there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done. I mean, that can be overwhelming for anyone. So if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life, try All-Free Clear Mega Packs. All-Free Clear Mega Packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry. All-Free Clear Mega Packs are also 100% free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin, which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs, which my family, we definitely have sensitive skin. So the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes, just know that All-Free Clear Mega Packs, they have your back.
Purchase All-Free Clear Mega Packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. Geico asks, how would you love a chance to save some money on insurance? Of course you would. And when it comes to great rates on insurance, Geico can help. Like with insurance for your car, truck, motorcycle, boat and RV. Even help with homeowners or renters coverage. Plus add an easy to use mobile app, available 24-hour roadside assistance and more and Geico is an easy choice. Switch today and see all the ways you could save. It's easy.
Simply go to Geico.com or contact your local agent today. And we're back with our American stories and Jim O'Brien's story about the Pittsburgh Steelers founding owner Art Rooney Sr. We just left off with Jim's friend Dan Lackner at the funeral of Rooney's wife Kathleen. While in line to give Rooney his condolences, Dan ran into a friend and former classmate whose father was also being remembered at the funeral home, Joe McNamara.
Let's pick up where we last left off. So he goes in the back room with his former classmate Joe McNamara and he walks into the room and there's a little dais there so to speak, a table where you could sign your name that you had paid your respects. And he signs his name and he said there were only about three or four other signatures on the pad. And he said there weren't many flowers in that room at the funeral home. He went back out and as he entered the lobby of the funeral home, Art Rooney spied him and Art Rooney walks over to him and he didn't miss a trick and he said, hey Dan what are you doing in the back room?
Kathleen's over here. And Dan Lackner said, oh an old friend of mine from Central Catholic High School, his father died, a guy named Joe McNamara, same name as his son. And Mr. Rooney says, well come on let's go back show me where he is and I'll pay my respects to your friend. You got to remember that Art Rooney was known for going to more funerals in Pittsburgh than anybody.
He just always showed up, said a prayer and he had a very comforting effect on people. I remember when my brother Danny died, I was editing a newspaper that had a circulation of about 5,000 at best and Mr. Rooney and all the club officials from the Steelers showed up at that funeral home to pay their respects and everybody he touched in the room felt like a cardinal or a bishop had just blessed them. So Art Rooney's in the back room with his friend Dan Lackner. He signs in, he tells the son that he's sorry that his father had died and he learns that his father had lived on Dawson Street in Oakland, not far from Forbes Field or Pitt Stadium.
And he had died at the VA Hospital in Oakland. It was very familiar to Art Rooney because in addition to going to so many funerals, he also paid many visits to friends that were in hospitals in the community. So he's back there talking to Joe McNamara. You'd have thought he was the mayor of Pittsburgh. And Mr. Rooney remembered that his dad was his dad had been a city fireman.
He always had a soft spot in his heart for them. So now he goes back out in the lobby and lo and behold the mayor of Pittsburgh is in the doorway and that was Pete Flaherty, good Irishman from the north side and another north sider Tom Forster, the Allegheny County Commissioner, one of the top politicians in the city. He was in the doorway with his friend Pete Flaherty and they were ready to offer their condolences to Art Rooney, said how sorry they were that Kathleen had died. And Art Rooney kind of shrugs it off and he says to him, he says, hey listen, he said you fellas don't forget to go to the back room and pay your respects to our friend McNamara. And Forster shoots a look at Flaherty to see if he knows the McNamara that Art Rooney is referring to. He gets a blank look and Forster says I don't know any fireman named McNamara and Rooney rather testily, he was a little upset with him, says yes you do.
The one from Dawson Street out in Oakland. So Forster and Flaherty look at each other and they sort of gave a look like they knew what Mr Rooney was talking about. And Forster says oh that one and he and Pete Flaherty go back to the other room. So the rest of the day, that weekend, Art Rooney had everyone pay their respects to our friend McNamara and he had them sign the visitor's book. It went like that the rest of the day and when I came back the next day my friend Lachner was still there and so was McNamara. And so was McNamara. He said we decided to stay another day. So Dan Lachner said that he went into the back room to see Joe McNamara's father once again and he said you could hardly see Joe McNamara in the casket. He said the room was full of flowers. It looked like Phipps Conservatory. And young McNamara showed the visitor's book to Dan Lachner and there were so many famous Steelers who had signed the book such as Joe Green and Mel Blount and Terry Bradshaw, Andy Russell, so many Hall of Famers.
Get this. It was signed by Pete Rozell, the NFL commissioner, and Al Davis, the owner of the Oakland Raiders. They've been there too. Everybody who was anybody in the National Football League had signed the book. That's just showing you the way that Art Rooney was that Art Rooney was and how respected he was in the league and how he got all these people who had come to see him and offer him their condolences that he got them while they were there to sign the book for his friend McNamara.
And I'll tell you you know at the church itself funny things happened. Al Davis was seated in a pew on the aisle in front of Pete Rozell. So they had been at odds with each other because they were fighting about things and Davis was threatening to take the NFL to court and so forth for differences that they had.
But even on that day when the priest who was officiating the mass told everybody to give the sign of peace to the person in front of them or behind them, I saw Al Davis shake hands with Pete Rozell. And somehow I thought that Art Rooney arranged it I guess in his own way. But think of that.
Just think of that. Art Rooney's wife has died and Art Rooney is steering everybody that comes to the funeral home to a man that he doesn't even know. But he's from Pittsburgh. He was a fireman and as far as Art Rooney was concerned he was the best of friends. That's all you need to know about Art Rooney.
And a terrific job on the production by Robbie and a spectacular piece of storytelling by Jim O'Brien about a legend in the sports business, an owner's owner, literally one of the men who started the NFL and started it from scratch when there was nothing there and built it up. And anyone who's known Art Rooney or his family will say one thing, he was a Catholic. He was a Catholic before he was anything. And this is what the Catholic Church aspires to be.
It's what any church or synagogue or mosque aspires to be and that is a servant to the city and a servant to the people around them. And there is no better story to tell about Art Rooney than that story. It shows his heart. It shows his compassion for others even at the greatest moment of his grieving, the loss of his wife who was everywhere with him in Pittsburgh and always at that church, the Daily Mass.
The story of Art Rooney Sr., a Catholic story, a story of faith and so much more here on Our American Stories. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop. But for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot and I stay cool and confident. See, they're small business owners too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious and there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done. I mean, that can be overwhelming for anyone. So if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life, try all free clear mega packs. All free clear mega packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry. All free clear mega packs are also 100% free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin, which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs.
Which my family, we definitely have sensitive skin. So the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes, just know that all free clear mega packs, they have your back. Purchase all free clear mega packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. And we return to our American stories. Up next, a story from our regular contributor, recipient of our great American storytelling award and contest and a friend of our show, Joy Neal Kidney. Joy is the author of Leora's Letters and Leora's Dexter Stories, two phenomenal books about her family's history. Today she shares with us a story entitled Dreaded Diseases of the Great Depression.
Take it away, Joy. Have you ever heard of anyone dying from the mumps or whooping cough? Both profoundly affected Iowa's Gough and Wilson families during the 1920s.
They had already suffered through severe cases of the so-called Spanish influenza early in the decade. Leora, the oldest of Sherden and Laura Gough's big family, was married to Clay Wilson. They had three children by then. Her brother Jennings had returned from the Great War and married Tess, a local Guthrie County girl. In 1921, Jennings and Tess had a daughter, Maxine, who was born the same spring as the Wilson twins. Three years later, Tess gave birth to a son. Both Tess and baby Merrill came down with the mumps.
Merrill was just four days old when his mother died. Jennings and his two small children began to make their home with his parents, Sherden and Laura. When the Wilson family moved to Dexter, the Goughs moved there as well. Along with many others, both families had lost their farms after the Great War. Having been encouraged to go into debt for land, they were shocked that farm prices severely slumped. Clay Wilson hired out as a tenant farmer, but the farm prices didn't go down.
They slumped. Clay Wilson hired out as a tenant farmer, but when that soured, the family moved to the edge of Dexter where they could at least keep their cow. By 1928, farm jobs had dried up, along with the Wilsons' cow.
Clay sold the cow for $75. By then, they had seven children. They made out a large order to Sears, Roebuck and Company for food in bulk, including oatmeal, gallons of sorghum, large jars of peanut butter, clothes, boots, winter coats, and one Christmas present for each youngster.
Bleak days of winter were upon them. Leora was in her family way again, with a baby due soon. In January of 1929, twins Jack and Jean were born. The babies were about three weeks old when the family moved from the outskirts of Dexter into a drab greenhouse on the street just south of the home of the extended Goff family.
The Wilson youngsters looked forward to having cousins Maxine and Merrill as their neighbors. Right away, Clay set up a stove in the new house and laid a fire, so it would be warm when the youngest ones arrived. A few kids at a time rode in the Model T with their mother's stickery asparagus fern and other houseplants and dozens of mason jars filled with whatever Leora had been able to preserve from the garden. All nine children, even the babies, came down with colds. It was not long before their coughs grew serious with a deep tell-tale croup. A doctor confirmed indeed they had all come down with whooping cough.
A quarantine sign was posted on the front door as the disease spreads very easily. Clay and Leora, who both had whooping cough as children, strewed newspapers upstairs on the wooden floors beside the children's beds with ashes in the center to catch the phlegm that they spit up. Short of breath, after deep coughing, the kids would fall to their knees and gasp for air. Donald fainted during a coughing episode. Newspapers covered the downstairs floors as well.
What a miserable time for the entire family. Every morning, Clay gathered up those stench-filled newspapers to burn in the stove and arranged fresh ones on the floors. The and arranged fresh ones on the floors. Every few days, Leora sent the children upstairs to snuggle under blankets in bed to stay warm while she aired out the house, scoured everything, and mopped the floors with disinfectant. When the stove warmed up the kitchen again, she called the youngsters come down. The room smelled so clean and medicine-y.
Darling remembered that decades later. The seven-year-old felt warm and safe, crouched behind the wood stove. One night, Clay heard scuffling and squeaking of bed springs overhead. Dale was nearly unconscious in the disheveled bed, with his head caught in the curves of the wrought iron headboard.
The boy was too weak to free himself. Clay went for the doctor who prescribed medicine for Dale, who had developed pneumonia, and also checked Doris's bloodshot eye. She had coughed so hard that her blood vessel broke.
The doctor said to use eye drops, probably boric acid. Those baby twins gasped and cried. They gagged when Leora tried to nurse them. The harried parents held them upside down, using fingers to work phlegm from their tiny mouths. So that Clay been Leora could get some rest, Jennings Gough, who had had disease as a child, stayed with the Wilsons at night to help. Pertussis or whooping cough is most dangerous in infants. The doctor suggested spooning a little whiskey down their throats to try to clear them.
But it didn't do any good. Baby Jack died, then two days later, so did Jean. They were five weeks old. The local newspaper noted that the school had sent a bouquet and so had the Rebecca Lodge, of which grandmother was a member. Neighbors had taken up a collection for flowers, carnations.
The spicy scent of carnations forever after would take Doris back to when she was 10 years old and the funeral for the baby twins. Called the 100-day cough, the miserable disease can last weeks. Delbert and Donald were in the eighth grade and ended up missing a whole grading period at school. There was talk about holding them back a year, but they wanted to graduate with their classmates.
The teachers agreed that if the boys would double down on their studies and take a special test, they could graduate, which they did. These days, most of us have gotten the DTP vaccination, which protects against diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough. A mumps vaccine wasn't developed until 1967.
These days, it's hard to imagine the loss of a young mother to mumps or to imagine the hardship of caring for nine children with such dreadful diseases whooping cough, then losing infants because of it. And a beautiful job on the production by Monty Montgomery and a special thanks to Joy Neal Kidney for sharing so many of the stories of her family. And it's hard to remember what life was like before we were here. As a comedian recently said, there was life before us and before you. And my goodness, when my dad and I would travel around the country, we'd always go to Civil War battlefields and under graveyards and cemeteries. And always there would be these little plots, little baby plots, every family losing a three-year-old, a one-year-old, miscarriages, carriages, the amount of death experienced by families. And right here in this one family, losing two five-week-olds to whooping cough and having to bury those little babies. A remarkable story about America living through hard times, farming life, falling prices, the Great Depression, no jobs, bleak winter months, mason jars, and my goodness, a stove that warmed the house. And reminding us what America was and still is, family still loved, and family still lived and thrived.
The story of America, the story of Des Moines, and Joy Neal Kidney's family here on Our American Story. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop, but for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot, and I stay cool and confident. See, they're small business owners too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious, and there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done. I mean, that can be overwhelming for anyone. So, if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life, try all free clear mega packs. All free clear mega packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry. All free clear mega packs are also 100% free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin, which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs, which my family, we definitely have sensitive skin. So, the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes, just know that all free clear mega packs, they have your back. Purchase all free clear mega packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types.
And we continue with our American Stories. Keycap artist known by her followers as Tiny Makes Things creates and forms artisan keycaps for mechanical keyboards. Tiny is a content creator alongside making her art.
She uses polymer clay to sculpt her custom designs, which has brought to her over three million followers on TikTok. Here's Tiny with her story and how she made this unique hobby, her full-time career. My dream job back when I was little and when people asked me, I just said I wanted to be an architect and that was because I really liked art and I also knew that I had a pretty big affinity for math and kind of engineering like science in that aspect and that was as a kid, that was like what I thought was the kind of combination of art and math I guess and I think earlier on I do remember wanting to be an artist but my I don't think they were trying to like stifle my I guess artistic spirit but my parents were probably not super supportive of me saying that I wanted to be an artist because I think even back then like being an artist means that you were kind of like poor and like it's very hard to like make money as an artist I feel like then I was like maybe it's more practical to think about what I can do that can actually you know provide me a salary and eventually I was like okay I want to be an engineer. When I was applying for college I knew that I just wanted to do engineering but I think I wasn't quite sure what kind of engineering and what I defaulted to was mechanical engineering actually you know you build things you make things you fix things kind of like that mindset of mechanical engineering was and so I applied as a mechanical engineer major to all of the colleges that I applied to and I think the college that I actually ended up going to I actually didn't get in as a mechanical engineer I got in as a computer engineer which was my backup major that I chose. I was trying to get into the mechanical engineering department and basically you just you take all the classes as a mechanical engineer would and then one of the classes I actually took as like one of the first classes was intro to C programming as like for mechanical engineers and I really enjoyed that class I did like really well and so I actually just kind of pivoted to computer engineering and then I started taking classes and I realized I didn't really like the electrical engineering portion of that and then completely switched over to computer science. So I had everything lined up like I had a job and I don't think the job itself was really bad in any way I just think when I started working it was typical eight hours a day kind of like 40 hour work week and then you go home and then you kind of veg out or you like watch tv or you play video games at least that's what I did when I went home I don't know what other people do and I just felt very unproductive about my life and just what I was doing because I was like I'm just starting to work and you know I'm young and this is what it's like for the rest of my life. I was working so hard and I didn't even get really anything out of it like I was working for a company and I mean at the end of the day everything that you make for that company is still that company's right like even if you have charge of a certain feature or product and so I think maybe I don't know like a year or so or half a year into the job I was just feeling I wasn't going anywhere even though I was I mean yeah the job was great but I guess outside of that I didn't really feel like anything was really happening and that's when I just started to start making keycaps just as a creative outlet and I that's when I started streaming on twitch. Streaming a lot of it started out from just like people playing games I think twitch was a platform that actually was a very generic platform first and then it narrowed it narrowed down to mostly like game content esports like people streaming themselves playing a game that's like kind of like where twitch came from but now twitch is kind of a lot of different kinds of streaming so for me when I started streaming I was just streaming like my art it's like when I'm crafting and sculpting things you can watch me as I do it live and I think part of that was interesting because I would make maybe a couple keycaps in one stream but you could see it go from like nothing to the final product like in the span of you know a couple of hours and some people just leave on the stream while they're doing other things it's kind of like you can have company without actually having company or if you like having background noise and having something on while you do stuff like you can have it's pretty low effort I think my streams are pretty like chill like a lot of people just leave it on in the background while they do other things so and when I started streaming it wasn't for the sake of like showing off anything it was just for the sake of like okay I'm setting a streaming schedule so I have to be you know live and you know at these hours on these days so they'll force me to like make stuff for that amount of time and sure if like people are stopping by or watching me then it makes it a little bit more like I kind of have to do it it kept me consistent which was really good and I started doing that more and more and I think I was like working full time and you know streaming 20 30 hours a week at some point at some point it was very tiring I was just so burnt out I think at that point I was doing mostly commission work or like one-off keycaps which I didn't really even charge that much for and it was not worth the time that I took for me to make a commission which is generally maybe like a couple hours I think I was charging like 25 or like 30 per keycap and that was I don't even think I was making like minimum wage at that at that rate and I was like I can't even do this you know for a job even if I wanted to because it just doesn't make enough money but the other I was thinking about okay maybe if I resin casted some of my keycaps then maybe I could make it more worth it because you can make molds and do stuff in greater capacity with with resin so I was like I could probably make this work but I really it's really hard to leave a like nice corporate job that provides a lot for you like your health benefits and like a lot of amenities especially in the bay area if you know a tech company is like what they provide for you it's just it's really hard to leave I ended up going part-time for a little bit I felt like I was kind of just half in in both things like I couldn't be at my full potential for each either of the jobs because I was just half there I think at this point this is like the crossroad because I realized at that point I could not go on like doing what I was doing it was just I was like miserable and I just kept thinking about like all the things that I wanted to do for you know like my business I think the hardest hardest part about that was telling my parents like I told them and they thought I was doing drugs or involved in a gang or something they really literally asked me like are you like are you okay like is everything okay are you you taking drugs like they I think they just thought I was like out of my mind because in what world would quitting a nice job and then pursuing this random like keycap art I don't even think they understood what kind of art I did that was very all like confusing to them and they tried very hard to convince me not to quit and I think at that point I was already set kind of gave myself a one-year timeline if I don't you know if this all goes south and I don't make enough money I can still go back to tech that was maybe just about like three years ago and I quit my job and I guess from the timeline here you can see that after one year I did was able to kind of make it work and kept going after that one year I do commissions which are actually I think people will when they hear about commissions generally I think people are like flabbergasted at the price my price point is like at the bare minimum for me to do a commission is 300 and it can go up from there based on you know the design and how much work goes into the keycap and honestly like if you look at art in general like that's not that much for a commission and I actually lose money when I do commissions for most of the time because the same amount of time that I can spend making that commission I can probably make a batch of keycaps but I do them because I like it just makes me happy to make other people happy in like oh I want you know some my dog on a keycap or I really like this character and like it means a lot to me and sometimes people have some really sentimental stories so most times people just like using the key they like using artisan keycaps as maybe like an escape key because then it kind of is like kind of helps complete the look I threw away a very good job and I don't know if I could ever get that job back I thought I might regret that but I'm definitely not grateful for a pandemic but that definitely accelerated a lot of the I think I started doing TikTok before it started and a lot of people got onto TikTok because of the pandemic because they were bored at home and there's a lot more creators out there now I think it's maybe a little bit harder to be noticed because then you're you know there's so many people making keycaps I think I work a lot but I I enjoy it to a degree where it doesn't always feel like work to me there are definitely parts of it that do feel like work when I have to do certain sponsorships or I have to like negotiate contracts or talk business and stuff like that like that that stuff does is that doesn't make me happy like not every part of the job is fulfilling or is you know brings me happiness but I would say for the large part of it the general feel that I get from just doing this job is is pretty it makes me really happy to do a lot of people find it hard to kind of pursue the things that they really like doing and being able to make a career out of it because I think there are some things that are just that are just hobbies and they're hard to make into an actual living wage and I think I'm really lucky and blessed to be able to do that I mean a lot of people are afraid to try and as like advice I would just tell people to to try but don't be like dumb about it you know like have backups and have you know I didn't just quit my job because I was like I had nothing I thought about it a lot and I kind of considered my options and then I kind of gave myself timelines and like goals you know it's really good to have like plans in place so you know quit your job but also don't do it really hastily or don't do it without any sort of plan in place and a special thanks to tiny and it's tiny makes things dot com where you can go and learn more about what she does about her art the story of a keycap artist here on our american page.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-02-16 21:57:31 / 2023-02-16 22:12:42 / 15
