Wanting to move from Davis after graduating from UCD, I packed my stuff into my 1968 Mustang in April of 1980, and left for San Diego for new adventures! Fans that I'd met embraced my move there. This was my "starving artist" period, between 1980 and 1984, which taught me to be resourceful, and to learn just how to live with all kinds of people. Southern California was a new culture to me. It took an experience of a blunt, unfair attack on my UCD design portfolio by a design rep that got me to realize that if I was going to make it, I had to change what I was doing in a major way. So, I began to take on all kinds of design work in San Diego, having to figure out on the spot just how I was going to make it happen. This was an unexpected turning point in my life. San Diego also taught me a lot about life (and relationships with women), with some brutal disappointments and heartbreaks. It was not too far from "The Big Bang Theory" to think of what life was like for me then, with SF fans in San Diego. Those four years would guide me away from the naive hopes and dreams of my childhood, into finding a more real way to make things happen. That is, if I was to find joy within what I was doing. I owe my saved spirit to artist Susan Dawe for her guidance and her sister-like hounding at me for getting through my San Diego "Odyssey"...
By 1985, my next move was to attending Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. My original plan was to go there and get a second degree, then apply for Walt Disney Imagineering to live out my dream job. But it was not to be. Art Center became too expensive for me, and as I remembered.....Clarence; my mentor in High School told me: "sometimes you have to do things to know what you really DON'T want to do".