At the September 2012 CreativeMornings/Portland, Andrew Dickson—a filmmaker who’s “not quite a visual artist; too experimental for Hollywood, too Hollywood for experimental”—presented his path from film school student to eBay power seller. He even touches on the nearly forgettable moment in his life when he traded his anti-corporate, Minor Threat background for a chance to work for Nike.

Dickson’s career arc is fascinating. After a six-year film project left him in debt and a little broken, he was inspired him to make up lost time. He created performance art characters (kinda like Andy Kaufman and Stephen Colbert) and moved to LA and worked as an actor and screen writer and a million other things. It sounds like a wonderful, albeit exhausting, creative explosion.

Watch the video below:

Addendum: Dickson concludes his presentation by petitioning the audience to find a creative solution to paying artists. I wrote my reaction to that over here.