reformed scratcher

hey guys my name is jared, and i am/was a scratcher. a bit of history, i got my first tattoo at a walk in shop when i was eighteen, just a nautical star on my wrist. nothing special, it was a shitty shop. thought nothing more about tattoos until about 8 months ago when a couple of mt friends got into tattooing (the scratcher way) and i got very interested, they were putting out some ok work so i decided to get my feet wet. one of my friends got a job at local shop and i landed an apprenticeship. i bought my own equipment and started learning. the dudes i was learning under basically didn't give me a real apprenticeship, so after about a month and a half of doing bitch work, drawing and doing work on myself, i was able to start doing work on other people. fast forward to a couple months ago. after doing a shit ton of research on the art, i began to realize i was doing pretty much everything in the worst ways possible. after learning much about sanitation, bbp etc. i realized my shop was TERRIBLE at EVERYTHING. i began a regiment to improve my shop and how we did things. everything i began telling my coworkers about how things should be done was basically either disregarded or laughed at. after hearing thinghs like i was up-tight, that i was challenging authority, etc. i realized it was a terrible decision to keep doing things the way i was doing. i quit the shop, and decided to pursue tattooing in an honest light. i stopped working on people because i realized the work i was doing was shit, granted i have been drawing for years and consider myself an excellent artist, i was not happy when i realized exactly how these people had these terrible tats on their skin forever. it's not like anything i did was outright horrible, it just is not up to the industry standards, and definitely not mine. i can't believe how the shop i worked at can feel ok about what they do, it's located in the east side of buffalo, so the clientele being mostly black (not tryin to be racist, but the people that would come in, had no knowledge of the art and want stupid shit like names and crosses) and me being a white boy from the bohemian district of the city, obviously knows the difference. i basically just wanna give a shout out to all the people on here that have genuine respect for the art and care about its future. thank you guys so much for helping me realize what i need to do. i recently started taking fine arts classes at one of the colleges in the area and am planning on building a badass portfolio and then seek out an apprenticeship with a legit artist. i'm serious about this and i really hate the fact that i started out in such a disrespectful way to the tattoo scene. i really hope i don't hear any flaming from any of you, i just wanna know how many people here started out like me.

:) This makes me happy :)