Hi ya Inestical, good to see an old trooper popping in....just got organised myself, in the last 6 months, to get back into dev work after 4 years off but now have a team of 6, 2 programmers and 4 artists, currently working on mobile dev but intending to replicate in GStudio as examples etc...
My story is similar to yours in a way, I came from what we call "The Wops", back-end of nowhere really, about 13 years ago, hit the big city, up skilled from a country bumpkin artist/laborer etc... at a tertiary institute where one of my tutors introduced me to GStudio, I was hooked and have to say that its thanks to Acknex that I gained proficiency in understanding basics.

Then I scored a few jobs for a couple of Game Dev firms and one of them returned me enough to get going again.

So until we get a title that returns capital spent, I am currently unemployed on my own job but loving it.....

All the best...

Cheers....