Living in the tunnel
Steve Pavlina posted his new personal development topic today,
The light at the end of the tunnel, and posed this question: Where are you right now - the light or the tunnel?
I am definitely in the tunnel. My dream from the time I was a kid
and played my first game (Beach head) on a Commodore 64 was to be a
game programmer. Well, except for those years I wanted to be an
orthopaedic surgeon when game programming was still there, just in the
background. I spent many nights as a kid programming small games in MS
Dos and q-basic. It takes advantage of my talents in math and logical
thinking, provides me entertainment, and lets me help others by
entertaining them. It is also a constant learning activity due to ever
changing system requirements and advances. I really enjoy helping and
entertaining people and learning. If I didn't have to worry about
money, then whatever I chose to do would involve my own personal growth
and helping others. I like to think ti would be game development, but
maybe not.
I moved to Austin because it was such a big game programming
community, and I didn't really want to live in California. The first
jobs I applied for were with game companies. I still remember going
into the Iguana lobby and handing over my woe-fully inadequate resume
and demo on a floppy disk. It was a wonderful atmosphere to just be
in; with the excitement, relaxed attitudes, and arcade games in the
hall. :) Of course looking back now I never had a chance. I was a kid
from a small town with no idea what it took, and quick-basic just
wouldn't cut it. As I ran out of money, my options quickly opened up
to any job that would allow me to survive and not have to move back
home. I ended up at Dell, where I am now a corporate programmer.
It's a great job that almost pays the bills and allows my
soon-to-be-three family to live comfortably enough. That's the reason
I stick with it, even though it is boring and I hate it most of the
time. There are some times it's nice, but for the most part if I were
starting my life over I wouldn't have picked it. I know that now I am
one of the best programmers out there when I apply myself and could go
almost anywhere. I get an email from different recruiters every few
weeks. But I'm not really interested in moving to another boring
corporate job working on the same program for 7 more years and
literally counting the hours of each and every day until I can go
home. I'm ground down; I've just become apathetic about the situation
- reserved myself to living through it - and not going anywhere anytime
soon. I don't have a zest for living anymore. I get off work at 2:30
pm and don't go to bed until about 11, but I usually don't do much of
anything productive in that time. I'm just so sick of work and my
situation that it's depressing and I've lost the drive to be
exceptional. When I'm not putting in more hours for work I tend to
just veg in front of the tv or only half-heartedly work on my game.
With a baby that could be born at any moment and our debt I just
feel trapped. Maybe it is just my ego saying I need the health
insurance and the steady paycheck, but it's still a very real feeling
of unease at the idea of being unemployed or even just not being able
to take care of all of my families needs.
So what am I going to do. Maybe nothing in the end, but I have to
try. If you've been following my blog you already know I've been
working on my physical being and that is helping clear my mind and give
me more energy. But I think that's not enough. I've been waiting for
the baby to come before I took my vacation this year. That would give
me a couple of weeks away from the grind to refresh and work on myself
in between lack of sleep and diaper changes. But reading the article
brought my recent private thoughts out into the public. I need to find
a manhole in this tunnel and get a breathe of fresh air. I'm going to
request to take off next week for vacation and just spend the time on
game and personal development. At the end of the week either I'll find
I don't currently have the personal drive to do it or I just don't find
it as enjoyable as before and need to find something else, or maybe it
will totally renew my energy and I'll rediscover the joy and spend more
time on it with the goal of doing it full time. Either way it should
help me get oriented in this tunnel and get started in the right
direction for finding the light.