Ambitions

[alexxkay]

I've been spending a lot of time in the last year or so considering who I am and who I want to be, professionally. Lots of my friends have been making big life changes recently, and when I consider this, it exacerbates an inner restlessness. siderea's recent long post brought some issues into sharper focus for me.

I've been working for the last few years under the assumption that I am, and should be, a Game Designer. It's what I get paid to do (not paid very much, but more than anything else currently obviously available to me). And I don't hate it, I enjoy most of a typical work-day.

But I'm not passionate about it. Siderea made the point that if you're in the 'right' career, then there isn't any real distinction between work and free time; that you do lots of industry research and career development because that's just what you enjoy doing, not out of any sense of obligation.

Yes, I play games a lot in my free time. But, and this is a crucial distinction, I don't play a *lot* of games. The highly successful game designers I've observed play *everything*. They don't often finish a game, but they'll spend at least a few hours with every major release and lots of minor ones as well. I don't find that enjoyable. I like to go deep, not broad, investigating whatever I'm playing down into its most intricate details.

I have one game design in my head that I am passionate about, but the company I work for currently will never make it, nor am I likely to make it myself. While I occasionally get obsessed with it for a few weeks at a time, I haven't got the drive -- nor the base skill-sets in business and programming -- to actually bring it to fruition.

I spent some free time, over the course of a few months, trying to build my programming skill. Embarassingly, it totally failed to take. What skill I once had has largely atrophied. I find trying to build new programming skill painfuly difficult and not-fun. On reflection, I never *did* like programming in the first place. I liked the *idea* of programming, but I didn't enjoy the actual process. (How the hell did I ever graduate with a CS degree at all, much less "with Honors"?) So I don't see any realistic route to making my game design happen unless I were to luck into someone equally passionate, but with a complementary skill set. (I know of one such real-world example, but the two people in that case are actually brothers.)

Meanwhile, I find myself in an ethical variant of the Money Trap. I am effectively responsible for tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt on kestrell's behalf. With Kes unable to pay these off herself, I have considered trying to default on these loans, declare personal bankruptcy, or something along those lines. But I value my personal honor so highly that I would feel dirty and depressed if I were to fail to meet this obligation. Moreover, with the economy in such bad shape, creating more bad debt seems socially irresponsible. Plus, I feel a need for decent health insurance, which is only practically available to me with a full-time job.

Given that, I don't feel able to make the sort of big life gamble that many of my friends have recently made, walking away from their jobs in order to pursue their dreams. Or at any rate, I feel unable to make such a move *now*. I am, slowly, crawling out of that debt, and it may be worth contemplating future possibilities. Small actions I take now, if on the proper trajectory, might have large pay-offs down the line.

So maybe I'm not, ideally, a game designer after all. So what *do* I feel passionate enough about to do on my own time. What other careers might I head for?

I really enjoyed my time as a QA tester, and my time working on the System Shock 2 Strategy Guide. Both of those were about playing deep, not broad, which is what I do on my own time. Sadly, these jobs both pay even fewer peanuts than my current gig, and come with zero job security to boot. But as the industry (slowly, in fits and starts) matures, this may change.

There are other things besides game-playing that I've poured huge amounts of time and effort into without being paid. Let's think about them for a bit:

I edited, memorized, and performed vast amounts of storytelling material, mostly english translations of Renaissance Italian epic poetry. Not a lot of market for that. Also, and perhaps more relevantly, I don't seem to be drawn to do this any more. A large part of my motivation, in hindsight, seems to have been displacement behavior; once I was in a stable relationship, I really didn't care about this any more.

I transcribed, edited, and self-published a number of period books. This actually produced some income, though not very much. I haven't done any of this in a while, but it's something I could see myself regaining enthusiasm for.

I directed a play. Lots of work, but also tons of fun, and I occasionally get the urge to do it again. Indirectly generated some income a decade later, when I edited together the DVD. I think I'm too much of a control freak to enjoy a theatrical career, though.

I did a massive sort, cull, and cataloging of the Carolingian Historical Archives, and did some work in getting it on-line. Again, no real market for it, and again, something I don't feel compelled to do any more.

There's the project I spent most of last weekend working on, the latest revision of The Dragaera Timeline. Steven Brust fandom is another niche market with little monetary opportuniy -- SB himself seems worse off financially than I am. Still, it has generated occasional trickles of cash via Paypal donations. There was once talk of me writing a GURPS Dragaera, but I let it atrophy. Hm. I suppose I could write a more general-interest book tie-in to the series at some point...

In a similar light, I maintained the Cerebus Timeline until that story was complete. I was doing it out of a sense of obligation by the end, though. A few Paypal donations, and a few small checks for semi-prozine contributions.

I did a bunch of work on various incomplete and unpublished literary monographs about Watchmen and Sandman. I could complete them and look for publishing opportunities. Jess Nevins has gotten several book deals out of this sort of thing.

The common thread I see here is one of editing / cross-referencing. (Giles' favorite hobby :-) I really enjoy taking masses of raw data and taming it, organizing it, and making it easier to use and/or more aesthetically pleasing. I'd say that I am obviously meant to be a librarian, only I have tons of librarian friends, many of whom are habitually un- (or under-) employed. But once I'm not in massive debt, it might be worth considering.

Or perhaps I could tackle things from another direction. Back before I entered the games industry, I had (more or less accidentally) transitioned from 'general clerical temp' to 'database administrator specialist'. I enjoyed that work, and it paid well. My specific skills in that arena are rusty, but I don't *think* it would be painful to revive them. On the other hand, doing that as a general office temp would not be very fulfilling. But if I could hook up with worthy projects that needed that expertise and could pay for it, that might satisfy my need to feel that I am leaving the world a better place than I found it.

Anyways that's more than enough blathering for post. I welcome commentary and discussion, since I'm not reaching any solid conclusions by just talking to myself...