But not in a bad way, actually a pretty good way! I finally feel like I can be whatever I want to be again. In this moment, I can see the good things coming up for me and I can also easily see the things that aren't really making me happy. As much as I talk about having an open mind, it seems that I'd never really opened up my mind to "me." I can be whatever I want and I can be the person that makes me happy; NOT the person I think I should be. I'll never be that person! I think it's good to have goals and such to work towards self growth, but it's important to make sure that the person you're growing into is one that makes you happy!
At this point in time, I feel like I have a lot of options in front of me, and I like that. If something makes me happy, I want to be a part of it. If it makes me unhappy, what's the point of staying? I know this is over-general and I'm also aware it's important to make sacrifices at some point in order to make yourself happier later. But I feel far too many times that people get caught in that "Sacrifice Stage" for far too long.
I'm gonna be me. It's the best I can do! The day that I admitted to myself that I wasn't perfect was the best day of my life.
I MAKE MISTAKES. The only time I have TRULY failed is the time that I have given up on myself.
Man, it feels good to write that out.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
A career in communicating
I'd never really thought of it before tonight.
Why do I want to make games? Because I want to tell stories.
What does telling a story accomplish? It evokes emotion, in my case I want to make someone happy, or feel complete.
Is this really about games? Can I get the same fulfillment out of life by simply taking on the happiness or anger of others?
My issue with conflict, at its root, has always been that I felt I was being incorrectly judged; someone would be upset with me when it wasn't even the "real" me.
But how does this work when anonymity comes into play? Would I still be affected by the conflict, or would I enjoy having the feeling without the mental repercussions?
Holy crap. I gotta think about this.
Why do I want to make games? Because I want to tell stories.
What does telling a story accomplish? It evokes emotion, in my case I want to make someone happy, or feel complete.
Is this really about games? Can I get the same fulfillment out of life by simply taking on the happiness or anger of others?
My issue with conflict, at its root, has always been that I felt I was being incorrectly judged; someone would be upset with me when it wasn't even the "real" me.
But how does this work when anonymity comes into play? Would I still be affected by the conflict, or would I enjoy having the feeling without the mental repercussions?
Holy crap. I gotta think about this.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
11/3/10
2am after working freelance since 7:30pm. I really need to evaluate my freelance life. I've told myself several times that if I had an actual job, I would stop freelancing altogether. I'm not sure if that's true, but after some nights of freelance, keeping work and home separate seem like a good thing. For now though, I get to relax, start season 4 of Dexter, and at 3am it's on to the GSL until I fall asleep.
I really freaked out today. Hope tomorrow is better!
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Hey Cool!
Sweet, It looks like I already have a blog set up!
I really want to have a blog of my own to just record what's going on and have a place to keep everything in order. As far as actually making posts goes I'm not sure if I'll be able to, but I really want to be able to make a post when I can.
What prompted all of this is my finishing school. At the time of me writing this, I officially graduate from school in just a few days now and in the past week I've gotten (and already resigned from) a job. Last week during guys night, around 8pm I got a call about a job I had kind of passively applied to on craigslist the previous week. They wanted to have me in for an interview the next day at 10am, so I said what the hey and agreed to it. My pals at guys night all hinted that it was a little sketchy that someone would call that late, and while I agreed, I figured the interview would still be worth a shot.
The following day, I had my interview, which turned out to be a two parter. The first part seemed fine, it was with the person who called me, and after reviewing my resume and portfolio, they seemed fairly confident of me, which felt great. After that, I was moved onto an interview with one of the company owners, and it was the most terrifying interview of my life. He didn't care about my resume or portfolio, but he did care about yelling a lot and constantly informing me that I was no longer in school and this is the real world now. Honestly, this interview alone probably should have set off all of the red flags inside my head, telling me this wasn't a great fit. They interviewed a bunch of people that day though, and after that insane interview I was pretty certain they weren't going to hire me anyways, so I wasn't really worrying about it.
Shows what I know! I pulled a Steve in regular fashion and that night they called me and offered me the job, starting the next day(Thursday). Something never really felt right about this. I was excited to get a job, but it had only been one day since my last official day of school. The unexpected nature of getting it left me feeling really strange. Anyways, I started the next day, learning that I was going to be a contract employee for 60 days, and after that if they liked me, they would hire me on full time.
Or so they told me. They way they were having me (and the other 3 programmers) build the site was in a way where the higher-ups would be able to maintain it themselves without knowing anything about web programming. Smart of them to say the least, but once I realized this, it became pretty apparent that there was very little chance of being hired on full time after the two months. What's worse is that since I wasn't an official employee, they said they would pay me 40 hours a week, but I was usually expected to work more, plus weekends sometimes. That night, I was working at home on some stuff that I still needed to finish from work, and Jessica asked me if that kind of thing would be regular with my job. Little did she know, this really made me think about who I want to be. Do I really want something that I have to take home almost every day, or do I want something that I can go to, and forget about it once the clock hits 5pm? Or maybe I want something completely different, where my job status is much more risky but I get to make my own hours? All of these are questions that I haven't asked myself yet. The problem is, even if I had, I don't think I would have been able to answer them.
After the first day, my mindset was pretty clear. I was going to show up for the 60 days, learn as much as I could, and try to remain optimistic. I like optimism, but the problem in this case was that I blinded myself from looking at if I was happy or not, and on Monday when I finally realized what was going on, my optimism made reality slap me right in the face. On Monday, I was assigned to do something that had very little to do with web development, and I was told that I had to present something about it by tomorrow afternoon. It was all but straight up said that this was a test for me, and if I didn't become an expert in this thing, my time at their company would be very short.
Thinking about what they had just presented to me, I quickly started to realize that this job wasn't for me. From my perspective, what they were doing didn't make any sense. They were testing me on my job position AFTER they had hired me, but the big problem is that they were testing me with something that my job description had nothing to do with in the first place. I make websites. Honestly, it's the only thing at this point that I'm good at and can also use as a means to make money - I'm far from a businessman! They wanted me to do something that didn't have much of anything to do with making websites, and this is what really made me think about my career, and my future as a whole.
The problem is, my days of having "throwaway" jobs are over. In previous jobs, if I didn't like something, I could always just tell myself that this wasn't my career and it wasn't a big deal. Now that I've finished school, where should my standards be? I know that a lot of people that look at my previous story will probably agree that I should have tried to "stick it out," but is that really the best move? I understand that having money is important. I need to pay my rent, my student loans, and every other random bill I have. If I'm looking for a job to settle down at though, shouldn't my standards be high? I understand that at this point it would be hard to find a "perfect job," but does that mean I should settle for something that makes me unhappy?
Regardless, in this case I didn't have much of a choice. I resigned before they had the chance to let me go, telling them that I wasn't qualified for what they wanted and I had decided to leave before I wasted their time.
So what do I do now? Well, I guess I enjoy my graduation, and take just a tiny amount of time off from the job search to reset my mind and get ready for working. Going from a relaxed schedule where (for the most part) I made my own hours, to a full time 9-5 job was jarring to say the least. I mean, I guess I can't REALLY say that seeing as how I was there for a whole three days, but when I got the job I had to think a lot about my time as a whole. The thing is, when I realized that I was fretting over being unhappy because I would be spending too much time at work, I realized that I might be in the wrong line of work.
I still don't fully understand what's going on with me. Throughout the few days that I was actually employed, something really strange was going on. As much as I could logically tell myself that I should be happy, I was almost kind of freaking out. It's like something happened to my brain that just made me depressed all the time, even when I couldn't think of a reason why. I mean hey, I had a job, I was finishing school, things were looking good. If all that was so true, then why the heck was I freaking out? Was I just having an extremely hard time adjusting to the idea of being done with school, or is something wrong with me? Questions like this are what I want to answer before I consider trying to find another job. I want to be happy, and I want to make money, but I need to be at a maturity level that can support that.
I really want to have a blog of my own to just record what's going on and have a place to keep everything in order. As far as actually making posts goes I'm not sure if I'll be able to, but I really want to be able to make a post when I can.
What prompted all of this is my finishing school. At the time of me writing this, I officially graduate from school in just a few days now and in the past week I've gotten (and already resigned from) a job. Last week during guys night, around 8pm I got a call about a job I had kind of passively applied to on craigslist the previous week. They wanted to have me in for an interview the next day at 10am, so I said what the hey and agreed to it. My pals at guys night all hinted that it was a little sketchy that someone would call that late, and while I agreed, I figured the interview would still be worth a shot.
The following day, I had my interview, which turned out to be a two parter. The first part seemed fine, it was with the person who called me, and after reviewing my resume and portfolio, they seemed fairly confident of me, which felt great. After that, I was moved onto an interview with one of the company owners, and it was the most terrifying interview of my life. He didn't care about my resume or portfolio, but he did care about yelling a lot and constantly informing me that I was no longer in school and this is the real world now. Honestly, this interview alone probably should have set off all of the red flags inside my head, telling me this wasn't a great fit. They interviewed a bunch of people that day though, and after that insane interview I was pretty certain they weren't going to hire me anyways, so I wasn't really worrying about it.
Shows what I know! I pulled a Steve in regular fashion and that night they called me and offered me the job, starting the next day(Thursday). Something never really felt right about this. I was excited to get a job, but it had only been one day since my last official day of school. The unexpected nature of getting it left me feeling really strange. Anyways, I started the next day, learning that I was going to be a contract employee for 60 days, and after that if they liked me, they would hire me on full time.
Or so they told me. They way they were having me (and the other 3 programmers) build the site was in a way where the higher-ups would be able to maintain it themselves without knowing anything about web programming. Smart of them to say the least, but once I realized this, it became pretty apparent that there was very little chance of being hired on full time after the two months. What's worse is that since I wasn't an official employee, they said they would pay me 40 hours a week, but I was usually expected to work more, plus weekends sometimes. That night, I was working at home on some stuff that I still needed to finish from work, and Jessica asked me if that kind of thing would be regular with my job. Little did she know, this really made me think about who I want to be. Do I really want something that I have to take home almost every day, or do I want something that I can go to, and forget about it once the clock hits 5pm? Or maybe I want something completely different, where my job status is much more risky but I get to make my own hours? All of these are questions that I haven't asked myself yet. The problem is, even if I had, I don't think I would have been able to answer them.
After the first day, my mindset was pretty clear. I was going to show up for the 60 days, learn as much as I could, and try to remain optimistic. I like optimism, but the problem in this case was that I blinded myself from looking at if I was happy or not, and on Monday when I finally realized what was going on, my optimism made reality slap me right in the face. On Monday, I was assigned to do something that had very little to do with web development, and I was told that I had to present something about it by tomorrow afternoon. It was all but straight up said that this was a test for me, and if I didn't become an expert in this thing, my time at their company would be very short.
Thinking about what they had just presented to me, I quickly started to realize that this job wasn't for me. From my perspective, what they were doing didn't make any sense. They were testing me on my job position AFTER they had hired me, but the big problem is that they were testing me with something that my job description had nothing to do with in the first place. I make websites. Honestly, it's the only thing at this point that I'm good at and can also use as a means to make money - I'm far from a businessman! They wanted me to do something that didn't have much of anything to do with making websites, and this is what really made me think about my career, and my future as a whole.
The problem is, my days of having "throwaway" jobs are over. In previous jobs, if I didn't like something, I could always just tell myself that this wasn't my career and it wasn't a big deal. Now that I've finished school, where should my standards be? I know that a lot of people that look at my previous story will probably agree that I should have tried to "stick it out," but is that really the best move? I understand that having money is important. I need to pay my rent, my student loans, and every other random bill I have. If I'm looking for a job to settle down at though, shouldn't my standards be high? I understand that at this point it would be hard to find a "perfect job," but does that mean I should settle for something that makes me unhappy?
Regardless, in this case I didn't have much of a choice. I resigned before they had the chance to let me go, telling them that I wasn't qualified for what they wanted and I had decided to leave before I wasted their time.
So what do I do now? Well, I guess I enjoy my graduation, and take just a tiny amount of time off from the job search to reset my mind and get ready for working. Going from a relaxed schedule where (for the most part) I made my own hours, to a full time 9-5 job was jarring to say the least. I mean, I guess I can't REALLY say that seeing as how I was there for a whole three days, but when I got the job I had to think a lot about my time as a whole. The thing is, when I realized that I was fretting over being unhappy because I would be spending too much time at work, I realized that I might be in the wrong line of work.
I still don't fully understand what's going on with me. Throughout the few days that I was actually employed, something really strange was going on. As much as I could logically tell myself that I should be happy, I was almost kind of freaking out. It's like something happened to my brain that just made me depressed all the time, even when I couldn't think of a reason why. I mean hey, I had a job, I was finishing school, things were looking good. If all that was so true, then why the heck was I freaking out? Was I just having an extremely hard time adjusting to the idea of being done with school, or is something wrong with me? Questions like this are what I want to answer before I consider trying to find another job. I want to be happy, and I want to make money, but I need to be at a maturity level that can support that.
Friday, April 10, 2009
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