Using the Force

As for the title, I shall not explain for fear of turning something into too much of a process and as for what that means, I shall simply not explain.

So I have a lot of family and friends who have been wondering how in the heck-o I am doing. First off, I'm sorry I've been so delayed in putting out the even the smallest chunk of info. My better half is the one you should contact for that. The furry quarter will simply lick his own rear upon hearing any question.

Lets dive in. To quickly recap, I left my job at WMS in Chicago and came to Megatouch in Bristol, PA. This choice was done for personal/career path reasons. My new job is going pretty well so far. Today marks the end of my 2nd week here. I got to admit, its really great to be around so many people who are relatively into the same thing I am. A well-known fact about Megatouch is almost all of our programmers come from Full Sail, so in some ways its like being back in that school enviorment. I've already started working on helping out with some bug fixes and the code base is very small-game friendly which is a huge relief to me. The biggest thing that has come to my attention here at Megatouch is that opportunities for challenges are present almost every day. These challenges are really so well made to make bad-ass programmers out of us and I need to get myself into the habit of diving into them and not simply sitting on the sidelines only doing what I'm told. A huge drive is slowly establishing itself deep within my brain-gut. Being here at work as already motivated me to get more work done at home but I'm not taking the chance to fix my work habits and improve how I manage my own time. This also comes back to the title of the post but as I said, I'm not going to explain that.

Now for another beat: Laura and I have faced some big challenges in our recent life and right now we face more even still. Sometimes this has caused us to grow distant from our families and friends. Personally this has caused me to lock myself out from world at large. The 'worse' things got, the further I pushed myself away from everyone else cause they 'didn't get it.' I feel that a lot of this comes from the constant feeling that I have already failed at what I was trying to do. Being in that constant state of failure is only designed to drag you further down until you really do fail. No more. I am taking small daily steps to let go of my fear of failure (or belief that I have already done so). Oddly enough this does not involve repating my successes out loud. What I say to myself is something I really can't explain nor do I want to. Its something that I find incredibly difficult to do but that only means that I'm doing the right thing.

"Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right, and what is easy..."

And for those still curious, ARZ is still in production. I just finished the intial take on a scriptable (via xml) Spawn Manager that controls how waves are ordered.

I think I want to get a plaque made for Laura and I that says "The Unsinkable Sko-Nats"

...well look at that. I did explain it. Thanks for coming along the ride with me.

I just used a pipe bomb to save a friend

L4D is an interesting game. The more risks you take, the better the game becomes. How did they do that!?

The Road Ahead

Fortunately, we do not yet live in a post-apocalyptic world where I need to protect my son with a single gun from cannibals...

But things are changing. Today is my last day at WMS in Chicago. Around six-ish I will begin to pack up my office and head home. Tonight Laura is flying in and we will begin the mad dash to pack every remaining thing before the movers arrive Wednesday. At that point we will head to Fort Wayne for the night and then head out fairly soon to NJ and to our new lives.

My life since leaving Full Sail has been...well it has been odd. I always had this idea in my head that I would achieve great things...who doesn't want to think that? However somewhere along the way i lost my focus on what 'great things' meant. Did it mean an amazing career that would have me working at Blizzard? Did it mean becoming semi-popular for producing creative indie games? Did it mean having an amazing married life? Did I even know my arms would be covered in cat bites and that I would spend almost a year waking up to a furry butt-hole in my face every morning?

Laura made a good point to me that we have to redefine what 'great things' means as we move forward together. She is totally right. Right now I want to live with my wife and cat and go to a job that leaves me with a grin of satisfaction when I leave everyday. If I can get that, then I've got "great things" going for me. That and Pizza every so often.

I guess in the end (and I'm kind of losing focus on this post right about now) I just want to know that all my hard walk in all aspects of my life was not for nothing but who doesn't want that?