40 is looming...

What do you know, tomorrow is my birthday. 33 years old. Wow. Before I know it I'll be 40 at this rate. The idea of 40 looming is kinda creepy.

Society has all these expectations for a 40 year old. Good grief, I'm just a big kid. I play video games, I watch cartoons. Not that I'm one to keep up with trends or cultural expectations, but I'm feeling this weird pressure. It's not peer pressure, cause my peers are video game playing, cartoon watching big kids too.

I think this pressure is an embodiment of observation. As kids, we observe adults and emulate them. That's how we learn and grow. We expect that one day we'll put on a shirt and tie and grab our briefcase and head off to the office. We'll be All Grown Up and we'll know and understand life and our position in it. Our role and duty will be clear.

This has not happened yet.

Since Cindy and I don't yet have kids, my biggest duty/responsibility is to go to work every day and help pay the bills. Once we have kids, that will still be my job... But right now I have the freedom to work in an industry with little stability. I work as a temp with no insurance and get laid off, on average, about every six months - not a career for someone with children. For a few years, I was working to learn all about the video game industry, what the jobs were, how to get them.

What I learned was that I don't want to be in this industry. It's too 'cool' and popular. There are too many ready-made replacements waiting for you to quit, burn out, or be laid off. All levels - from entry level to management - in this industry are used up and burnt out without concern from corporate because there are lots of people waiting to take your job.

It's like working during the Depression. You can't complain very loudly about any of the terrible truths of the job or industry, because a few hundred guys would happily do the same work for less pay.

It's the nature of the industry and unlikely to change. I got into it with the hopes of getting into the creative aspects of it. They don't want storytellers in the video game industry, they want game programmers and digital artists. Since I'm neither one of those and don't have a lot of talent in either direction, the alternative is management. The pressure on management to bring an ill-conceived project with an arbitrary ship date in on time and budget is not fun.

I've affirmed the fact that I'm not a people person - all of the bullshitting, cajoling, convincing, arguing and etc of video game development is very tiresome for me. I need something a lot more singular. I'm happy to work in a group and on a team, but I have little interest in being in charge of that team - unless I have ultimate say-so.

Also, though video game development is branching out, it's still largely a California job. If you move to Idaho, your video game job opportunities are slim. Cindy's job could be done anywhere there is a bookstore - and every town has a bookstore. Since I'm the kind of guy who likes to move around, I don't want to lock myself into an industry that exists largely in one state.

I have plans for early 2005 to go to college, to study web design. Web design has the benefit of being widespread - I could do web design in any city and even do the work at home. The capacity for freelance work is also good.

Of course, I could not pick something simple. Oh no. Web design is a mixture of functionality and aesthetics. It has to work, and it also has to look good. It's graphic design, journalistic layout, art placement, and programming code. This programming code covers many different functions. For each function there is a language. HTML is the basic language, with Java, Flash, PHP, Perl, and more doing more complex functions.

I don't know if I can do programming. It might involve too much math for me. We'll see. (I noticed a funny class in the listing for Math at El Camino - it was something about overcoming mathematics intimidation - the whole class is to make you like numbers I guess. I know that I need that class.) I had 3 years of Apple Basic programming classes in junior high school. I enjoyed that - (no math) but the programs were very very basic. Very. And that was a long time ago.

Web programming seems straightforward, from my current, ignorant point of view. Web seems a lot easier to learn than game programming. With web programming, you plug in a variable here, save the page, and then view it. You can see your results. You can tell right away that the font size is wrong on the web page, then look at the code and see what you did wrong. Oh - I see the problem. I typed in "12" when I wanted "10".

Web programming seems to be more about understanding the theory, and then grabbing one of your hatful of templates, and plugging in the content (art and story). Then you tweak the code to customize it for that site. Since I'm about to go to school for this, I'm probably about to find out how very wrong I am. In simplifying the steps, I don't expect the classes, tests, and certifications to be any easier.

One good thing about web design as a career is that a lot of people don't need degrees in order to get hired. You create an online portfolio which demonstrates your skills. The potential employer can explore your portfolio site and even check out the code. Some people have elegant code, and others throw things together sloppily. An experienced programmer can tell a lot about your work by looking at the code. It's like a snapshot of your work ethic. Since I have a solid work ethic, this works well for me. Hopefully.

I'll need to work while I go to school, which is fine - that's what happens when you don't go to school when you should (living at home with the parents, right out of high school) but nothing really interested me enough to go to school for in 1990. The idea of going to school for 4 or more years for a creative writing degree - with no job opportunities afterward (journalism annoys me) - was not appealing.

The internet has always inspired me with its possibilities - like the Fiction Interactive site I'm working on now. I'd never heard of the internet when I graduated in 1990. Hell, the DOS version of AOL was not released until 1991! The Windows version didn't debut until 1993.

When I first started getting online, probably in about 1995, the internet was still pretty new - a lot of people thought it was a fad. Nowadays it is clearly not a fad, it's here to stay. We now have cell phones with internet access!

I don't know what I'll be doing as a part time job while I go to school... I don't really want to work a retail or food job if I can help it - but I don't know how many office/professional positions are part time. I'll have to contact the placement agencies I've worked for - Helpmates, Yoh Interactive, and Spherion and see what they can do for me. Unfortunately, the job I have now will last until November.

November isn't a good time to be looking for work. Neither is January, February, or March for that matter. Perhaps I can get a job at B. Dalton through Cindy, especially if just for the Christmas season. Or perhaps she could recommend me for a job with the BN company.

I'm not worried, I'll find some job to do while I'm at school. I might even end up with something at Realtime (where I work now) they like me and always have work to do. I can see them hiring me part time.

So yeah. Almost 40, big kid, going back to school, need work.