When I was growing up I didn’t give a whole lot of thought to my future career. I either wanted to be a private detective in the style of Frank and Joe Hardy, or a farmer like my biggest hero, my dad. Sometime in the last couple years of high school I suddenly grew an affinity to writing, and almost literally overnight I started writing pages and pages of the most random crap you could imagine.
Being 16-17, a lot of it was just me trying to make sense of life by emptying out my thoughts onto paper. I created my own fantasy setting, complete with six different races and a complete world map. I tried to describe exactly what true love was (all I figured out were dozens of things that it wasn’t), and theorized on the meaning of life, and more importantly, where I should go with my life. Pretty run of the mill teenage stuff.
When I graduated high school and went into college all I knew is that I wanted to write, so I started taking general classes at the local community college with the idea of getting a Journalism degree. After a while I started understanding a little bit more about job demand and the evolving medium of print media. I began to wonder if I was going into the wrong field. All the writers I respected were professionals in the field they were writing in first, and journalists second. Their success as writers came secondary to their success in their respective careers. “Alright,” I thought. “So I get a degree in the field I want to write about, and go from there.”
About a year and a half ago I started listening to 1UP Yours. I was familiar with EGM, but I didn’t pay enough attention to video game news to make the connection between 1UP and EGM. I quickly grew to love the commentary the 1UP and EGM staff provided, and like any 20ish year old guy, thought working at a place like that would quite possibly be the most awesome job EVER. I loved listening to Shane Bettenhausen and Jeremy Parish rattle off publishers, artists, and producers like they were talking about the stats on the back of their favorite baseball card. I started thinking that if I ever could get a job writing for anybody, I wanted to write for 1UP, EGM, or GFW.
I become a podcast junky at that point, and was listening to all the IGN podcasts, the Gamespot podcast, and the Joystiq podcast; on top of non-video game related offerings. I gave them all a fair chance, but the 1UP Network blew them all away. It really wasn’t even close. It was actually few months after I started listening to EGM Live that I actually got a subscription to EGM. After poring over every issue for a few months, I became convinced that I could write just as good or better then these guys, so hey, I should work there!
First off, I was wrong about my writing ability. With practice I firmly believe I could churn out a fine review or column for the editors of any publication to ink up and send back to me, but I am certainly not on the level of a true professional journalist.
Secondly, (news flash) GFW closed months ago, EGM closed its doors last week, and 1UP fired 90% of the people I wanted to work with on the same day. Well, there went my dream job.
In truth that dream job was more of an escapist effort to keep holding on to my childhood instead of embracing this whole “growing up” thing. I still have an inner conflict sometimes. Should I take on the persona of the mature, responsible person that brings home the bacon and does what’s expected of him, or should I hold on to that carefree, ‘dream big’, mindset I had in high school and see where it takes me?
Right now I have my Associates in Arts from that community college I started going to after I graduated high school. Armed with a full arsenal of electives, I now know a little bit more about a little bit of everything, from astronomy to philosophy.
This past fall I started a new college career in the computer programming and web design department. The classes arn’t all that challenging, and I’m confident I could excel in that field if I so chose to. The question I’m asking myself is the same one I asked at 17: where should I go with my life?
Guess I’ll keep on writing and find out.
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