Revenge of the Gamer

When we are young we are told by our parents that we are special.  Our potential is limitless, and we can accomplish anything we set our minds to.  That’s what they tell us, anyway.  It’s a lie as empty and hollow as Santa Claus.

Look around you.  How many of your friends became rock gods, or famous authors or football stars?  How many of us are living the dreams we had when we were children?  Among my peer group the answer is none. 

Somewhere along the way each of us lost that spark.  We made a compromise, and then another.  Before long nearly all of us were working dead end jobs, or at least jobs that provided us with no sense of satisfaction or pride.

I numbered among those people until recently.  When I moved to Southern California I lived the corporate dream, but not my dream.  I made great money and had a ‘bright’ future.  Yet, my life bore no resemblance to my childhood dream. 

As an adult I was only concerned with the high salary and the job title.  I remember a sense of pride when I first held a paycheck over $10,000.  I also remember how I puffed up like a peacock when they gave me the title EVP of sales.  The sense of pride and fulfillment didn’t last long.  Why?

I didn’t derive any pleasure from the work.  Quite the opposite.  Most of us involved in the mortgage industry destroyed people’s lives, however inadvertently.

We got rich off the sweat and dreams of others, and lived a life of luxury brought about by peddling dubious loans that endangered the homes of those who took them.

Just after I turned thirty I had what you might call a mid life crisis.  I was having trouble sleeping, because I finally understood the damage my company was doing.  I couldn’t accept it and quit the six figure salary with no real idea of what I wanted to do next.

I did know that Los Angeles wasn’t a healthy place for me.  The anger, pollution, traffic and just the rat race itself are nothing I’d wish on my worst enemy.  I knew that if I ever wanted to be happy I had to get away from that place.  So I did.

I moved six hundred miles north to Santa Rosa, California.  The place is famous for exactly three things.  Wine country, redwoods and it was the home of Charles Schultz.  Beyond that its like any other small town you’d see across the united states.

The move home did wonders for me.  All the tension and stress faded.  I no longer hated what I did for a living.  Instead of being surrounded by smog and traffic now it was trees and smiles.  I’d come home.

Unfortunately, six years in the mortgage industry took a larger toll on me than I’d expected.  I was burned out and for several months instead of looking for a job I lost myself in a haze of drugs and video games.  Don’t get me wrong…I had a great time doing it and it very much recharged my batteries so to speak.

The thing is during the two years since I haven’t accomplished anything.  Or at least nothing that I feel matters.  I played a lot of World of Warcraft.  I got a chance to raid and to hit an 1850 arena rating.  I made friends and had good times, so I did take away memories.

I played a lot of pen and paper games as well.  Aaron ran his Eberron game, and then later a 4th edition game set in my game world, Faelands.  I ran an Exalted game and a short lived 4th edition game of my own.  Later, I even had a chance to play in the Exalted game Aaron ran.

All of this was good.  These activities are the hobbies I’ve had for most of my life, and I still love them…especially pen and paper roleplaying.  The only proof I need to see that is my current Exalted campaign.  I still love the hobby.

Somehow, though,  I’d lost my way.  I’d told myself before moving home that I was going to look for a good job.  Instead I took the first one available.  Two years later I still have that job.  I haven’t done a single thing to improve my job skills or to move forward professionally. 

And I could have.  I could have been promoted multiple times if I wanted to.  It would have taken hard work on my part, but I’ve worked as a software engineer, sales and a host of mortgage positions.  Getting promoted would be easy if I walked the same path I followed in Los Angeles.

I haven’t, and I think I finally know why.  I’ve been reluctant to walk the same path, because a large part of me fears where that path will lead.  Will I get to the top again only to find it as hollow and unfulfilling as it was in Los Angeles?  I think I would if I went in that direction.

I’ve subconsciously avoided walking the same path.  But spending my time goofing off isn’t the answer either, and while it was a great distraction for a while it didn’t last forever. 

Now I’m left with a strong desire to find a third path.  I don’t want to excel professionally.  I don’t want to be middle management or even upper management.  Nor do I want to spend my time indulging in vises and killing time with distractions.

I want to reclaim my childhoood dream.  I want to be an author.  Not just an author, I can already claim that title.  I want to be a novelist.  I want to see my book in another person’s hands, and know that the rapt attention they are paying to that book is because of the story I wrote.

Six months ago this dream re-awakened for the first time in nearly a decade.  It not only awakened but did so with a vengeance.  I know now what I was meant to do in life.  I know now what I find fulfilling.  I know what my craft was always meant to be.

I’m a storyteller.  I entertain.  I take people to fantastic worlds and show them fantastic things they’d never see in their every day lives.  I show people a world more beautiful than this one.

That’s what makes me happy.  This is what brings me fulfillment.  For the past seven months I have written like a fiend.  Last night was a fairly major milestone, because I finished editing 200 pages of the novel.  In another month, two at the outside, that novel will be finished.

I’m in the home stretch.  Soon, I’ll be able to wear the title that entranced me at the tender age of six.  I’ll be a novelist.