My workplace had a (sigh) “Reduction In Force” yesterday — a layoff. No, I did not lose my job. No, I do not know how I feel about that.
When a layoff has been announced, it’s impossible to get through a conversation at your job without the sentence, “Ah, you’re probably safe,” coming up. Every time I heard it directed at me, I cringed just a little bit. One of the main things keeping me from my ambitions right now is, remarkably, my career, my 40-hour weekly time sink that displaces me eight hours into the future every Monday through Friday morning. Goodness, what delights I could weave if I had that time back.
I need my job, though, at least in the short term. Our home is expensive to live in, and we’re still in the process of trying to unload it so we can move into a cheap apartment. Quitting my job right now just isn’t prudent. It would create more stress on myself and especially my wife than is really worth the trouble, given how easily it can be avoided.
Quitting is right out, but a layoff, now that’s a different story. Severance and COBRA would sweeten that 40-hour pot considerably. But I did not get laid off, and that’s fine, it probably still would have been madly stressful. Nevertheless, there was still that small hope, even though I knew I was perfectly “safe” from “losing” my job. You remember that one time in middle school when you asked out that girl who was utterly out of your league, and in your brain you knew that your odds were as close to impossible as to be rounded thereto, yet in your (I hate this term) heart you assumed against all reason that she’d say yes? That was my morning yesterday as we awaited our sentences.
I’ve become immensely productive at home, recently. Attending PAX East had a lot to do with that. I attended a pair of magnificent panels about independent game development, and met a large handful of successful developers who were astoundingly eager to share their insights and experiences. I returned home from Boston feeling more motivated to pursue my ambitions than I’ve ever felt in my life.
For years, I’ve wondered what my problem is, why I can’t seem to keep my initiative rolling and stay focused on my projects. I now realize that I need, above all else, exposure to other creatives on a regular basis in order to keep this up. And so the first thing I did when I got back from PAX was join the Philly chapter of IGDA. One hopes that the monthly meetings will give me to enough networking to keep me going.
I’m also looking into joining Independents Hall, a well-regarded coworking community in East Philadelphia. I’ve wanted to join a coworking office for a while, but it’s unusual to find one that doesn’t require a full time commitment. Indy Hall, however, offers a — cheap! — basic membership that only gives you one free day per month to use the office (more days can be reserved at a big discount), but still gives you full access to the community forum and all of the delicious human contact it entails. I wish I could join Full Time, but until that beautiful shred of pink flutters through my cubicle “door”, this will do nicely.
It’s odd to think of someone with as much social anxiety as me going out of his way to be near people like this. Desperate times.
I am a game developer. I am a game developer. I just need to prove it, partially to myself and partially to everyone else. Personally, I’m convinced well enough by now, deliverables be damned; I just need to show the rest of the world what I’m capable of, a tricky thing to do when you’ve got an albatross of a home tethering you to a time consumer of a job you’re more than eager to leave. These are things that can be shed, but for the time being, I need to keep my income steady. When did security become more important than dreams?
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