There are many things that I think about on a day to day basis but the one thing that really gets to me is the career path.
I spent a few years collecting experience and spending half of my life in an office and I felt like I was trapped. A place with high pressure just cannot make me think very well but more importantly, problem solving becomes harder! Solving problems does not feel as good as it used to and maybe the reason for that is the repetition of the same issues arises becoming nothing more but a chore.
I recently jumped into a new job where things are constantly changing, consistency is slowly integrating and unlocking new areas I have not experienced before… It feels like I am finally leveling up and it feels great.
One thing that I have felt confused about lately was mixing the hobby and work to improve my quality of life! So when I was thinking to become a games developer, I would have created the illusion of being excited to go to work everyday! It feels like it makes perfect sense… to me anyway.
However, there is a slight problem when trying merge a hobby with work…
The way I define a hobby is an activity that I like to do and it creates a nice distraction that allows me to escape the work environment. Work, on the other hand, brings an environment where things need to be done at a certain time generating a thing I like to call “unnecessary pressure”. The reason I call it this is because the pressure is pushed by someone else but does not benefit anyone else but the person who owns the company!
Getting the pressure from individuals who may not care about the project and only cares about the payslip makes the other begin to dislike the entire operation altogether. The way I see it is that if it is supposed to be something you enjoy, how could you truly love it if you are being pressured to do it?
Don’t get me wrong though, there are some areas that do not deal with this kind of pressure.
So with me, I am a web developer in the day but a games developer as my side quest. Web development is a broad area and it equally gives the same frustrations as a games developer but the key difference between the two is the fact that the development patterns are different which gives that extra challenge.
What I am trying to get at is that creating two environments for one thing you enjoy most and the other being a job is the ideal thing to do if you want to continue enjoying what you want to do…
It is not to say that jobs are boring but people are pressuring to finish things where you want to be perfect about… Jobs are also a place to learn! If you don’t learn something new in a job, you end up being bored.
For me, the way to really fix this is just to keep my games as personal projects and my web life as work. This keeps the game development as a stress-free environment.
Maybe this is not an ideal way for some people but I feel it is the right move for me. One way or another, I’m glad I have some sort of direction once again…
