4 posts tagged “future”

I've accomplished nearly nothing this weekend.
I have been completely listless.
I have managed to read and re-read a few passages from books for use as inspiration.
I entered a contest hosted by Penny-Arcade, which required writing short stories of 10 words.
Aside from that, I have spent a goodly amount of time watching Food Network and wishing I had someone to cook for.
The more I watch Good Eats and Ace of Cakes the more I really want to get back into cooking and/or baking.
It's something that used to feel me with such excitement... I need to recapture that.
I need to harness that in a lot of areas in my life.

I need to make it through this month.
Force-march through this bullshit until Summer rears it's head.
Then maybe disappear for a while.

I've been incommunicado for a bit.

Spent quite a bit of time thinking and some avoiding thought.

Saw the girl, briefly, when she dropped by on her way out of town last weekend.
We talked about a lot of things, great and small.
I really do miss her in my everyday life.

I don't want to be here.
Here, as in, my present life situation, not necessarily my location.
Although I am quite certain the location does nothing to help my disposition.

I keep telling myself to stick it out and keep scrapping away at that degree, one half-time semester after another.
I'm just tired of postponing my future because of the present.

I started classes again this morning, the first being English Drama.

I'm lonely, cranky, and frustrated.
This is not a good look for me.

I've got an exam at 8am.
I've got a meeting at 10am.
For some reason, I can't sleep.
Even with 100mg of Trazodone in my system.

I've been in a mood all day.
Unhappy. Listless. Restless.
I'm afflicted with some spiritual malaise.

I can't decide what to do.
Try to stick it out here and finish my degree or move somewhere.
If I move, I'll have to bank on my work experience and winning personality.
As I learned in Baton Rouge, sometimes that just isn't enough.
Oh, what to do, what to do?

There'll be one less bottle of red wine in the world tomorrow.
I'll fully accept responsibility for the loss.

I spent the better part of the day trying to decide how to open this entry. Words tumbled over one as I tried to figure out how, exactly, to express the ideas that have been fighting to get out of my head. It's something that comes up constantly, yet I still don't know how to approach it.

When the subject of my return to academia comes up, people always ask me, "What are you majoring in?" My answer is always an unsatisfactory, "I don't know." Typically, that results in the person plying me with more questions about what I want to do once I'm finished with school and/or suggestions about what they think I'd do well in.

Most of the time, I simply settle on telling them I'm going to work on a History major with either a Journalism or Communications minor. That works for the most part, and then we can move the conversation into greener pastures which don't make me squirm uncomfortably inside.

Truth be told, I've always felt silly saying what I'd truly like to do out loud.

To begin with, I enjoy role-playing games, be it of the computer, console, or tabletop variety. The creativity and intelligence involved with these time-killers has always intrigued me, and initially it's what drew me in. I was captivated by the imagined worlds dreamed into existence by others, and the pantheons of their creations were as enthralling in me as those of the ancient Greek and Sumerian cultures.

Neil Gaiman once wrote, "Things need not to have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust, and ashes, and forgot." The worlds created by the pens and words of man are no less real and enduring than those that have been lived out. A well-written piece of fiction can impart a lesson to someone that life experience sometimes cannot. A book can affect a person's outlook, even if the characters are completely fictitious.

My imagination has always run rampant inside my skull. As an only child, this was a great boon, as I could easily entertain myself during solitary playtimes. I would create entirely new backstories and worlds for my action figures. Some of these were enduring, some of them crumbled like the empires of ages past. There were epic battles and power struggles, all drawn from the well of my imagination.

Office work does not appeal to me. I have done the 7-to-4 gig, and was unhappy. There was no room for anything but conformity. No use of the mind, only rote regurgitation of learned skills, which any trained employee (or monkey) could be trained to do. Admittedly, I am a fair hand with technical work and computers in particular, but the number of times where my hands were active but my mind was idle became too great. Perhaps an office job where I was allowed more inventive applications of knowledge to accomplish my tasks would suit me, but thus far I have not found a job matching that criterion.

Honestly, I want to create new worlds for a living. I want to brainstorm. I want to use a pen (or word processor) to carve out new pantheons from blank pages. I desire the task of the storyteller, passing on legends and lore. Unfortunately, there's not really a degree that emphasizes that.

The video game field seems to be where I would have the most luck, but landing a job in that coveted field is akin to winning the geek lottery. Unless you know someone in the field or are already working in it I have heard tale that it is difficult to get noticed. Location would also be a factor, as the majority of the publishing houses are going to be either out West in California or back East in New England .

For the time being, I'm going to set about finding the best Major/minor to suit this odd pipe dream of mine, and go forward with the best intentions and plans for the worst case scenario.