Stand Tall, Shake The Heavens

Sometimes I can't help but look back on the story so far and wonder where the hell I'm going. I'm in a pretty good place right now I guess, compared to a majority of people in this country. I've got a good job with a more than decent salary that lets me consume the mythical three-square-meals-a-day and pile on a bit of luxury on top of that.

But sometimes you stop and think to yourself, is this all there is to life? Slaving away as some company's employee, getting promotions and raises, then retiring to watch your kids grow up? Don't get me wrong, I love my job and the company I work for is great, very responsive to its employees. And I'm sure retiring and raising kids is a worthy goal for some people. But I highly doubt I'm that sort of person.

I get antsy sometimes, I often tell some people at work that I think of resigning at least once a week. The thing is, I don't really know where to go or what to do if I resigned. All I know is at some point I would like to be doing something else with my life, something other than a regular nine-to-five (well in my case more of eight-to-seven) job, something that leaves a mark on the world. Stand tall and shake the heavens, I always like to say to myself.

My biggest problem right now is fear - fear of burning bridges. There was this awesome article somewhere by this shareware guy about how to start your own indie business (I'll credit him sometime when I remember), and I remember one of the things he said that struck me the most: Don't be afraid to burn bridges.

But I am afraid, and with good reason. Like I said, I've got a good job, it's decent pay and I even enjoy the work a good percentage of the time. And of course, I'm also providing financial support for the rest of the family.

It becomes more frightening when I take into consideration what my passions are. The main ones right now are: gaming and web development. Taken together, it points in one direction: I should work on a web-based game. But the size of this task at this point is too huge for me to imagine, and the risks far too obvious. It would be very hard and it may take years to turn a profit, I would need some considerable financial base before doing this. And I would also need an idea of what game to do...

The second problem is focus. I lack focus. This I've known for a long time. Even if I decide on one course of action, I'm never sure that I would have the will to carry it on until the end. I can have focus and determination in the short term, i.e. a task that takes a week or so I can easily focus on. But the sort of life-changing ambitions I'm considering right now can't be done in a week, and I fear that I will run out of steam half-way through and all will be for naught.

I need to overcome these problems. I need to overcome fear. Well, now that I think about it, it would be far easier to overcome fear if I knew that I had focus and determination. I need to be become stronger than I currently am.