I have been a developer in the financial world for over 10 years now. You probably wouldn’t believe it, but it actually does offer a fair amount of creative output. Over the years I have had to find different methods that fit hundreds of client workflows, making it easier for them to do work. When I started out in this business, I was hungry to learn anything in the programming world. I took on tasks and concepts that were far from the necessary expertise my job would require. I have always had the desire to be creative in a more artistic field, but have often felt I lacked perspective and raw talent to realize the concepts trapped in my mind. I started to begin to think of it like creating a diamond. It takes time, pressure, and patience. Also, it means you can’t really know if the diamond is ready unless you begin to mine for that mineral. That being said, I decided to unearth my inner mind diamonds (mindmonds? Diaminds?) and start on some projects that have been left buried for the last 20 years. Let’s begin.

If you will allow me to jump back in time a bit, in my middle school years, I cut my teeth on the only thing the early internet had to offer for tragically awkward anime nerds. Anime Music Videos. I had always been a fan of film for as long as I can remember, and through music video creation, I found that I loved editing. During the early internet years, I did some internet sleuthing and found that two things were available in abundance. Dragon Ball Z and Gundam clips. So, I spent night after night, downloading anything I could get my clicker on, and went to work using Quicktime to splice together music and anime. This was before youtube, and I couldn’t afford to host anything, so these never went past my own computer, but my friends were equally excited and hooked on this creative pastime. It became a collaborative affair, late into the weekend nights. We were so young, it didn’t even feel all that limiting that all we could get was DBZ. However, by mid-highschool, this whole affair had to take a backseat to planning a real future, and I focused all my energy on getting out of my parents house, getting into and graduating college, and starting a career.

As I said, in the beginning of my career, I wanted to put my hands on all kinds of programming. Microsoft released quite a bit of free tools for their Xbox 360 platform and I began to research game design for XBLA. Quickly, I learned to write really basic games, like Pong. However, it turned out there were so many assets you needed to be able to create, really driving home that solo game creation is not only time consuming, but artistically exhausting, especially if you haven’t spent a lot of time flexing that muscle. It also turned out that this kind of programming was a variant that my actual career had almost nothing to do with. Since I was still green to programming, I decided to bury game design. Until today. I just finished plowing through the first bit of Unity tutorials I bought as a package over 6 years ago, and decided to see if it’s something I can get into. Independent game design. As of this writing, my goal is to learn and design a single screen platformer. My muse, a childhood love, Bubble Bobble. This could take me months or even years. I might quit. This could be the only thing I write on the subject. The last few years, as I have gotten older, I have begun to feel restless. I achieved everything I set out to do so far. I have a house, a stable business, and a long term relationship. But I am still years away from raising a child and only this blog to my artistic name. Now is the time. If not now, then when? If you stop seeing progress, hopefully it’s just a slump. Or maybe I got pregnant. Send me those good vibes. Peace.