A Small Confession

This is actually the SECOND time I've done this.

You know, the-whole-quit-your-job-to-write thing.

In fact, this is the second time I've left the video game company. Because they hired me again after I left the first time.

Feels like the Matrix Reloaded up in here, doesn't it?

Let me explain. The first time was much less ambitious. I left my video game job, and took a 10k paycut to work at an entertainment non-profit, which hosts a widely ignored awards ceremony. They locked my hours at about 35 per week. And it was the kind of job where I only had to do about two hours of work a day, and then I could just write at my desk. Additionally, they gave me twelve weeks leave to go travel the world. I spent ten weeks in Europe, and another two in South America.

I wrote. And I was bored most of the time. I spent a lot of time among the trees of Amelia Earheart park, thinking and pacing. (Ironically, the statue of Amelia that stands in her park was missing for most of that time. I attended its reinstallation ceremony (above) during one of my work breaks.)

During that year and a half, I finished my script The Last Whatever, and I was pleased with it.

But for a long while, it appeared that my risk - leaving my job, taking a paycut, being bored a lot - none of it had paid off. Nobody was pounding on my door asking to buy the script, and I had to return to the job that I had left. My life was inexorably returning to the status quo.

It felt like nothing had changed. At all.

Now. 18 months later. My script blows up. I have money in the bank. And it's on.

If I hadn't quit my job the first time, I wouldn't have written the script. And none of this would have happened. I came this close to being a unfulfilled game designer for life.

Ray Kinsella had to wait through the entire winter before Shoeless Joe showed up on that field.

The return on that initial risk may be slow to arrive.

But that doesn't mean it's not coming.