original little hellraisers

so. i resigned from my job last week. my last week is this week. it’s a very sad, emotionally confusing time for me right now, professionally. i’ve worked at this company for four and a half years, throwing myself into work at the expense of other things in my life that are more important.

it is however, a very exciting time for me personally.

rewind to december. i took two weeks off to allow for time with our out of town guests: parents on both sides, little brother and his wonderful girlfriend julie, and our friends hisano and yasu with their baby chinatsu. the awesome upside to this was that i got to spend the largest amount of time ever with owen since he was born. i sort of wrote about it here — but the thing that i didn’t quite express in that post was how profound and touching it was for me. i simply want to spend more time with owen. and our new baby. and my incredible wife.

from there i made a new years’ resolution: to not only see my children in their pajamas.

please understand, my day currently goes like this: wake up, kiss owen on the forehead, head to work, work, head home from work, see owen getting out of the bath, kiss owen on the forehead before he goes to bed and spend an hour with kara on the couch before we go to bed.

now i know there’s this whole view on the world that i shouldn’t complain and that we have a good life… which we do… i just expect to be as present a father as i possibly can be. i need to work less to get this done. a change had to be made.

i love what i do. i love the team that i work with. but as one of my friends at work put it, ‘if i hear the music, i’ll want to dance.’ my only real solution is to get out of development as i know it and move into a different part of this business (or out of this business altogether). it’s weird — many of the people at my current job, i’ve worked with for the majority of my career. outside of that, i have, literally, spent more time with this team than i have with my family (which is, no doubt, a problem). but there is no denying how important they are to me, not just as co-workers, but in many ways, as friends.

i had to set some priorities for work: 1) be able to spend more time at home / be bound to less on-site need, 2) not sacrifice our quality of life (if possible), 3) if i decided to stay in the industry, not to take a professional side-step or step backwards.

we talked about moving out of california and over to austin. there’s a large portion of the game industry there and i have quite a few friends that work out there. aimee and marc, some of our dearest friends, live there and are about to have a baby of their own. sure, it’d be a big move for us, but we were beginning to wonder if a big move was exactly what we needed. austin was (and is) the type of place we could afford to leave the industry and try something new.

and then there were the options here: stay in my current job, where i have an established history and reputation. move to another developer. move into publishing. get out of the industry.

staying in my current job or moving to another developer present the same problem. the problem is not in the place i work, but in how i know how to work. i spend all my energy managing other people’s time. i’ve just never looked at the job i am in as an 8 hour job. i think any manager would agree — management isn’t something you clock into and clock out of. when the team sizes grow they way they do, it adds stress, responsibility and accountability for a large group down to the pinpoint of a handful of people. it was this particular stress (one that is inherent in the job no matter where in development i work) that started the conversation for kara and i. so, from there, i decided that the job i have (which is a great job, mind you) isn’t one that will help me sustain goal #1 above. neither will moving to another developer, where that exact stress will be present (as i’ve said, it’s inherent). mostly because i will fall into my pattern of wake up, kiss the kids, head to work and back, kiss the kids, watch them go to bed.

that leaves me with two options: get out of the industry or move into publishing.

getting out of the industry — i’m not sure i have the courage. i’m not a risk taker. sometimes i wish i was more of one… i think it would help me some. kara and i have discussed a few options, but with another baby on the way, i couldn’t figure out how i could build something new, and something that would rely on kara’s skills to be done right, while we’re planning for a sequel.

if you’re keeping score… publishing is the only option not discussed.

i’ve taken a job with 2k games in marin. i’m moving into the publishing side of the business, where, the hope is, i can spend more predictable hours at work. this would leave me with a schedule that is slightly more stable. there is going to be more travel, no doubt, but i think the hours will balance out so that i will have more time for my home life than i ever have before. i’m really looking forward to this change — as this is a big one for me.

we’re also going to be moving closer to my new job so that, as part of goal #1, i can have a shorter commute. this also means we get a bigger house (hopefully) and one that doesn’t require ten years of work to be done to it… it also means we’re moving to the suburbs in the north bay: san rafael, greenbrae, san anselmo, etc. it’s not quite the city life that we’ve grown used to, but to be fair, where we live isn’t the city life either…

i’m not fully sure what the future has to hold, but when are we ever?

change is exciting. in this case, change is a good thing. change is the right thing.