My part-time job is teaching at a language school. Which I am glad to have such a job, but my skills are in games and technical nonsense. I have the flu, and I just got over a nasty eye infection that caused the right eye to swell shut and leaf thick white fluids. With the aching body I still sat at the desk and worked on my game. Today is the start of everything. I am 31 years old, wife, two kids 7 and 1, we live in my in-laws house and it's cramped. Coming from owning a condo and two cars to having just the bare minimum made me change a lot. Not that I am attached to those things... I just feel, not burned out, just fed up.
This is a risk for me and my family. I am lucky to have a wife who puts up with the crap I do, and I am lucky she lets me buy the software and hardware when I need it to do the things I love to do. After leaving San Diego for Midway in Chicago, then getting the rug pulled out from under me 4 months into being employed there, moving down to Texas to share a room in my parents house, I decided I was done with the main-stream game industry. Not that I won't contract for them, I just want to take care of my family and work from home. That part hasn't worked out well. A game concept here, a kiosk there, fixing busted assets done by some outsourcing company... nothing big or long term or worth talking about, in some cases they just ran out of $$ and never released (but they paid on time ^_^ ).
So my goal is to sit at home and make games. That's it. Make a good enough income where I can do the things I want/need. My wife doesn't have to worry, and I can get a house that was made this century (The house I am in has thin walls and it's REALLY cold). I want my kids to grow up in the same town from 1st to 12th grade. I don't want to move after every project, or when the studio closes. Two job offers since the Midway meltdown and I turned them both down because I can't work from home.
Sometimes I feel this industry isn't family friendly. I don't want to have to move all the time...
So Toaster-Kun is my first step to taking no steps.
