Well, I had been thinking of what would be a good way to start this whole post off. I had come up with a few ideas that involved stories, or just talking about who I am in more detail. However that just doesn’t sound to entertaining to me at the moment, and I feel that over the course of me posting to this website, you the readers will come to know who I am.
So what then am I going to talk about? Well I figured I can talk a little bit about a write up that I had done over on LinkedIn a few days ago. The article was titled “The Game Industry, talking about that work and life balance”. Don’t worry I am not going to ask you to go find it; I am just going to post it below. I wanted to extend upon some of the thoughts and talk about one of the more key details of why I wrote that post to begin with.
Start of Article
Happy Sunday!
Since my body is used to some crazy weird biological clock these days, I thought to myself this morning that busting out the bog post should be a goal for the day. So let’s just jump right in. In this post, I want to go over what my experience has been the past year.
Work and Life, a Simple Balance
Many people seem to grasp at what a good work/life balance has the potential to be. In most cases, and pretty common, is when you work for a company doing a typical 9 to 5 job for the hours that you are at work that is your work life. The focus is on the tasks at hand or about that meeting that suddenly sprang up and you are now running for. When the job ends, home beckons and you race home to make some dinner, hang out with family, exercise, a triad of different activities. This personal life should have a nice balance from the working life. The reason being is that everybody needs a chance to sit back and unwind, letting the brain recharge and just relax.
Really I can not stress the relaxing part enough. When doing anything with games, relaxing is a foreign concept. Being part of a company is it big or small, will expect a lot from its employee, and what that sometimes means is that you are going to have to sacrifice the work/life balance in order to meet the demands of the employer. Granted this type of thing is common in most work environments. However, when something that happens maybe once every couple of months and at best you only ever stay at work a few extra hours a week, turns into 72 hours of straight work in some cases in the game industry. This type of schedule could be non-stop, every other week, always on weekends. With so much time being devoted to work, what happens to the personal life?
The personal life begins to falter. The walls had been clearly defined are now merging with that of work and personal life. Instead of coming home and relaxing with the dog and going for a run, it is instead being filled with more work, not being given to disconnect from the job and focus on more personal matters. These can lead to a lot of problems in both areas. One of the major areas is relationships.
The stress and pressure of working in the game industry, has a way of impacting everyone differently, but a lot of the times the work load has a way of straining the personal life in so many ways that it would eventually crumble away, leaving nothing but stress and pain in its wake. Who wants that? Plus before arguments are made saying that if someone is passionate about the industry they work in won’t mind working on it in their personal time, let me address that. Working on a project in one’s spare time is amazing, and of course they would not mind working on the project because it embodies the passion for the industry that they are working in.
But the project is most likely one that was thought up by them and not handed to them as some form of work request. So this side project can be a since of relief and fueled by passion, not a deadline.
So I want to bring myself into this a bit as I wrap this first part up about work and life balance. Firstly, I know that something like this is different for everyone, what drives them, pushes them to be better, and even what drives them into a specific industry to begin with. I had wanted nothing more than to be in the industry, driving and moving towards it since my education in software began. It was not until this past year that I really got a feel for the industry and allowed me to take a step back and reflect on myself.
The self-reflection for this particular topic around work/life balance was something that had surprised me. Years I had thought working on games was exactly what I wanted. But I came to realize that it wasn’t in the capacity that the industry demanded. I am still very passionate about the industry, games, programming, however one of the reasons I no longer want that as my career. A nice balance is what I seek at the moment, and currently I think I have found the first part of it with my current job.
I will still be dabbling in some code in my free time, but you will most likely catch me trying out a new cooking recipe or laying out in the sun reading a book digging my toes into the sand, or even traveling and just enjoying the world.
End of Article
Touching bases on that a bit more, is really just looking back at the situation as a whole. I plan to continue those articles, both on LinkedIn as well as here. I feel that some people may get the wrong idea about what I am saying inside this article. I don’t wish to come across as a person who is saying “Don’t follow your dreams!” in fact quite the opposite. Everyone should always strive to obtain the goals that they set for themselves, be it working in the game industry, a graphic designer, a musician, because if you never reach out you will never truly know if that is really what you wanted.
I was and still am to a degree, very passionate about the gaming industry. I love the products that come out, and I greatly enjoy the passion when people talk about the creations that they are shaping.
So I implore everyone to push hard for that, or else you will never know. I didn’t know how much I really wanted a career that had a good work/life balance until I started working were I am now. Everyone experiences life differently, and that counts for all aspects. I am of the opinion that most situations we find ourselves in are happening for a reason. We should learn from what we are experiencing and use that in our future to inspire, to create, or even avoid.
Well, time to call it an end here.
See you all tomorrow.