The Trouble With A Comfortable Life

So you get up in the morning after a nice long sleep, take your time getting ready and stroll to work in the morning.  Work is well paid, quite interesting and full of young, vibrant people who all get along well.  The days go quickly and you’re kept busy but not overworked, with slow periods not being long enough to become bored.

Many people would consider the above scenario as a good job.  It pays the bills, keeps you interested and generally allows you to get through the week easily and enjoy your time outside of work.  However, in my opinion there’s a problem with this path:

You will wake up one day in 20 years time and wonder “What have I done with my life?”

What happened to all the hopes and dreams?  Becoming a millionaire and living the highlife or “finding yourself” in some mountain temple in far east asia.  What about taking exciting risks or truly searching for that perfect function for you in life?

When you are following such a comfortable (but not truly fulfilling) life it is very easy to watch the time fly by without you achieving any of your other life goals.  You might be one of the rare people who can make every evening and weekend productive but most people after a week at work want nothing more than to relax and do very little.  This leads to missing out on your true life goals and ambitions.

Personally, I would like to start my own business but my day job keeps getting in the way.  Its a circular problem - I need money to start my own business but earning that money inhibits starting a business.  So much effort is required in the working day, which means very little gets done outside of work.  I certainly don’t want to be asking the highlighted question above but unfortunately the answer to this problem still eludes me…

 

 

Can’t we all just get along?

A friend of mine asked me an interesting question today and as a game developer I had an instant answer but as a game player it provoked some thought.  Speaking about the new Grand Theft Auto game he asked, “Why can’t PS3 owners play against XBOX 360 owners?”. 

Well, why not I thought, and the technical among you may talk about incompatibilities between platforms and the amount of work it would take.  The fact is that it would be great for all gamers out there to be able to play together seamlessly but it seems, as usual, the money has got in the way. 

Taking a very idealistic view, it would be great if companies like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft would all work together to create a “super console” which all developers worked on to make a wide range of games, rather than sterotyping a console and its games towards a particular section of the market.

It’ll never happen, but its nice to dream!