Month 11 Report
I would like to have a lot to say. I’d like to have an expansive list of accomplishments to detail here for your amusement and/or edification. The truth is that I’ve spent much of the last month concerned.
I’m concerned about the coming year of school. If you missed the update, I’m returning to Vancouver Island University in September despite already achieving all the requirements for a bachelor’s in creative writing. I decided that rather than waste the three years I spent studying computing science that I would put those credits toward a minor. I also wanted to avoid another year of re-rentering the workforce. Two birds, one stone.
The trouble with this is that I once failed computing science. I drove myself out of it by refusing to put my mind toward solving assembly language and discrete mathematics. Could I have done it? If you believe my mother, who always said I was capable of doing anything I put my mind to, then yes. But a mother’s belief can only carry you so far. Self-belief is what matters in the end, and after three years of scrabbling up the sheer cliffs of advanced science—which came snarling and snapping on the heels of five years of failing to publish a hit video game or book—I was ready to let go.
We’re supposed to learn from our mistakes, see how we misstepped and avoid those pitfalls going forward. But there are falls so great they leave the intrepid adventurer shattered and pulped at the bottom of a rocky gully. The only ways “forward” are to either crawl with broken elbows into town and hope there’s some way to recover, or pray that a rescuer happens by.
I think, for me, the past few years of creative writing were a form of recovery. Though I couldn’t see it then, all the time I spent exercising what I’ve been told is my “greatest gift” was simple “achievement therapy”. It was the equivalent of setting the game to easy mode and breezing through a few dozen levels. But always the thought that I’d abandoned something important intruded on my moments of calm. Just before nodding off to sleep, sitting at red lights, or the brief lulls between writing lines, I think about how I once had a grasp of computer code. How there was I time I could sit down and spin up a video game out of nothing.
This past month I dove back into computer science with an actual vengeance. I want to take revenge on 2019 me, who shamefully walked away from a degree that could have earned him six figures. I want to take revenge on 2015 me, who closed Unreal Engine for the last time with a project most of the way complete that could have earned at least a handful of pennies on the Steam storefront today (have you seen how low the bar is these days?). I want to scoop that broken mess of dreams up from the bottom of the cliff of higher education and carry him on my back up to the peak, and plant a damn flag.
As of this writing, there are thirteen days until that journey starts. I’m scared as hell. But I’m ready.
Wish me luck.
P.S. I just got a massive Twitch payout. This is odd because I quit broadcasting on June 7, over seventy-five days ago. If you’re still subscribed to the CMONTV channel, please stop. There are better ways to financially support me.
2024.08.21