Well, I never thought I'd actually find myself here.

Like so many other people, 2020 brought lots of changes to my life. In my case, none of them were actually triggered by the pandemic; it was just a coincidence that I decided it was time to start looking into options to retrain for the workforce. At the time I had a little one at home who was due to start kindergarten in 2022 and I was beginning to think about what should come next after that.

Like all large decisions, I took my time with it. My poor husband was forced to listen to me waffle back and forth on the pros and cons of various options for weeks. And then months. Should I pursue something that would net us quick money? Or long term? Should I pay to return to school? Would I make back the investment if I did? I'm not exactly a spring chicken, and while it's not out of the realm of possibility to do a full career change at my age, it's certainly not easy.

In the end, it really boiled down to two options; I could either go train up in a field that would likely make me miserable in order to make good reliable money, or I could pursue something that I really wanted to do, even if it didn't do much more than break even. I sat on that decision for a LONG time. A very long time. I haven't had the easiest of journeys and all my decisions up until this point were driven by survival and practicality. What I wanted--what made me happy--has almost never factored into anything before. It couldn't. Until now.

I find myself in the very fortunate position of being free enough to choose happiness.

I am choosing to follow a childhood wish instead of practical, reliable options. Pretty sure that my husband is simply relieved that I made a choice. Now he gets to listen to me theorize about game designs and pick apart mechanics instead of agonizing over how awful it would be to force myself into an accounting program at the local college...

What you want to be when you grow up is one of those questions one hears over and over all throughout childhood. In the early years one doesn't really think too much about it. One simply answers "Firefighter," or "Astronaut," or "Ballerina," with all the heartfelt gusto one has, completely oblivious to the requirements for said job or the likelihood of success. Somewhere along the way I learned to temper those sorts of goals, just like everyone else. I narrowed it down into a little list of things I thought I might be good at or things I enjoyed doing. One of those things was game development--though I didn't know it at the time.

I only knew that I wanted to have my picture on the back of a game box like Roberta Williams.

"I want to be the next Roberta Williams," I would tell my parents every time the next King's Quest game came home from the local computer store. She was something of a hero, I suppose. After all, she made some of my favourite games and like an author of a best-selling novel, her photo was on the back of every box she created. I learned to read by playing her games. Oh sure, there was Reader Rabbit to get me started, but for words with more than three or four letters? That's all on Ms. Williams. We played her games as a family long before I was capable of reading them on my own. My father sat at the desk and would read my sister and I every dialog box. We would talk about what was happening or what to try next while he meticulously mapped out the area on paper so we wouldn't forget the layout of the game world.

... I know, I'm SO old! Had to make our own mini-maps.

I didn't think too much at the time about whether or not there were other women making games. I know now that there really weren't too many others out there, but at the time I didn't realize that. I only knew that she made good ones with fantastical stories of adventure, so similiar to the books I liked best to read.

She retired when I was a teen. I'm not sure I can really express how disappointing that was at the time. She and her creations had simply always been a fixture of the fun parts of life, and it wasn't too long after that when the point-and-click adventure genre slid into a pretty big slump. I'd found a home in other genres by then and I'd moved on from the idea of following that particular dream of making computer games after everyone on the planet (or so it seemed) was telling me that I wouldn't be any good at it and to pick something else.

I've had a few decades to sit on the idea now. A few decades to sort out what I can and can't do, what I will and won't let others decide for me and what is and isn't going to make me happy. I like to create things. I have a great deal of drive and focus for things that I love. I'm strangely good at organizing, planning, and streamlining for efficiency. I'm also not that bad at math, it turns out.

So, here I am. Gunning for Ms. Williams' job (in spirit anyway).