The pile of art instruction books in my shelf depresses me - I always thought, at the time that I bought them, that “With this, I’ll finally be able, this is the push I need!”
But a push only takes you so far.
###The first sign of trouble
The biggest mistake in my life was believing I was as smart as I was told. I built my self-image around this flawed belief, which made me halt completely when I failed to understand a subject.
“If I can’t understand it, I must be really stupid - and I’m not so I’ll just try something else.”
And through self-preservation of what little self-steem that I had left, I never learned to persist. Borrowing from the greek tragedies: A hero is only as interesting as the challenges that he or she has to overcome.
###The inheritance of trouble
What do you get from a life filled with non-starters? Regret.
“I’ll be a moviemaker!”
“I’ll be an artist!”
“I’ll be a writer!”
“I’ll be a designer!”
Much like the boy who cried wolf, I lost all credibility in the eyes of my family. Truth is, I never knew what I really wanted, I always grabbed onto the very next thing, because I knew I would face trouble if for a second I admitted how lost I really was.
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t want a regular job, I don’t want to be like my parents.”
###It is no trouble
With programming (and game development) I have been making an effort to be different. I’ve insisted until I understood, I’ve allowed myself to make questions that were idiotic and stupid. All I want is to learn, grow and make things. I’ll be honest that I hate the pressure that there is to make money out of it but there is little that I can do about that, given the society that we are in.
Few understood how important it was to me that my team received a prize in the last jam we attended - it was validation that persistence pays off. I cried on that day and I couldn’t be happier.
I finally learned that fire, while beautiful, takes a lot a friction and a lot of time.
Keep that in mind when you are struggling or when you achieve something great.