Love what you do. Escape the rat race.

Inspiration

Why aren’t you being everything you can be right now?

Gabrielle Bouliane, which was diagnosed with Stage Four Cancer and passed away on 01/29/10.

If you aren’t working right now on your best idea or seeking your dreams, then you are doing everything wrong.

REWORK, ©37signals.

#iDevBlogADay

First, if you don’t know #iDevBlogADay yet, you should go to www.idevblogaday.com and see what a wonderful idea. From the site:

“iDevBlogADay is a group of indie developers that want to blog more regularly. Each day of the week is assigned to 2 people. Each person writes in his own blog about whatever he wants. Then they tweet about it with the #iDevBlogADay  hash tag. If a person doesn’t blog during his assigned day, his spot is given to a different developer”.

I am on the waiting list already, but the most important: I’m following each developer on the Twitter. Everyday I read amazing and valuable things from them, as today’s post from We Heart Games: Take the wide turn, love what you do. I am on the same boat as him, to not say that our story is identical.

A little story about myself

I started programming when I was 8, because I wanted to make games.

But everything started “wrong”. I learned Delphi on that time and started doing database applications. When I was 10 I wrote a small “Wap Web Editor” (a text editor with HTML and Wap’s cards syntax highlighting and support buttons) which was published in a Brazilian Web magazine with CD-Rom companion – I was featured due to my age and so on. And my Delphi’s journey ended there.

After that I wanted to write an emulator’s site, so I got SAMS Teach yourself ASP 3 in 21 days. I made my emulators and roms website (which had peaks of 3.000 Brazilian visitors a day) and wrote some websites freelancing (my father has arranged some contacts, since I was too young) until I met PHP.

On this side, I started “right”. I wrote a bunch of tutorials and articles in the biggest Brazil’s PHP and Web development communities. Since then, PHP was my gold mine. From my 15 years old to date I made almost all my cash with PHP. I wrote all kind of websites and webapps, for all company sizes. Then I learned Ruby on Rails – but note something: I was still keeping myself in the web development world.

As a hobby I have always read game development books or stuff that would help me make games: C++ books, algorithms, and so on.

Just for money

I’ll be honest. I actually never felt something special or passionate while working with web development. I have always worked with a feeling of hurry, because I never did what I wanted and what I dreamed. It actually drove me to a lot of frustration periods. And actually, when thinking about doing websites I have a very bad feeling. I’m just tired of doing it. It’s awful to not do what you dream and love.

Then why do I have always worked with it?

1. My professional career was all based on web development, so I was scared of shifting focus (I think most persons are tied to this rat race).
2. It always gave me a good money.

But, as I said, if I was frustrated or even hating doing this, why keep doing? That’s what was hitting my mind this year.

Forget the money, do what you love!

“It became clear that the biggest risk in life wasn’t making mistakes but regret: missing out on things. He could never go back and recapture the years spent doing something he disliked” †.

Games have always been my passion and they still are. The musics I hear are based on games soundtracks, all of my creative side comes from games, I think “game based” and so on! That’s my real passion! Games are all around me. Games are what make me feel warm and comfortable. And thinking of making my own games is what I really want.

So, since June I stopped doing websites. And decided I will invest almost (see below why not ALL the time) all my time to games.

If you want to have something done, you will have to make it happen and don’t just wait. Mostly important, don’t invest your time and your life in something that doesn’t add any value on the end or that you dislike.

The 4-hour Workweek book has an interesting story about Josh Steinitz, which had cancer. It tells how he started doing ONLY the things he loves and wants, instead of making them for cash or obligation. Why has he done it? Because none of his plans mattered when he knew about the cancer, so he decided to enjoy his life before it was too late (the quotation above). But he is alive and with no cancer. And better than that: he still doing just passionate things! That’s what every one of us should learn: do what you love everyday.

I am half way on the process. Since I need to pay the bills and keep me and my family warm and fed, I actually do 3 days per week some video editing to two TV shows. The rest of the week is totally dedicated to game development (as you can see in the blog, I am in a heavy learning process!). But that’s temporary, until I can use everyday to game development. At least I’m not a full time frustrated-doing-boring-stuff anymore.

Thanks We Heart Games for the nice article!

† The 4-Hour Workweek, p. 268.