10/30/2003 10:36:11 AM|||Travis|||

Chug-Chug..... CHO CHOOOOOO

Writing is awesome. I hate it when my ideas are lost. So many ideas fly through my mind in a day, and its a shame that very few of them get recorded. I need more journals and things to keep track of everything.

I had a good talk with Jake last night, and told him how depressed I was/(still am?). He didn't know the severity of it, and had some inspiratoinal words about the path I have set out to do, why I decided to do it and why I should continue it. The thing is, he really needs me now. The business is unhealthy, and he can't fix that. He doesn't know who to call, he doesn't know how to convince them, he doesn't know who to turn to. He pointed this out last night, and for once I felt important.

Its always bothered me that my contributions to Gnostic were largely unrecognized, besides through myself and others. I guess that is how it plays off for managers. They must always direct the credit to those who work for them and then take the heat when the shit hits the fan. Its actually a hard thing to do, because we all crave recognition for what we have created.

So getting some of that was great last night.

I want to become a CEO. Do you know anyone that is hiring for a CEO position, that would like to take a 21 year old student? Yep... I didn't think so.

I also realized that if I quit now, I would have no direction. Would it actually be fun to not have anything to work on anymore? Would I just join the corporate world and start slowly climbing up the rungs of the ladder, jumping through hoops, kissing ass, and realizing somebody else's dream?

No thanks.

So we have some problems with the game company. Our goals and expectations are high. We are entering a highly competitive market that chews kids like me up for breakfast. We don't have enough money. We don't have enough talent. We don't have any experience. We don't have the right relationships. We lack a concrete plan. We don't konw all of the technical obsticles that we will encounter. We have to many distractions.

In the words of Homer:

Bursts as a wave that from the clouds impends,
And swell'd with tempests on the ship descends;
White are the decks with foam; the winds aloud
Howl o'er the masts, and sing through every shroud:
Pale, trembling, tir'd, the sailors freeze with fears;
And instant death on every wave appears.
-Homer, the Illaid

We are like a ship, sailing head on into this storm, with a captain who just learned where the tiller is and how the sails works.

Yet isn't this when your talents are stretched to the breaking point? Isn't this when you can accomplish the most? Isn't this when you feel completely alive?

I am remembering one other time when I felt something similar to this, from my childhood.

While we were warring with the Viser tribe (our evil neighborhood arch enemy), they once started lobbing fist sized rocks from a raised position into our fortification in the woods. Our tribe was instantly put out into the field, on a slow approach strategy for deterence, while the more experienced warriors went around to flank the hill from which the enemy fired upon us. But I will tell you this, when your commander shouts "incoming" and you hit the ground and take cover, and can hear death wizzing through the air and listen as the rock slams into a tree ten feet to your right, breaking apart with tremendous force- you feel alive. You feel something deep and primal.... something that's really hard to describe. You are scared shitless, but atune to all that is going on around you.

So in a strange way, I feel this again. I feel that my company is pinned behind a tree, with death rocks flying all around us. If anyone of them hits, it would mean chapter 11- company death.

And for once, in a long while, after I glimpsed this last night- I felt alive.

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