I founded a startup, Juicer, in 2014 and sold it in 2018. This kind of put me in a weird position. I made enough money to not work for a while, but not enough to never work again. But it did grant me enough freedom and free-time to really think about what kind of work I wanted to do. I had grown disillusioned with the tech industry, my techno-optimism soured into techno-pessimism. We were promised flying cars and second-lives and brain uploading and AI servants, leaving us more free time for creative pursuits. Instead we got phones that make us depressed and apps that make ordering food slightly easier and neo-fascism. We got small incremental change, the sanding off of the edges off minor inconveniences. It turns out that life IS those minor inconveniences, once they were gone, what was left?
I spent the first few years of my semi-retirement working on my health, fixing the most obvious of issues. I quit smoking, I went to therapy, I got in shape, I slept more. I started doing yoga and meditating. I fixed my diet. I felt present and mindful, not happy but content. During the pandemic I regressed, struggling without the structure of work, without the escape of travel, being stuck inside;I floundered. I tried to recreate the lightning in a bottle I had captured with Juicer, it didn’t work. My heart wasn’t in it; Juicer succeeded because I needed it to, not just because it would have been nice, it was a deep needing in my soul. Money is a great measuring stick for validation, the closest thing we have in real life to a high score. But what do you use for motivation when money ceases to be a necessity?
It took me a long time to remember that time is money, and time is freedom. Freedom to explore, to experiment, to take risks. I’m from the Midwest and if I had to characterize the Midwestern mindset the word that comes to mind is “risk adverse”. Always take the practical path.
I found myself at the Norton Simon Museum on a Wednesday afternoon after having eaten an edible, entranced by the paintings. I realized that artistic creation is the only pursuit that really matters, the one unique thing we can do as humans. I started following the artistic passions I had given up in the Midwest in my adolescence in the pursuit of practicality. I started writing again, taking UCLA extension classes. I started drawing. I bought a drum set and a guitar and various synths; joined a band. Being in a band in college was my first taste of collaborative artistic creation. It was the same taste I later got when starting my own company, though in highly diluted form. There’s nothing like pursuing an artistic goal with your friends and loved ones, no higher calling.
My friend gave me a thought experiment: what would you do if you knew you would succeed? The answer came to me immediately: start a videogame studio. It was my earliest dream, the first one stamped out in the name of practicality. I was “designing” games with my friends when I was 8. In fact, that pursuit is what originally led me to programming: checking out a C++ reference manual from my library, having no idea how any of this worked but knowing that you need to know C++ to make videogames (I never did learn it).
Making videogames was the culmination of all of my passions that I had re-ignited in my semi-retirement: coding, writing, art, music. It was right there on the surface, all along. It took me a while to get there, but I eventually did. Maybe it’s not the best direction to head in but it feels good to just be heading in any direction at all, instead of standing still, looking around me, not being sure which way to go because all directions are equally valid.
I started working on my first game, just to learn. I’m trying to keep the scope really small, it barely counts as a game. After, I’ll keep pushing, keep pursuing the creation of art because I think that’s the only pursuit that matters.