Next Stop, The White House!

One of my favorite quotes was uttered by W. C. Fields, "If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it." The first time I'd ever seen those words, they were posted on the wall in the room of my high school government and economics teacher. Unfortunately for him (or me, I can't quite decide), I did not take those words to heart, especially when it came to his tests. Ironically, I think he eventually began to give me points for persistence or perhaps pity when, as the answer to every single question about a specific bit of legislation enacted half a century prior to my birth, I would answer "The Hawley-Smoot Tariff," which is perfectly real but something about which I was painfully uneducated considering that I had only heard about it while reading Dave Barry essays aloud with my friends instead of studying for the government exams. But years later, my youthful persistence to remain ignorant would eventually worm its way back to considering the Fields quote in the context of a harsher reality.

Earlier as a preteen, I loved both playing games with and programming computers. At the time, when asked if I'd had a hobby, I would respond that programming was it and also that I was considering a career in it. Again unfortunately for me, once I became old enough to study such subjects in high school, I discovered that I was good at music and that I liked girls, not to mention that I had also developed a healthy distaste for actually being in high school, which put a premature cap on the progression of my programming skills. But as a college student, I was reintroduced to computer games via Duke Nukem 3D and found that the games I had imagined as only a possibility as a child were now actually being made. It also did not escape me that, not only were those games being made, there was decent music to go along with them, music that someone probably got paid to write. I made up my mind then and there as an undergraduate student struggling to discover what exactly it was that I wanted to do with myself for another fifty years, to embrace my roots and focus on a career in technology as it related to music and sound.

Of course, little did I know at the time that my chances of making music as a career, even in the burgeoning days of computer games' surging popularity, were about as slim or slimmer than my becoming the President of the United States based on my knowledge of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff. I was determined that I could blunder my way in based on my love and knowledge of music and naively applied to every open position I found while sending some truly pathetic examples of demo reel non-showmanship including cassettes with unmarked labels and blank CDs with Sharpie-d contact information scrawled onto the surface. Yes, I have been guilty of these faux pas and more but I do not, however, apologize for anything because without any training or guidance of any kind, I was making it up as I went along, like a jazz solo or a high school government essay exam.

Once I successfully realized that I had a screen door's chance at being built into a submarine of landing an audio gig, I did what anyone with a dream of fantastic underdog success might do. I held onto my dream like a convict guarding his cigarettes, garnered a string of singularly terrible jobs, and continued to work on learning the skills that would someday enable me to make audio for video games. The journey has led me over five hundred miles through blue collar enslavement, entitled trust fund baby classmates and ivory-tower academics, and even a slightly off-target, but related career. However, even with almost half a decade of additional experience holding a related job and an equal amount of time devoted to the attainment of the job, I still could not get the time of day from the game industry if I stopped it on the street and offered it cash. It is as though I am constantly running five steps behind the departing bus, always making it to the door just after it's been closed and locked.

What turns a simple goal into a dream and what drives us to chase them so stubbornly? Perhaps it is the faith that success comes to those who are persistent and patient. But perhaps that success also comes from one's ability to be clever, crafty, or ingenious, to know how to turn the tide in one's favor with a simpler idea. Then, there is also the question of fortune, the act of being in the right place at the right time. Speaking for myself, I feel as though I have the persistence and patience down to a science. But I must lack the ingenuity to truly follow through. Not to mention that the very idea of simple fortune seems as strange to me as any. In any case, I don't know what the future will bring, but if the past is any indication, the words of W. C. Fields continue to resonate with my experiences. Perhaps I should quit my job and run for office.