Nerves, nerves
I can not stay in one place right now. My body is unable to relax and I keep pacing around the house. At around noon today I was on the phone with some of the people from 2KBoston. I did a coding assignment for them this Tuesday and my solution was not quite what they expected, so I do not know which way it is going to go. If they like my way of thinking, then they would finally have me come in person for an interview, so this is not even the end of this process. Ah, the nerves! The amount of work you have to put in before they even consider seeing you in the flesh is amazing. I have completed 3 coding assignments so far. Two of those companies have contacted me for a follow up. The third (Linden Lab) is apparently notorious for their slow, unresponsive recruiting process, or so tells me my friend Dylan who works there. The waiting game is killing me! My Indie game developer friend from Canada has many plans of his own and is looking for his next project. Ah, if I could just follow him without thinking, but there are many questions unanswered (Hi Jonathan!). Not that I question my decision to resign from my job and pursue this crazy dream of mine, but I am worried sick about being able to provide for my family while doing it.

Last week I spent much of two days doing something completely unrelated to any of this. It was silly and incredibly boring, but nonetheless nerve wracking. The deadline to exercise the stock options that I was given by my old company was last Friday. You do not know what a stock option is? Neither did I (really) until last Friday. I had to google, call people and ask around to figure out what to do. It turns out that exercising them (which does not make you any money at all, really) could cost you dearly in taxes. The laws are very weird and many people have been hit with unexpected and extremely large taxes when they do it. You can imagine how nervous I was. If I did exercise them, then perhaps one day my old company would be sold and I would at least see some money from giving my life away for 8 years to them. If I did nothing, then I could miss out big time. If they go down, nothing is gained, nothing is lost. What a silly game, and such a waste of time. In the end I did exercise them and now own some of their shares. Of course, now I am constantly fantasizing about them selling the damn thing and making me rich, so I can spend the rest of my days making games from my rocking chair in our bedroom. And also having nightmares about Uncle Sam pushing me into bankruptcy next April. Ah, life.


And I have not touched my game in weeks. That makes me very sad, but it is necessary right now. The rest of the time I have spent it working with Jonathan on more fixes for his game. I hope the selling of it goes well. The amount of work and dedication he put into it really inspire me every day. We all need heroes :).