Future Careers

I find myself in an awkward position these days. I am lucky enough to find myself in the position of deciding what area of my particular major I want to focus on. As a Software Engineering major I am essentially learning how to design, manage and program various computer programs.

My problem is that I am torn between doing either something that I find to be of substantial value, or doing something that would be satisfying but ultimately earn me both less money and less deeply fulfilling.

The two areas I would really like to delve in to are scientific (physics, chemistry, biology) modeling and research, or (and this would come as no surprise to anybody that knows me) video games.

I have, for a long time, been extraordinarily interested in physics and chemistry. In fact, when I was a young kid, that still had dreams that I thought might come true, I wanted to be a physicist. Well, actually I wanted to be a fighter pilot. But my secondary dream was that I would go to Stanford and enter in to the world of physics research. People like Einstein, Farraday and Gauss always intrigued me.

I also grew up with video games my entire life. In fact, as strange as it sounds, as more and more time has passed most of my fondest memories are no longer of the partying that I had done, and more of them are of the times I spent playing games with my brothers and my best friends. These days I sometimes sit around with my best friend Mike and fire up some games and relax, have fun and bullshit about whatever crosses our minds.

Over the last few years I have started to really push myself in my studies. I decided it was time to find out what I was really capable of, and as it turns out I could probably fulfill one of my childhood dreams of being a scientist. Or I could actually try my hand at making video games.

While making video games may not seem like a very noble endeavor, I like the idea of spending my time creating things that will give kids the sort of memories that I have. For most people that don’t play video games regularly the sort of satisfaction that comes from playing a really great video game is probably impossible to understand. And I will admit that I also think that it is just sort of… stupid (for lack of a better word). And I really do believe that if I decided to spend the next few years going down the path of learning as much as I can about game development I could make very good video games. In fact I could probably make good money doing so.

But there is a very large part of me that feels that going that route is self-indulgent and somewhat risky behavior. There is very little guarantee of success and even if I become the greatest video game developer in the world (which is unlikely considering I like sex) I will still only be a video game developer.

If I were to go the science route, I would likely be pretty fulfilled. There is very little else that I would like to accomplish in my life than making some discovery, proving a theory to be either right or wrong, or otherwise contributing to the future of mankind. Once again, this sounds indulgent. And it probably is. I have no reason to think that I would really accomplish anything worthwhile in my life if I decided to go that route. But why even think about it unless I allow myself to believe that I may actually have something to offer.

My mind works in strange ways, and really what this decision comes down to is really something more than just what I want to do for work. But I really don’t know what I want out of life entirely any more. For a very long time I wanted to get married. I believed I would find the love of my life, and we would have children. I would spend a good amount of my life dedicated to my wife and kids. And that still sounds great. But within the last few years I have begun to question whether or not it will really happen for me. I have become more and more picky about the women in my life. Frankly, I find most of the women that are interested in me to be quite annoying. And those that I find interesting are either taken or (and) likely not interested in me.

But I digress. The point is that if I chose to go the route of physics research it would not be half-hearted. I don’t intend to be a number cruncher. If I was to go in to something I would ultimately be aiming to be the head of research on projects. And the problem there is that it is a huge time investment without a huge amount of pay for the most part. Both the time investment and relatively low pay are both difficult things to deal with when having a family. But ultimately if I were to end up living a mostly single existence for the rest of my life I would be fulfilled pretty much solely by my work.

If I were to have a family, however, that would be my main source of fulfillment. After all contributing new humans (good ones) to the world is in and of itself fulfilling enough (or at least I assume). And I could, in this circumstance, devote my studies and efforts to developing video games. Of course there are relationship problems involved there as well… since you know, women don’t exactly swoon at the idea of game developers.

I think it is fair to say that I overthink the future. In a matter of a few years I have pulled a complete 180. Over that time I have switched from someone that lives in the moment and worries about the future when it comes, to someone that is almost always thinking about the future, making plans for it, and trying to strive for it in almost everything I do. All of this is probably a result of living in a current life that I am not all too fond of. So most of my brain is concentrated on school, weight loss, careers for the future and so on.

And this blog and the last have fully convinced me that I could never be a writer since I can never keep my fractured thinking out of my writing. But I really write these things as a weird way of exercising my thoughts in a more concrete manner. But if anybody happened across this blog, feel free to comment on whatever you think about my future.

Since it is always an excellent idea to take advice from strangers through the internet.

Source: http://watchthisgobang.blogspot.com/2010/08/future-careers.html