Long time no update. I wish I had more exciting things going on in my life to speak of, to justify the absence, but I don’t. Mainly it’s because I haven’t been doing much thinking since July.

Usually my brain is alive with activity and I’m constantly thinking of new things to learn, do and try, and I can chew through an entire book every couple days. I’m full of life and inspiration and I’m happy in my life overall. But sometimes my brain just falls asleep for a few weeks to a few months at a time and I just kinda veg out and don’t get much thinking done.

Ever since my birthday at the end of July I’ve been so focused on improving myself and getting a new job and getting stable again that I haven’t had time to stop, relax, and turn my brain on again. Things are finally stable here and I have a handle on everything, and after a few frustrating false starts (like starting to read a book, but quickly losing interest) I feel back to normal and happy again. My brain is once again active.

I’ve been wanting to start some kind of side business in my spare time, something non-industry-related. I’m apparently a shameless masochist and have an urge to develop a creative outlet for myself in which I’m solely responsible for everything that happens. Business has long interested me, and after a stint in sales and marketing, I want to study it from more angles.

I picked up a copy of Forbes the other day and began reading through the Forbes 400 Richest People in the USA. It’s an incredible list, full of descriptions of how each person got their riches. Some inherited it, some created their wealth from nothing. Some people created new companies which gained value, some people played the stock market, and some people made a game out of buying a company for very little money, improving it dramatically and then selling it for a ridiculous profit.

One example is a former bank examiner that bought a drug store for $5,000, grew it into a 100-store chain and then sold it to Eckerd for $50 million only twelve years later. Another is one of the original investors of Google who invested $200,000 when it was first starting, and now that $200,000 bought him shares that are now worth $14 billion. HOLY SHIT.

It’s been mindblowing to read about all these ridiculously successful people and see how varied their backgrounds are and how you can make gobs of money in so many different industries and in so many different ways. It’s gotten me thinking beyond the game industry and what I’d like to start doing in my spare time to build something incredible over the next decade or three.

So now my head is abuzz with all kinds of ideas of where I want to go and how I want to implement them, but there’s the unavoidable fact that there’s still a cubic buttload of new things to learn. So much so that it’s becoming an incredibly daunting task to find out where to start.

The basic subjects I want to learn so far are business administration, people management, financial management, real estate and investing. And that’s on top of my current interests of history, biographies of geniuses, the art of excellence and Maya scripting.

It would seem that the first problem I need to tackle is finding out how to tackle the first problem.

With such an incredible span of subjects and a nearly infinite amount of knowledge I need to acquire, I need to begin prioritizing what I’m learning. One technique I’ve begun to consider is brute-forcing my way through a subject in a certain amount of time. I like being able to freely learn and absorb information at my own pace with no deadlines, because I can get some good results out of that. However, I always function better under pressure. My sadistic pragmatist half sees the laid-back lackadaisacal half, thinks “YOU FILTHY HIPPIE!” and wants to viciously whip it into submission.

Specifically, my idea is to pick out two or three books on a subject and allot a very specific amount of time to finish them, like one week per book. From there I’ll be forced to schedule time every night to read through it. That way I could theoretically plan my next two months of reading and GET IT DONE instead of being a slack-ass little bitch like I feel I tend to be when it comes to finishing books. It’ll also help me focus more, and the harder I drum it into my head the faster I’ll be able to think.

When I was learning marketing, I found that the more marketing books I drove into my skull off-hours, the more I started thinking of marketing in relation to my job and game development when I was back on the clock. The two subjects dance around in my head and are forced to interact like two shy sophomores at a spring dance at a chaperone’s insistence. And so ideas are born.

I think I’m going to try that idea with business administration or management. I’d like to generally force myself to become more disciplined and a better time manager, like I’ve always wanted. It’s still early enough in my life now that I think I’ll be much better off in the future if I start brutalizing good habits into myself now.

Oh, and don’t get the wrong idea about my job or anything. I love where I work and the people I work with, and I honestly couldn’t hope for a better job. I have every intention of staying with the company indefinitely because they all kick ass and I’m really happy where I am, and shall continue to be so for a long, long time. :) See, creating art used to be my hobby, then I made it my job, so now running my own business off-hours is going to be my new hobby.

In personal news, we finally got a couple Playstation Portables at work and my god they’re amazing I want two. Graphics are incredible, Ridge Racer is a blast, Armored Core is beautiful, Metal Gear Acid looks intriguing, multiplayer is fun as hell and the unit itself is a work of frickin art. Sony’s going to clean the floor with the DS. In all aspects, there’s no contest, the PSP is the winner. Am I ever glad I’m developing a PSP title.

Speaking of video games, I’ve given up on Jak 1 for the time being because I’m fucking sick of constant failure. Maybe I’m bad at platformers but this game annoys me so goddamn much so often that I want to snap the controller in half on almost every single challenge I’m presented with. I’m taking a break from it for a while and starting on Jak 2.

I’ve also discovered Sly Cooper (the first one) and I’m in love with it. I wholly despise stealth games with the furious passion of a thousand suns, but the small stealthy parts of this game are so clear and comprehensible that my rosy little cheeks twinkle with joy. The game’s beautiful visually, it’s fun, and never too challenging. I don’t mind a challenge but there’s such a fine line between “I failed because of X” and “the game fucked up and I failed.” I always understand why I failed and I don’t mind trying to get better, but as soon as I have to start compensating for a faulty game design I get pissy and wanna crush people. I have very low tolerance for crap like that and I’d have probably snapped my Jak 1 disk in half then shit all over it and never touched it again if I hadn’t promised my friends that love it (and my boss that worked on it ;) that I’d try my best to finish it. I’ll return to it eventually, but it’s full of bad memories presently.

Also getting settled into California now. Got a car, love it. Dea and I are doing better than ever. We bought two cats that we’re deeply in love with and it feels like a little family now. Dea got a job working as a graphic artist for a small web ad agency and for a local startup magazine and she’s thrilled to be doing what she loves and earn money doing it. Life is going really well now, and I’m really happy.

Aaaaaaanyway, that’s all for now. I’ll be posting more often in the new year. Whenever my brain starts buzzing with life I get an urge to update the blog and post. I see this as my personal journal that people happen to read, so it helps to get all my thoughts in writing. It’s fun reading back over it and thinking “Holy crap, I sure sound smarter than I feel.”