Text and Hubris

So, I had an interview today. What did I learn? I learned that I am rusty when it comes to all of this. I used to be good at interviews but five years at the same job tends to dull those instincts. I felt like a complete moron. I arrived early, sweating from the heat and humidity, and then stood around because I didn’t really feel like sitting. In the interview itself, I didn’t do much at all to sell myself. I just spent most of the time nodding along as I was shown the project. A project which, by the way, is the kind of project that you just want to work on.

Luckily, my qualifications spoke better than I did and I think it all came out well. Now, I just need to let my references speak for me and they are all fairly eloquent folks so I should be okay. This is only a part time gig and the pay is what you would expect for a student position. It’s worth it, though. If just to give a little back. Besides, with the combination of this, Courtney’s salary, and my financial aid (if it all comes out right) we just might make it.

To live life the way I want and still be able to make it in the world. That is the challenge I face. So far, so good.

@makzu

Most of the stories I write are interactive stories. I create the world. I fill it characters, create a series of plots and subplots that are constantly occurring and evolving and then drop other creative people into the midst of it all. They interact with my world. They push at it, tug at it, scream at it, rip at it, and out of it they create their own stories, their own narratives. I am, in essence, the meta-narrator. It is a job that I love. If only I could find a way to make it pay.

Not that it matters, mind you, I create worlds in my head every day. Some are pleasant, cheerful places, others are dark and terrifying. This is their nature because it is my nature. I put the work in because I must, I do it because it is who I am. Even if all the other people went away, I would still be here creating worlds. We don’t do this to play a game. If we do, then the time is wasted. We do this to create a circle of storytellers, to bring together people to create new narratives and new adventures.

For most of 2009, I found myself trapped in a loop. I was creating stories that weren’t new. They were simple, and nothing more than a sad rehash of other stories. I can’t do that. I realize that now. I need to create stories that move and flow and evolve. Stories that are unique in some form. I’m back doing that now. Even during this protracted illness my mind has been fluttering around my True20 system adaptation of the both The Sixth and another, unnamed, project. Now, I am also looking seriously at maybe writing for Pathfinder as well.

This is what the work gives you even when it doesn’t come to fruition. It gives you stories, it fills your arsenal of tropes, tricks, and hooks. It keeps you creating even when there is no one to share it with and even that is sometimes enough.

Most of the people who remain in this medium are not like me. Most of them simply want to play a game and then go about their way. My belief is that their time in this medium is limited. There are better options out there for them. I am looking to a different niche entirely and I really believe that is where the future lies.

The narrative is key.

I had planned on eating my lunch in the park yesterday, but the rain put an end to that. Instead, I wandered downstairs and look for a seat in the work cafeteria. It still amazes how much like high school this place is. Here, I am a youngster. Most of my colleagues are in their 40′s and yet there are the managers sitting at one table, the go-getters at another, and the social butterflies at yet another. I note this as further evidence that the social divisions of a nation, a school, and a workplace are all the same.

With that cheerful thought in mind, I almost think of tossing my meal and heading upstairs. I think it would be easier than to watch this. I am hungry, though, and I can’t will myself to throw away food simply due to my own frustration. I sit at a table far removed from the rest, pull my sandwich out of the brown paper bag I’ve been carrying with me and commence eating.

They all talk at once. I listen and I watch and I catalog a hundred conversations about nothing. Jim is ranting about politics, George rambles on about his ongoing home repairs while Angie and Chad are whispering in the back almost too conspiratorially considering they are both married and not to each other. This latter issue would count as gossip here. I can already see the social butterflies, more vampires than butterflies, watching closely.

I know I should get up and leave. Upstairs there is nothing to do but log into the same systems and do the same thing I have been doing. The new technology has left us behind. Now, I work on 10 yr. old platforms that just won’t die. Now, I watch high school politics play out in a nearly empty cafeteria that used to house hundreds.

This is my life.

And yet, there is always that whisper in my ear. That echo that says,

“It doesn’t have to be…”

I was feeling nostalgic so here we go. This is a throw back to what the Greyrealm and Text and Hubris used to look like. Sometimes, simple is best.

What to do, what to do? I sit here and stare at my future. I have three papers to write and all I can do is ponder how to merge them all into a new media narrative. I feel so far behind and yet, in some ways, I am still ahead. My goals are coalescing. New Media narratives can and do exist but only by accepting that we cannot hold on to the paradigms of the past. That includes the paradigms of the the Internet.

New Media is not youtube, it is not the Gutenberg Project, or Google’s mad dash to digitize all text. Text exists within and without. Narratives are human creations and we now live inside and outside of the machine. Inside the machine the world is only slivers of grey. This is the Greyrealm that has hosted me for so long. Beyond the realms of that are only illusions and vast tracts of advertising. Narratives exist in between. They exist in the colleague who tells me of a dwarf who stands against the horde. They exist in a boy who delights in telling me how so silly tripe changed his mind and in the many shared laughs caused by that cursed narwhal song. They are teh reason that a crappy boy band from – what was it, Moldova – will be forever remembered for one really annoying song. New Media is the narrative of life and in that it is no different from the narratives of the past. The only real difference is that more people are talking and more tales are being told and the giants of old media are doing whatever they can to make money while the giant corporations of new media prepare to devour their forefathers.

Into all of this we are born, the storytellers of the digital age. Finally, I think I start to understand. The technology I have spent my life wandering through, the digital wastelands that encompass most of my life exist because I can tell a story with it. All this work…and now I sit and look and realize the tools before me. I have them. I am ready.

Wow…I hope I don’t fuck this up….