Thirty-Five Years

In a way, it's amazing I've managed to stay alive this long.

I mean, sure, I was certainly brought up well enough to do it. My folks did their jobs well enough in that respect. But given the dumbass lifestyle choices I've made in the second half of my life so far, it's a miracle I haven't dropped dead of a heart attack by now.

I don't blame anybody but myself for that. There were people who tried to stop me or talk me out of a lot of the shit choices I've made.

What got me thinking about all this was that game review from I-Mockery I wrote in 2004 that I reposted on my blog last week. And since I tend to get all contemplative around my birthday, as one does, I started wondering if and how my life might have been different if I'd gone ahead with other choices, decisions, and paths than I ultimately decided against.

See, back in 2004, there was still a part of me that had really hoped to have a go as a blogger or a web video star. Around the same time, my parents had convinced me to enroll in the medical transcription program at Kilian Community College because there was supposed to be more of a job market in that field. I agreed because at the time I was pretty sure they were right about it being the better choice. Even though it did work out a little better than my previous attempt at higher education, it didn't exactly work out the way I had hoped.

And really, the only person I've got to place much blame on for the whole college thing not working out the way I had hoped is myself. There was more I could have done to make it work, and I didn't do it the way I should have.

Still, I can't help but wonder how things might have been different for me had I decided to go the “Internet as a job” route back then. Maybe I would have been amongst the ranks of The Spoony One and the Nostalgia Critic, and a whole galaxy of other Web stars I could probably name if I really put my mind to it.

More than likely, though, things probably wouldn't have turned out too terribly much differently than the whole medical transcription thing in that it wouldn't have gone nearly as well as I'd hoped, due to a distinct lack of necessary effort on my part, and as a result, I'd still be working as a cook in a burger joint to pay the rent on a basement apartment that smells of stale tobacco smoke and dampness.

I'm not exactly saying that it's entirely a bad thing, of course. In a way, I'm actually seeing at least some of my dream come true in that I do have this blog, that, by some coincidence of effort and luck, seems to be getting more and more popular every time I post something to it. I've got my own user-generated series in the community blog section at That Guy With The Glasses, and I've even got a handful of subscribers to my YouTube and uStream channels.

One part of the reason I'm not actually making any significant income off those things is that I'm simply not putting forth the effort I should to make them work to that extent. That, however, is a fault largely of my own doing, as I've said, and I'll take my share of the blame for it.

Another part of that has to do with my own tech savvy. I really didn't have what it would have taken to make a decent go at being a blogger or video guy back then, and not much has changed since then. I'm still not particularly great at making blog posts or videos for the relevant channels. Even if that were not so much the case, I doubt my folks would have had much appreciation for my yelling at a webcam for half the night while I worked on videos for YouTube while I lived with them, and I suspect the same would hold at least partly true for my current upstairs neighbors.

I am, of course, working on changing that, and I think I'm getting a little better at these things as I go along and do them. Practice makes perfect, after all.

Probably the biggest thing on my mind right now is where I'm going to go from here. It's the same problem I've always had. Lots of ideas, but oftentimes only about half the motivation I need to get it done. Hopefully, I'll be able to figure out how to get past that eventually.

And I'll also need to learn how to make decent plans, too. As I said, lots of ideas, but in this case, not much ability to plan them out decently.

At any rate, I'm sure I'll figure something out. If I do it right, it'll be something good that I'll manage to get right for a change.

Here's to at least one more year on planet Earth, I guess, if nothing else.