Has it really been 14 months - quick update!

I just re-read my initial plan that I posted back in January of 2005. My my how time flies...

Let's see, in the last 14 months I have been:
1. Promoted to a job (title only no pay) where I managed the IT teams in two states servicing 48 locations which put me on the road way too much.
2. Delt with two deaths in my family, one being my Grandfather.
3. Delt with marital crisis.
4. Left that job when the monetary compensation they promised never came.
5. Left the torque community for what I thought was greener pastures only too return after about 8 months and 2 game engines later.
6. Joined a "programmer" and started a gaming company.
7. Spent 4 months trying to recruit talent for said company.
8. Went through two "sets" of teams where we kept losing team members to jobs they couldn't pass up making big bucks (you can't argue with someone leaving your team for a steady paycheck from NASA).
9. Switched game projects when you realized your initial game was too big in scope - causing team angst.
10. After many starts, sputters, setbacks, felt your grip on the project slipping
11. Moved 3 states away from your family to start a new job making more money but having to leave them behind until you can sell your house and buy a new one.
12. Spend the next 4 months having to talk to your wife, 3 year old, and 1 year old only on the phone. Having your 3 year old cry cause your not there and not being able to explain it so they understand.
13. Slipping into a severe depression at the holidays due to your seperation from your family to the point that your only able to go to your new job and function, then go home and sleep.
14. Spend New Years 2006 on the living room floor crying cause you desperately miss your family.
15. Realize your partner in the game company and you are going different ways both professionally and artistically.
16. Become an ordained minister - have most of your family dissapprove, (ever have your deeply religious and devout Grandma scowl at you?) and your wife mis-understand and not take it seriously.
17. Realize after you've spent well over $600 bucks out of your pocket, on top of the $1,000 plus before partnering up, that the game is dead and neither of you want to admit it.
Finally get the call from your wife almost a month later that finally the house has sold.
18. Fly back to your family a month after that, hug and kiss them, finalize the house sale, pack them up and move caravan style 3 states away.
19. Have to pack your family, not in your new house, but into a two bedroom apartment because there is a paper work glitch that is holding up finalizing the purchase of your new home. Including your mother-in-law and 3 cats your allergic to!
20. Have to call your game partner and listen to BS on why the company site is down, they didn't call you to let you know or get your help, because they can find money for hockey games, but not for helping pay for game content, let alone the 30 bucks needed to keep the site up!
21. Decide on a new game direction (minus the partner & the lone team member that may still be willing to work on the porject - but your not sure since the site is still down).
22. Start new game company with totally new direction and fresh start.
23. Recruit two new team members without even recruiting! YEAH!
24. Finish design for your new game, something that truely has not been done, and may be controversial, and will probably garner much criticism and be mis-understood, but you believe in it!
25. Decide on website name(s), start on all the legal paper work.
26. Congradulate your wife on her new job!
27. Read your originaly plan from way back in January 2005 and realize how naive you were, but now you think you know better, and have realistic goals.
28. Try to decide on how to write a new plan after such along time and be taken serious in the community.
29. Decide during your day job lunch break to write this blog in leu of a plan for now.
30. Cringe as you post it hoping no one takes it as a lame excuse or attempt to get sympathy instead of as the quick update it is.

Anyway, everything is great! New job, new state within short drive of childhood home and extended family. We'll finalize that home shortly and get out of this stinkin apartment. Amazing how life can change so much so quickly! The last year has truely been a roller coaster ride with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.

I am writing a new plan shortly which will outline the new company and it's goals, the game and it's focus, and the future for me. The new game will truely be, I feel, a first. I also wasn't kidding about expecting alot of flack and mis-understanding. It's not my intention for this to happen, but while polling people on the idea I found that people rarely took a middle ground on it, they were either excited by the game, or they were against it.

I expect to release the information soon so keep looking!