An Excess of Freedom
Okay, with my back feeling a lot better today, and now that I seem to be seeing the last of whatever cold has been bugging me, I am now able to consider what to do with the rest of my life. To be honest, I've spent the last few weeks just agonizing on how sick I've been, and now I'm trying to figure out what to do with my dynamic new lifestyle.

Basically, I can do anything. My wife is making money now, so we're not in any dire need for funding. I don't have a job, so my day is pretty much free. Now, I have spent the last seven years of my life as a video game programmer, and I've spent the last twenty-five years of my life programming, so it's a pretty good guess that I'm going to fall back in with programming. But at least, I have the chance now to consider alternatives.

For instance, here's a brief list of the things I'm currently working on:

• Children's story based on Grimm's fairy tale format.
• Novel based on cryogenic freezing.
• Treatise on the state of ethics in video games.
• Small Civ-clone for the PC/Pocket PC.
• Web-based (using Laszlo) MMORPG City builder game.
• This blog.

So, there's a lot of stuff there, and most of it is writing (wonder if I should put Linux on my laptop, if I don't need MSDev), but even that is just scratching the surface of "what should I do". For instance, I want to get back into Tae Kwon Do, I want to take guitar lessons, I could be a damn fine actor (character actor, probably).

Here's the really weird part. This freedom scares the bejesus out of me. I'm almost paralysed with fear, not the fear of doing the wrong thing, but just the fear of the decision itself. That's why I think I've spent so much time wallowing in sickness, rather than doing anything.

So, little help here guys. What would you do if you could reinvent yourself today?
- posted by BrandG @ 7:09 AM