Not being an artist myself, the sentiment is probably too focused on money. Except, well, money matters. For at least the past 500 years, artists either find an established, institutional means to be paid regularly for the effort they could spend in less creative fields, find sponsors and manage themselves as cottage industries doing other things besides art, or keep their day jobs.

Lucy knows this as well as anyone, and has cartooned on the subject at least once before, in reaction to more experienced cartoonists bemoaning the loss of the syndicated newspaper comic strip as a viable form of expression with a regular paycheck. Her reaction to them isn’t too far off from my reaction to her latest cartoon, about being asked by a stranger what she wants to be “when she grows up,” and the discouraging comments that follow her answer — a cartoonist.

At least, I think they’re similar reactions. I’m not a cartoonist, and can’t even remember pretending to be interested in drawing, even as a kid. But I did spend 10 years working in newspapers, and recently started another career in an entertainment field where it’s considered appropriate to discourage others who express interest in it. And I have lots of friends who are creative professionals, and read and have read lots of comic books and comic strips. So I think I might have some insight on the subject.

Let me just bullet-point the most important points that I accept without question, before I get too far into what could be misinterpreted.

• Lucy Knisley is already an accomplished, published cartoonist with a substantial body of work that proves her talent, aptitude and commitment.
• She is, therefore, already what she told a total stranger what she wanted to be when she “grows up”.
• Profound conversations with strangers, in person or over the Internet, is often awkward.
• This is especially true if one of the strangers is clearly older and more expressly opinionated, than the other, and moreso if the opinions are perceived as negative.
• There will always be opinionated people, regardless of how informed their opinions are, or that they think they are.
• Most gentle-minded people tend to avoid expressing disagreements verbally, out of fear of escalating arguments. This is again, especially true of arguments with strangers, or when there’s no commonality of opinion established before a respectful discussion can follow.
• Fear of arguments comes from the more basic human fear of what we do not understand.
• Most people do not and will never understand what it takes to be a creative professional, even though many are fascinated by the prospect of being one.
• Fascination, that being the fatuous influence of desires, and understanding are not the same thing.
• Many people can’t tell the difference.

I’ve been asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?” before. It’s usually been by strangers. Friends of mine know better, as I can’t remember a time in my life when what I want to be has ever been clearly in focus. I don’t blame anyone for that, nor do I blame myself, but I admit to being fascinated (and I use that in the spirit of the above bullet point) by those who do know what they want out of life. The purpose-driven life, as some would call it, must be a great thing, however I am not yet convinced it is absolutely necessary to live a happy life.

Not that I’m an expert on the subject of being happy. But that’s another subject.

Lucy surely didn’t include the entirety of what she and the stranger talked about in the train station. I’m not entirely sure she actually turned the question around on him, as the final panel of her comic implies. Certainly the question has some importance to her, I infer from its inclusion in that panel, but maybe more in the asking, rather than the answering. I say this because among the other things she didn’t include in the cartoon, she apparently didn’t tell the stranger that she doesn’t just want to be a cartoonist, she is one, and list several of the things that any normal person would consider worthy of consideration — the kind of thing he might have reacted by saying, “Oh, then you really are what you want to be.”

But that’s not what Lucy wanted to talk about, in the real-life encounter (which I must also take as a given really happened, and wasn’t just made up for the chance to draw a cartoon about it) or in the cartoon, which becomes a meditation on the frustrations of being an artist surrounded by people who might discourage people like her.

Lucy’s conclusions about why such discouragement exists, and is expressed freely by so many people often enough to be socially acceptable, seem off the mark to me. Sure, maybe the “starving artist” idea is over-romanticized, but it’s not as though every “artist” who has ever fit the description of “starving” cultivated the persona. More to the point, how hard is it to find someone who has ever expressed interest in being creative, yet struggled and ultimately failed by any standard to achieve anything meaningful, going through life as a generally unhappy and maybe pitiable individual?

Now, maybe the reason for this is just as Lucy suggests, that the world is full of (see above) misunderstanding about creative arts, and there are many barriers for anyone to prove their ability as an artist. Or, to be less nice about it, that the world is a big meat-grinder for anyone who all but the most mediocre of individuals. Maybe the trips and snares of the world ensure that the majority of would-be artists are doomed, and but for the well-meaning wise strangers, they wouldn’t receive their proper warning before being consumed.

But why is “proof” of ability so important?

Maybe it’s because the uninformed uncreatives of the world have set up deterministic and quantifiable measurements for everything, such that creativity could be compared to something like how tall you are or how much weight you can carry. Maybe we’re introduced to the rank-and-file at an early age and any resources to teach the ways of the world are  (as per Sir Ken Robinson). Maybe the idea of success in creative fields is so strange as to become abhorrent, such that the first taste of success should have nothing but ruinous failure afterward (as Elizabeth Gilbert has said).

Maybe few artists spend much time talking about their successes, and too much about their failures. Gloom and doom makes for more memorable writing, however — just try to get through Warren Ellis’ Do Anything essays and remember the successes of people like Jack Kirby over the artfully crafted confusion and malaise. Go read all about Bill Watterson, the “Calvin and Hobbes” guy, and dare not to be surprised by how, 15 years after leaving the beloved strip and not looking back, he has no regrets.

Maybe there are legitimate reasons to be concerned for anyone who says she wants to be a cartoonist, given how newspapers and other print media, so long the medium of choice for comic strip artists, are not nearly as reliable as they used to be. (Though many media-savvy artists have found success by taking control of their own businesses, such as Scott Kurtz.) This probably could have been acknowledged by Lucy more than she did, though she did point out how the stranger admitted that his relative works for Marvel Comics (”NOT CARTOONING,” she writes). Why, though, didn’t she point out to the stranger, as she has to her readers in the same posting, that her work is set to appear in a Marvel Comic? (Girl Comics, coming next week.)

Again, I don’t fault Lucy for what she did or didn’t say to the stranger, or her choices of what to express in her cartoon about it. And maybe I’m reacting more to what wasn’t expressed more than what was. Maybe this was the same mistake the stranger made, unloading his opinion and interpreting her lack of objection as encouragement. This would go right along with how he might not have regarded Lucy as an adult (she admits she looks younger than she is,) and based on the assumption that she was some naive girl with a whimsical affectation, and attributed her interest in cartooning to inexperience.

But if he really did have a relative that worked at a major comic book publisher, maybe all he hears is stories about poor wannabe creatives trying to break in, and wandering off disappointed. Or maybe, it’s all that he remembers, out of the few stories his relative would tell someone else not really familiar with the business.

Maybe he was just trying to be helpful, and maybe she could have explained she didn’t need that kind of help. Maybe no one really needs that kind of help, but maybe artists like Lucy Knisley have reason to be more confident about expressing themselves when challenged.

Maybe she would have rather drawn a comic strip about it anyway. And that’s not a bad thing. Nothing to be discouraged.

I often wonder how crazy I sound, to readers as well as to myself, including my past and future selves. I get over it pretty quick, though, as I’d much rather sound crazy than boring.

I said there was another reason I don’t write so much here anymore. I may as well say what it is.

Right now I’m sitting in a conference room at Microsoft’s offices in Austin, in a place called Stonebridge Plaza. When I finish this post, I might be somewhere else. For now, I’m waiting on a meeting to start, organized by something called Austin SPIN. There’s going to be a talk, one that I thought would begin at this moment, but will actually begin half an hour from now.

Only one other person is in the room with me now. When he explained most people don’t come in so early, I excused myself, saying, “I’m an old reporter. I’m used to coming in early.” Better to be too early than too late. Too late and you miss the start of the speech, and everyone already seated would look at you funny, so you miss your chance to become just another observer. Meanwhile, it’s been more than five hours since I’ve eaten much besides a cookie and a Jolly Rancher, and it’ll be at least another hour and a half before I can find anything else.

This is what my life is like now. Happier than I’ve been in a decade, unlikely to be all that more interesting than I ever was. Just a product of my experiences, past and future desires and interests, a lot more comfortable yet at the same time more aware of just how uncertain everything is for me.

I might just be closer to a midlife crisis than I want to admit, but I’m getting to a point, here.

Two years ago, I knew very little other than I knew my career was going nowhere and I wanted out. Other than game-related side projects, some on contract and some unpaid, there was no indication (that I was aware of) that I’d be doing anything but newspaper editorial work for the rest of my life. Any ship that would have carried me in a different direction had sailed, and it would be flourescent lighting, 30-year-old desks and computer software not much younger, random management and the nagging suspicion that nothing I did mattered, until I got too old to read a  monitor or grip a mouse.

I still write every day. In fact, my current job involves writing e-mails to customers at the online subscription-based video game publisher I work for. But it’s writing that no one gets to read, except for me, my co-workers, and the customer who needs help.

The point might be apparent to some of you at this point.

Every day at work  is a reminder to me of how distant I was from entertainment production and the services thereof, and how most entertainment consumers still are — gamers (probably) moreso than any other sort of entertainment consumer. I’d come to the conclusion well in advance of this job (my piece for GameCareerGuide was at least partly about this) that people who play games are not encouraged by their love of the craft to learn real information about its production, and it turns out I could not have been more right.

And that in turn makes me think about all the writing I did when all I knew how to do was write, writing about friendships I was making with actual game development and publishing professionals, and how easy that seemed despite having no claim to being easy to like or being able to relate to others. Most of that time was spent holding the door shut on the lingering desire to one day do what everyone calls, “go work in the industry.” What I really wanted to do was bear witness and learn, in a way most people on the outside looking in were not doing.

And again, as it turned out, I was doing the right things.

I’ve probably veered too far off the point now. One more detour and I’ll steer back.

Recently I attended a group presentation among 3D production professionals and enthusiasts that included a request for pros to come to local schools and talk about their work. Great, I thought, immediately correcting myself before finishing the thought, that would be so inappropriate for me to even assume anyone would want to hear about my professional growth — finish college, fart around in a chosen profession and be generally annoyed with just about everything for 10 freaking years* before getting the first bottom-rung customer service job at an office where there isn’t any actual game development going on anymore.

* 1998/9-2008/9, so actual truth.

So what I’m calling the other reason is the following:

Writing about games for a general audience, while it has been rewarding for me, reminds me too much of the past decade spent being generally unsatisfied and mopey.

I’m lots happier doing work that includes writing, but that most people will never read, and is too wrapped up in the scope of the particular game I work on that it reads like code to anyone not already familiar with the game.

This is the writing I ought to be doing, which as has been pointed out lately, is the kind of writing that makes this kind of entertainment happen.

All that writing I was doing before, on this blog and other Internet sites, including the ones that paid me to write about games? That writing didn’t get any games made.

That writing’s still important. Other people can do that writing now, and as I said in the previous post, some are more motivated and are at the proper stage of their lives to make it work for them.

It still sounds selfish when I put it that way, which is probably why I won’t bring it up again.

Now you know why I don’t post that much here anymore. We’ll see when I find something else to write about.

Some other time.

It’s not just the clutch of internal excuses and traps that Jay Smooth calls the little hater. It’s not just that I have very little say to my dwindling local audience that I’ve largely turned my back on, most of whom are still friends of mine and who I can pester through other Internet media all I want.

Those are the obvious reasons. There are others not everyone knows about. Here’s one. Not promising I’ll make it to part 2.

About 18 months ago, just a few months before I ended up in my current job, I was still pretending to want to write about games and the publishing thereof, so I went to what turned out to be the last showcase by Austin-based startup upstart, Gamecock Media.

They had a lot of really mediocre games to showcase, and a few awful stinkers, one of which actually looked good at the time, another that’s still in limbo, and another that was at least good enough to secure the developers a few more high-profile deals. It wasn’t much of a learning experience other than a reminder that the same tired myth that money and good times aren’t the only requirements for being an effective publisher of any entertainment media.

By the end of the year, Gamecock got bought up, but of course the process hasn’t been smooth, even though their new owners, SouthPeak Interactive, another publisher of mediocre novelty games, are doing all right these days, and one of the two Gamecock principals took his game elsewhere (and has a great notion of support.)

At the time, there didn’t seem to be that much worth writing about. And after I ended up not saying much about it, I immediately started wondering whether I was wasting my time pretending to be a journalist without any hungry desire to write stuff down about video games. Was there even a point to be having gone to the showcase?

As it turns out, there were at least two, neither of which had anything to do with me writing a thing.

One was a video interview I gave that never got published. It was by a crew at Docubloggers, which at the time was programmed out of KLRU, Austin’s PBS station. They’ve since weathered cutbacks and have struck out as an independent Web site. They’d asked me about this site, and what it takes to be a successful blogger.

Like I ever knew anything about that.

It never got published, as I learned later, because they wanted to use it as a follow-up for the next Gamecock showcase. The one that never happened.

I’ve since made friends with Domenique Bellavia and Sean Cunningham, and will at least be watching if not actively participating in their progress. If you saw my videos about ZapWizard and his Left4Dead map based on the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Lake Creek, well, that was going to be one attempt. My Youtube channel continues to have mostly-unedited material (largely because I know next to nothing about video editing and haven’t got around to really learning) that I’ve otherwise enjoyed creating.

The other person I met at the Gamecock expo (they called it EIEIO, but it sounds just as ridiculous now as it did then) was Jay Lopez. And for anyone who hasn’t already heard it from me, here goes.

8-Bit Jay Lopez is going to be doing all the writing about games that I never did.

In the year following the showcase, Jay hustled up reporting jobs at newspapers near where he’s from, the on-the-way-to-South-Padre communities of Laguna Vista, Laguna Heights and Port Isabel. While he learned how to work with  deadlines and editors in the same room, he’s been writing for gaming Web sites, including a blog on GamePro Arcade (which recently shut down, but he’s still in good with GamePro editors, who recently gave him a review for their main site.) He’s got his own blog apart from everything else, and is still hustling.

Being a source of encouragement for someone like Jay, that I would not have met if not for a mutual interest in games, has been more rewarding than anything I’ve ever written on this or any other Web site. All I’ve had to do is answer IMs from someone I’ve only met in person once, telling him, yes get after that, or no don’t waste your time. He’s done all the other work.

So that’s a reason why I don’t write so much anymore. I’ve got other means of expression. At least one other person is doing the work I would do, were I more motivated to do it myself. I don’t want to feel like a big fake anymore.

There is another reason. We’ll see if I get around to writing about that.

We asked each other how things were going. We’re both busy, though him arguably far more than me. Not much to complain about.

He asked if I was still writing.

I said, not really.

He said, “At least I know I’m not missing anything.”

Totally happened.

Right now I’m in a coffee shop retraining my huge hands to use my netbook keyboard. I might finally be able to use this thing to take notes the week after next, when my Project Management class begins.

This is my second summer living in Austin, and part of me just can’t relax. It’s a part that’s easily swayed by Texas martinis and nootropics, varied entertainment options and a hassle-free workplace, though. I imagine it’s kind of like post-hypnosis. The days when I used to quack like a duck on command are long behind me, and by “quack like a duck” I mean “seethe with disempowered rage.”

I’m sure other people would react differently to such a dramatic life change. This year, I’m sure most in this country experienced one that they’ve had to endure — but I’m also sure I’ve groused about other people’s problems before, without useful conclusions.

Meanwhile, my journey of self-reflection has progressed with fits and starts. I’m currently testing out the notion that the way I talk, both with inflection and choice of words, makes me sound annoyed more often than I really am. Still not sure if it’s actually true, but being happy makes me more self-conscious about such things. I am also aware, as well, that I’m getting old and fat. Being a guy in his 30s, this is not something I feel comfortable questioning others about.

The classical radio station is on too loud in here, and my Step by Step Microsoft Project 2007 book is sitting like a big blue and white lump on the table. I’m probably the happiest I’ve been in years, and the only thing I wonder about is how long it’ll last, which means I still don’t really know how to smile.

Maybe once summer’s finally over.

What the gaming sites have yet to point out is that Four Points Centre is barely what anyone would call “Austin,” at least not counting suburban sprawl. Its own location map advertises the fact that it’s way out in the sticks, and if anyone would care to check the Google Maps version, you might get double-checks their estimates on drive times.

I’d call it “out by Lake Travis”. Or, “about seven miles from Hippie Hollow“.

Edit: In all fairness, I’m not (officially) making a qualitative statement about suburban sprawl, just that while the developers most likely expect that the area will build up and become a growth center in the next few years, it isn’t much of one now, and while a 15-minute drive to anywhere might seem fine to anyone from, say, L.A., Texans would call it ‘livin’ in the country.”

But, in truth, the place where I go to work, out on Loop 360, was just hills and trees less than 30 years ago. ‘Course, back then they thought it’d be made into a freeway. Didn’t quite happen that way, and it’s still pretty nice country out there.

Only clear message: They really wanted a game with the abbreviation “HoT”.