An Englishman in New England

Being stuck in pseudo-unemployment land (population: me, and declining rapidly) does have its perks. I'm not just referring to the sleeping in, pottering about in my sleeping shorts/whatever beastly leather thing M has made me wear the previous night, or catching up on the latest Passions saga.

I've had the chance to really sit down, excuse myself from the daily grind of money-earning, and think about what it is I want to do. In a recent conversation with Those Who Spawned Me, they reminded me of a startling fact - in 20 years of toil, not once had either of them woken up looking forward to dragging their caffenated asses into their cubicles/offices/meetings. Not once. In 20 years. If my mental calculation serves me right, that's over 7000 days of wanting to eat a bullet in a very public and emotionally scarring manner to the onlookers. If my mental calculation makes it two for two, that's a lot of bullets, scars, death and mopping up to do. It's a wonder I'm even here to write this.

I like to think that they endured such a hardship so that I might not have to, and instead find fame and fortune by answering my calling. Well actually, my other calling, since my career in porn was brutally grounded before it really got going. I'm talking about graphic design. But I'm not talking about any old graphic design. I'm thinking I'd really like to be in videogames.

Videogames and I go way back, back even before my eyes crapped out on me, and I was forced to go to school wearing glasses so thick my teachers kept insisting I put the binoculars down. Hell, I've been playing them long enough to remember when they came on audio-cassette tapes and floppy disks, before migrating to the robust cartridge and finally their hi-tech CD incarnations. And now I'm here, wondering why I denied that I wanted to make games for so long.

It must be because of The Look. The one they used to give me that you'd normally reserve for a guy you caught having a quick one off the wrist in the furthest pew from the altar. "For shame" The Look used to say, "We thought you'd have grown out of that by now".

Luckily, I learned to ignore it and post fantabulously high scores while nodding modestly at the gasps of my equally digitally-obsessed friends/nerds.