It's fifteen after midnight on a Friday...or rather, a Saturday, and I see the name of a stranger that spent a few hours earlier in the day stabbing me to death pop up on my screen.
But here that's ok. That's ok because I spent most of that time perforating him with bullets in return. This isn't my average Friday...but thats only 'cus I get Friday's off mostly. Any other day, you'll catch sight of rampant homicide like this ranging every region of the globe, through every conceivable conflict and era, fabricated and real, passing through various renditions of reality that get farther from fiction just about every day.
This is a computer arcade. An arcade for the modern world. The kind of place William Gibson tried to imagine without the benefit of perspective, two-ish decades ago.
And I am an action hero. Or rather, I run the place, to the best of my ability. On paper I might seem like the most overqualified arcade manager conceivable. After running a car dealerships entire web and photography department while still in highschool, I went on to drop out of college in favor of military service (in the purpose sense, not the no-other-choice sense). After settling on the Navy I ended up getting into advanced nuclear engineering and qualification...but then somewhere in there I went a little crazy.
I guess that last part is really what qualifies me for this job.
I've worked a number of shifts in my life, many less glamorous than the ones previously cited. But now I'm stuck on something I love so much I want to get an irritating girlfriend just to provide an excuse to go to work during off hours.
Of course when it comes right down to it, I don't really need an excuse at all. It could be as simple as the choice between choosing to stay home alone and drink, or come into work and load up on caffeine. I'm scheduled for only a little over forty hours in a week during the summer but I average something closer to sixty or seventy. Other than the Navy this is the first job that doesn't pay by the hour anyway, so overtime doesn't really exist anymore in the classical sense.
But things need fixing. Computers need updating. Games need installing and patching and rigorous testing. Punks need killings. Luckily for me all that's in the job description, and more.
But the real reason I love my work so much is because when I'm here, I don't think about anything else. It's me and the business. In many ways it depends on me for success (at the very least it needs me to maintain the arcade in a state of which it is then capable of generating success)...but as time goes by the relationship has become more symbiotic.
This place needs me as much as I need it...possibly to the point that it could be my whole reason for day-to-day existence.
A few years ago that might have bothered me. But then the prospect of becoming a workaholic has become more and more acceptable in my increasingly-hatched-together life plan. Looking at the advantages – almost guaranteed financial success, a sense of progress and a good way to spend quality hobby time – it doesn't seem half bad.
But then again, with the proper perspective and a dash of healthy cynicism it could easily be the last bastion of a life with hypothetically-limitless potential falling into the nigh-inevitable mold of mediocrity. (Whew...that last bit was like a Charleston Chew of syllables, innit?)
I once heard someone say that years 18 to 21 is the dark age of our lives, a limbo where people suddenly have no place or purpose outside of what they inflict upon themselves. Now I've found myself just a few months out the other side, seemingly settled into something like a career.
Four years ago I can remember vehemently wanting to go to art school. I wasn't even half bad.
So how did I get here? And should I be disappointed?
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