T w e n t y S i d e d

Fifteen years. That’s a long time to hold onto a job in this industry. Technology moves fast and companies come and go, so this has been a good run for me. But now my time at Activeworlds is over. We parted very amicably. But we parted. I might still do a bit of consulting-type stuff, but my 9-to-5 job is gone. (As well as the jobs of a few friends, alas.)

On one hand, this is a little scary. I’m aware that this is actually a terrible time to be looking for work. Everyone else is also looking for work. It’s also a terrible time for me to be out of work. We had already taken a financial hit a few months ago and things have been looking uncertain. Now I’m looking at our finances and concluding that if our household was a game of The Sims, I would seriously be thinking of abandoning the game and starting over, because this game is hosed.

But despite the ominous financial outlook, this is actually a bit of a relief. I’d been working for AW for three days a week. Then making comics, my column, and my Let’s Play during the other three. And then squeezing this blog in wherever it fit. And even Saturday, my nominal “day off” had to be spent playing games in order to keep up. I’ve been redlining for about nine months now. I don’t care how much you love your job, (and I love my jobs) you will get sick of it if you do too much for too long without a break. I needed this break. And I’ve been itching to do something new. Like I said, fifteen years is a long time.

I haven’t actually made up a resume or actively looked for work since 1993 or so. I’ve preferred finding and attaining jobs organically: Meet people, discover a common goal, and throw in with them. But now I might have to look for work the old-fashioned way. For a while I’ve been hedging my bets in regard to my career. Day job as a coder. Night job as a writer. But now I need to decide which way I’m going to go. Coding is what I’ve done the most, but (oddly enough) my writing is what I’m known for. I’m actually willing to go either way.

My hope is to find a nice small company that can use my rather esoteric skill set. I could take a standard job as a programmer, but in a perfect world I’d find someone who wanted to do something with procedural content, or specialized tools. Or maybe I’ll go the writing route?

I need to brush up on resume writing. The last time I did one was pre-internet for me. I imagine a lot of the standards have changed. (Or I hope so. I always found the standard resume to be 50% names and addresses, 40% boilerplate self-promotion, and 10% useful data.) If anyone has resume-writing advice (particularly on mistakes to avoid) it would be much appreciated.

Wish me luck.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.