The Monthly Post - Oct 2021

I'm a little frustrated with myself. Honestly, it's the same deal again and again that's been plaguing me for years.

All my life, I've been instructed to find meaning out of this life through career and family. I've been questioning this on several lines:

 

[1] My career in many ways feels like I'm just padding the back pockets of corporate leaders, rather than an actual contribution to society. It's mildly less bad with my swap to HR from accounting, but still…

 

[2] Needless to say family is important. But if all we spend our lives looking for a spouse, amassing resources to give to our children, then our children spend their lives amassing resources to give to their kids, we produce a selfish society where generosity ends at the family line. In this sense, we are no better than animals.

 

At least when I was a teenager and a younger tween in college, I thought about taking on a "side gig" - singing, art, some sort of hobby that would make a more direct contribution to others' quality of life. But:

 

[3] When I look at artists who have day jobs, they often spend their whole lives between their jobs, so it is difficult for them to find spouses and begin settling down. I've now mostly accepted that if I am to take on a side gig, family is not happening, so this is not really a concern anymore. But it's still worth noting - not least because many of the amateur artists and entertainers I know are often exhausted or struggling under their double workloads, while the professionals also struggle with money in a saturated industry.

 

[4] There are perhaps millions of artists and entertainers in the world, and with the rise of online entertainment platforms like Spotify, the spread of the arts has become so overly saturated that its value is diminished. Why listen to me ever when you can listen to hundreds of thousands of the best artists anytime on the go?

 

[5] I picked video games because I feel the video game industry is the one place where amateurs and indies have an advantage over professionals. This is because professionals must craft their games in a certain way in order to retain profits. As someone not limited by this, I have greater freedom to tackle niche markets. However, because I am an amateur, my budget is extremely low, and thus I might not have the budget to even advertise. It is very likely I might just be looking at a few players in my game solely due to a lack of publicity. Neither is there a guarantee I'll be successful, and the game I make might just suck.

 

As of this weekend, I was thinking maybe I should look outside art/entertainment instead. It won't do much about [3] but it will help with [4] and [5]. But what exactly should I tackle? Given my expertise, I'm not sure what I can do that will make this world a better place.