Random Fail: First World Problems

[Pharaun]

The company that processes debit/credit card transactions for the financial institution I work at had a short network outage lasting for about 15 minutes earlier today. This cause all transactions to be declined as a result. In that time frame there were several people who threatened to close their account because "that is ridiculous, card transactions should work 100% of the time." Cue me face palming.

[Fievel]

Still get to clock in and get paid at least? I'm a baker and it sucks when someone calls off on my off day because I go back to a regular schedule day (wake up around 6am-7am, go to bed around 9-10pm) to all of the sudden "hey someone called off can you come in?" SURE I WILL just let me hurry up and get 2 hours of sleep and come in at 12:00am.

Hellllllllllllll yeah I invoiced them for it, haha

Thats when I'd say "oh I decided to take a sick day, sorry I didnt call".

I'm a medical rep and I contract with different hospitals, if I were to do that they'd just find somebody else and give them the money

[Myrrh_Quetz]

This is a more personal fail but here it is.


Ever since Transplant I can't seem to decide on what I want to do with myself. I feel like a 10 year old kid. Like, every month I'm deciding that I want to go to school for something new. I want to do Culinary Arts, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Comedian, Actor, Model, Try to do something in video games, artist, and a couple others and who knows what I'll decide next month. Shit is getting annoying but fuck man, I've never been able to think like this. Before my transplant it was just "Man, I hope I wake up tomorrow" lol

[Apelila]

I can actually relate to that on the "The fuck do I do with myself" level.

When I moved to AZ 10 years ago it was just to get the hell away from East Texas and be able to be myself. I moved back here and assumed it would be for at most 3 years, and this is year three. I know where I'll end up, in Dallas with my boyfriend. But I have no real path
to making that happen, and I can't really afford it for another year due to debts.

Feels bad man. If you find anything that helps you narrow your decision down please let me know, and I likewise.

[shaddix]

I thought about putting this in fitness thread but I think this is more appropriate. Protein sparing modified fast going on 7 days(1100kcal/day), my appetite is completely gone, I've had 600 today and dread choking down another chicken breast or can of tuna. I started putting mustard on the tuna.

[Mojo]

This is a more personal fail but here it is.


Ever since Transplant I can't seem to decide on what I want to do with myself. I feel like a 10 year old kid. Like, every month I'm deciding that I want to go to school for something new. I want to do Culinary Arts, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Comedian, Actor, Model, Try to do something in video games, artist, and a couple others and who knows what I'll decide next month. Shit is getting annoying but fuck man, I've never been able to think like this. Before my transplant it was just "Man, I hope I wake up tomorrow" lol

Let me help you out a bit. Unless you are highly passionate, motivated, and have enough talent to impress people, avoid the video game industry. Even if you have all of those things, you would likely end you working insanely long hours on projects that don't interest you.

[Talint]

Let me help you out a bit. Unless you are highly passionate, motivated, and have enough talent to impress people, avoid the video game industry. Even if you have all of those things, you would likely end you working insanely long hours on projects that don't interest you.

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/images/300x/4672419.jpg.

[Xantavia]

Let me help you out a bit. Unless you are highly passionate, motivated, and have enough talent to impress people, avoid the video game industry. Even if you have all of those things, you would likely end you working insanely long hours on projects that don't interest you.

Your answer reminds me of a instructor I had. He was really into sound design and wanted to do it for video games. Showed us this lovely little Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen game he worked on, which he also had the honor of narrating, since the company slashed the budget and pushed it out the door at the end of the psone's life.

[Silenka]

I think instructors tell us those kinds of warnings because things are almost never as rosy as they initially sound, and that's a pitfall most people don't manage to avoid (especially going into a college education and making the wrong decisions on major/research topics).

Honestly I'm 27 and I don't know what to do with myself either, but in the opposite way. There's only one thing that interests me. The only real training I have is in Japanese language and I have absolutely no ambitions except to go to Japan, become fluent in Japanese and get into translation work somehow. Outside of that I actually just have zero talent, no money, no background in anything that would help me start a career or be useful at a job.

I wonder how many people are in my position - I think mostly everyone has at least something they're good at or a background in some kind of field (often both). I live in the land of opportunity, but I'm really bad at finding it and it's really bad at finding me. I haven't been able to make anything of myself or get my foot in the door anywhere in my field (living in Ohio is pretty bad for Japanese opportunities, too).

I guess this is just kind of a pity party/complaint riding on the tail of Myrrh's post but I kind of just wanted to say you're not the only one who doesn't know what to do with yourself. At least you have interests in many things instead of just one. As a talentless, generic person myself, I'd say you should definitely just capitalize on whatever talent you might happen to have. If you're honestly funny in person, maybe try comedy and see where it gets you. You can always stop and switch to something else.

[Aksannyi]

I know exactly what I want to do, myself, but the problem is, it's almost impossible to start up from scratch, with or without a financial base upon which to fall back.

I've wanted to own my own dance studio since I was a little girl, and that hasn't changed in nearly twenty-five years. But knowing how difficult it would be to start up my own business (especially in this economy) with no business background, no contacts in the dance world in this part of the country, and no college degree, I don't think it will ever happen for me.

That's why I work late nights in Dispatch, it's a job, I like it well enough and I'm damn good at it, but it isn't what I want.

[Talint]

Your answer reminds me of a instructor I had. He was really into sound design and wanted to do it for video games. Showed us this lovely little Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen game he worked on, which he also had the honor of narrating, since the company slashed the budget and pushed it out the door at the end of the psone's life.

If you feel you're stuck on a dead-end project, then it's a corner you've willingly put yourself into.

If you have reasonable expectations for the industry, then you're going to enjoy where you end up. If you think you can just strut into Bioware, pitch a game idea, become director of development, and sit around all day doing nothing but issuing orders to underlings, then you've got another thing coming.

[Coren]

I know exactly what I want to do, myself, but the problem is, it's almost impossible to start up from scratch, with or without a financial base upon which to fall back.

I've wanted to own my own dance studio since I was a little girl, and that hasn't changed in nearly twenty-five years. But knowing how difficult it would be to start up my own business (especially in this economy) with no business background, no contacts in the dance world in this part of the country, and no college degree, I don't think it will ever happen for me.

That's why I work late nights in Dispatch, it's a job, I like it well enough and I'm damn good at it, but it isn't what I want.

I started a Martial Arts school in a gym aerobics room when they weren't having any classes. We now have over 40 students and rent our own place. I still work a fulltime job, and teach at nights and on saturdays. Eventually I may go fulltime, but not any time soon.

[hey]

I started a Martial Arts school in a gym aerobics room when they weren't having any classes. We now have over 40 students and rent our own place. I still work a fulltime job, and teach at nights and on saturdays. Eventually I may go fulltime, but not any time soon.

So like she said, almost impossible.

[Coren]

So like she said, almost impossible.

My point is that we spent almost no money building our school. It just took time and work. So why "impossible"? You need roughly the same things for a martial arts school or a dance school: an instructor and a giant empty floor. The other classes taught at the same timeslot on other days of the week were belly dancing classes.

[Aksannyi]

Not true. Dance studios also need floor length mirrors, appropriate flooring, and a barre, and a relatively good sound system - cheap boomboxes won't cut it. On top of that, who is going to go to an untested, not local dance teacher? I moved here four years ago and in that time, I've not been connected to the dance world (mostly due to financial reasons, can't take classes at a studio without money). Even with credentials and references, it's hard to gain trust in the field. Dance is ridiculously cutthroat, moreso if you want to be a competition dancer or aspire to be a professional.

On top of that, I would need to amass at least one other teacher (more as I would expand, but two to start), and how would I convince people I don't know to leave their established school and join with my startup? Unless I had a friend from my old studio who was willing to move down here and start up with me, I'd be hard pressed to find someone else with my vision whom I could trust well enough to instruct children to dance.

I know what it takes and I know what my vision would be, but I don't have the capital to make it happen, and I certainly don't think that parents would be willing to run the risk of joining a start-up studio from a complete unknown. I may join a studio next year if I can find a daytime job again, but as far as opening my own, I can't see that happening in the foreseeable future.



EDIT: Even with all that, I would have to maintain a steady day job, as there is very little chance running a dance studio would be enough to support myself, unless I built an apartment upstairs from the studio so that I wouldn't have two rents/mortgages.

[AoE]

So like she said, almost impossible.

.

[Apelila]

Comparing operating a Martial Arts to a Dance school is like comparing the management of a Mc Donalds to a 5 star restaurant.

I mean no offense, they're just completely different in what the clientele are looking for.

Aksannyi: What kind of dance studio out of curiosity? My boyfriend is a dance instructor so I've learned waaaaay more the last year about it than I knew existed.

[Aksannyi]

Nothing high-end, honestly. It would be one of those studios which specializes in all genres and has an end-of-year recital. Up north where I used to live there were dozens of schools which operated that way, I went to one of them for nearly twenty years. Not a competition school, either, I'm not a fan of competition dance, they all learn a bunch of tricks but often lack in technique.

I have been looking for a job that will not require me to work overnight shifts. When this happens, I am going to actively search for a studio that meets my needs. I may not be able to open my own, but dammit, I can still go back to dancing which is one thing I've loved consistently for almost thirty years.

Basically, I took one of each class every week at my studio - tap and jazz were on Tuesday nights and ran one hour each. There was a hip hop class after that but while I've taken some hip hop dancing, it never struck me as anything I wanted to seriously take up. And ballet (pointe) was Thursdays for an hour and fifteen minutes, also once weekly. We would have our adagio classes on Saturdays where we would rehearse the big numbers.

In high school I was also taking dance classes in school and attending after school rehearsals, so I was dancing usually six out of seven days a week in my prime. I would be content for two or three classes a week now. Getting old.

[Kohan]

This is a more personal fail but here it is.

Ever since Transplant I can't seem to decide on what I want to do with myself. I feel like a 10 year old kid. Like, every month I'm deciding that I want to go to school for something new. I want to do Culinary Arts, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Comedian, Actor, Model, Try to do something in video games, artist, and a couple others and who knows what I'll decide next month. Shit is getting annoying but fuck man, I've never been able to think like this. Before my transplant it was just "Man, I hope I wake up tomorrow" lol

I was originally going to say "I'm going to counter Mojo's post," but instead, I'm going to agree with part of it. After all, he mentioned good things as a requirement to being successful in the video game industry—passion, motivation, and charisma—and I wouldn't disagree with that. Not only are they a requirement in that industry, but they're expected in virtually any line of work that exists, as a willingness to do good work and the wherewithal to see it through makes one a good employee.

That said, I do have some advice for you that may not only help you in general, but which could also make things easier in relation to the game industry. You've said that there are a lot of topics that interest you, and that you can't pick just one. That's fine. Instead, think of a general goal. I'm sticking with video games, as we've pretty much established that it's what my post is about. So, let's say you want to become a game designer. They're expected to have knowledge in relation to a lot of things. As such, if you wanted to study architecture, literature, and foreign cultures, you could tie together those seemingly unrelated academic pursuits by saying, "I'd like to be well-educated in relation to these fields so I can someday create robust video game universes."

It wouldn't be bullshit, and you'd have a legitimate reason for doing all of those things. You could satisfy your seemingly random desires, and still aim toward an ultimate goal.

Of course, on the side, you should do more research related to whatever ultimate goal it is you decide upon. You'll want to beef up more directly related things, like a familiarity with the development and publishing process, or—if you decide to get into production, for example—project management and related matters.

Also, as for the person who said that they're knowledgeable in Japanese—if you're fluent, there's virtually always game jobs available (like this one, which I'll bet $5 is at a company whose compound name starts with S and ends in X). As for other people, languages that are prized in the video game industry (and others, of course) are Korean, Chinese, and German. If you want to do something new, you can always start studying one of those.

[Silenka]

Local candidates only

I'm not fluent either, that's my major problem or I would be looking for a job around here in the field. I have to go to Japan for a while to get firsthand cultural experience and finish gaining fluency (or as close as I can get being a non-native speaker) before I'd be comfortable getting a job in the field, but I can't afford it on my own dime and I can't afford school anymore either. Currently have an application out to teach English in Japan though but who knows, the program is pretty competitive.

To be a full time translator you pretty much either have to work for the government or have to be in the right area for the language (and for the video game industry, almost certainly West coast). Not to mention it takes years to learn a language enough to be fluent enough for most translation jobs, it takes real dedication to it for most people. And then there's the fact that a lot of langauge classes just plain suck and you'll walk away knowing almost nothing (took a sadly loosely-administered Japanese at a community college for 3 years and literally learned almost nothing from it that I hadn't taught myself, university was definitely the way to go). If you happen to fall into one of those fail programs you're pretty much screwed unless you cand find something better in your area, which, depending on the langauge and area might be pretty hard to do. Solely teaching yourself is pretty much out of the question too, as that doesn't convey cultural nuances or affirmation of correct learning (and especially not pronunciation and accent).

Thanks though Kohan.