Vocations

I went to Catholic school my whole life, up until college. Preschool, gradeschool, junior high, and high school.

St. Peter and St. Paul, Sacred Heart, and eventually Damien High School.

Around 6th grade this term started to be thrown around. It was the term "Vocation." I really had no idea what it meant and at first I thought it was a way for my teachers to recruit young children into promising that they'd be priests when they got older - or some other manner of employee within the church. It was mainly focused around the religious vocations, but eventually they started opening up to other "careers."

The synonymous theme between "careers" and "vocation" appeared to be, as defined by my schools, a calling by God to do something. Most of the time this meant to be a good Christian and go to church and perhaps volunteer or even take up the cloth and all that stuff. But I slowly learned that it really meant to do what you love doing. If that's the higher power's way of calling to you to do something, then I'll definitely agree with that statement.

When you absolutely love doing something, it guides your life. I loved sitting in front of my TV and playing Nintendo games for hours straight. This was my vocation when I was younger. I was a child born of the electronic age with short attention spans and expensive hobbies. I craved stories, puzzles, adventures, and worlds bigger and much more fascinating than my own. This insatiable hunger for entertainment transcended most of the equipment I used to get it - from the Nintendo, Genesis, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Gamecube, Game Boy, Game Gear, etc. Eventually, it settled on to the most malleable of all of them - the computer.

I started playing around on computers when I was about 10 years old. The "pay by the hour" AOL days. My first real computer that I could call my own I received as a Christmas gift at the age of 12. I loved that thing, and did everything I could to make sure it played games in the best and fastest possible way without me having to worry about money or asking my parents for anything.

Little did I know at the time, playing video games turned out to be my vocation. Through the acts of wanting to make my computer better and faster, I learned how to do everything I do now as a career. Analysis, design, engineering, troubleshooting, making the best out of minimal resources - it all came about from a young age of wide-eyed awe and mystery at games.

Hindsight is interesting, is it not?