Well, it finally happened. I ran out of money and am moving away, back in with my parents. I guess that’s the risk I took when I pooled my money and moved to San Francisco. Nothing in life is certain, and game jobs are a famously risky industry.

I’ve never been one to attribute failure with bad luck, and indeed I can look at many, many things I could have done better in my two years in SF. While in college, I spent the lion’s share of my time on my schoolwork and almost no time trying to get hired. Once out of college, I routinely chickened out on aggressively seeking out employment with whatever contacts I managed to secure. I felt crippled by how staggeringly high the rent was, and how quickly my money was running out. I had to borrow from a close friend to make my last rent, and I’ll be retaking my old job at the Tutoring Club to rebuild my finances after paying him back.

I have some ideas for where I’ll go next, but none of them are very concrete. I was looking favorably at Irvine, but then Activision/Blizzard fired 800 people and flooded the market, so going there now would be a terrible idea. I’ve applied to several jobs in the local area, but I’d rather not live at my parent’s fulltime for the foreseeable future, since they have their own lives and I’d like to have one of my own. But for now, in all honesty, I need to count my blessings they were here to escape my SF situation, because I’d be homeless by March if they weren’t here to save me. I shouldn’t have cut it so close financially, but I was holding out hope that one of the dozens of companies I’d applied for would finally contact me.

There might be a brief lull in creative projects while I settle into my new place. Which is my old high school room, so honestly it shouldn’t take very long.