I get a lot of questions about my life and choices. This isn't about what I did before, really ( #videogames 15 years...) but the changes in my thinking that brought me here. About being out of the rat-race for 4 years now, since October 30, 2016. A day I celebrate each year.

I spent a long time struggling to secure the highest paying, most prestigious creative jobs I could, but it somehow never seemed enough. But I woke up sometime in 2012-13, realizing-holy hell, this *IS* it. I was wasting my life making videogames. It was time to get out.

So I did. I quit the job and moved to the middle of nowhere to work on my own stuff. And boy am I glad I did. It has totally reshaped my thinking. Whatever I thought might be possible BEFORE I made the jump — I was off by a few orders of magnitude. It has been incredible.

What have I learned and what do I tell my kids now?

-THE COST OF ANYTHING IS THE AMOUNT OF LIFE YOU SPEND TO GET IT: This is the most important thing: Nearly every miserable person I know 40+ is miserable about debt or crazy hours at work not paying enough...

...Paying off college, the house, the new car. Don't do it if you can avoid it. The most common is college. Once, perhaps, a college degree was a guarantor of something, but today, it's pretty hit and miss (some degrees, of course, are very worth it) but many are just paper.

...Crazy hours at work is the second, and that, too, is just not worth it in the end — you can control how much you MUST make by controlling where you live and what it takes to support you. It can change at both ends. Keep your costs as low as you can.

-LIVE YOUR LIFE FOR YOURSELF: Stop listening to what the world or your parents tell you you MUST do to survive and decide for yourself. It's highly likely 1) They have no idea and 2) The systems they're making their decisions on broke decades ago and won't be coming back.

...My parents harped on me about my pastimes as a child (drawing comics, lacklusterly programming computers, playing roleplaying games and videogames). What did I end up doing professionally...uh...drawing comic books, writing roleplaying games, and creating videogames.

The most important thing here is: you can't just plug into a school track and guarantee a future. That doesn't work anymore. You need to find a future for yourself. And by no means does searching guarantee a positive outcome. People fail all the time.

-LIFE IS NOT ABOUT WHAT YOU EARN: I ran the videogame division of a large studio, and made more money than I ever had in my life. We lived in the swankiest neighborhoods in San Francisco, our kids went to private school, I was in charge of franchises that are known and loved...

...but it...sucked. Why? I worked 70 hour weeks. I never saw my family. I was constantly on call. The key to me being happy now is walking away from that. Was it all bad? No. Was some of it downright amazing? Yeah. Was it worth the amount of time lost with my family, no way.

-LOOK TO ESCAPE THE SYSTEM BECAUSE THE SYSTEM IS FUCKED: The best you can do is construct the cheapest, easiest to maintain life that makes you happy. That's what I did when I turned 41 — I set about a plan to find a place I could live that would be good for my family...

...the cheapest it could possibly be for us, and which would remove as much debt as possible. It took a couple of years, but we made it.

For me, as the grind increased, the risk associated with falling on my face as an independent dwindled. Until I had to try. You can too.