Hey there, welcome to TheEdge! My name is Micah, and I'm currently working (somewhat slowly) towards launching an indie game company. I'm going to use this site as a sort of catch all to display the skills I'm learning on my journey, nerd out a little, and connect with likeminded people. Aside from writing about what I'm learning, I'll also be posting my art, short stories and some modules that can be used with my favorite table top role playing game. Stick around, join me on this adventure and enjoy some unique!
About Me:
I am 27 years old and currently residing in Arizona. I'm originally from all over, born in Louisiana, I've spent equal amounts of time living in Arizona, New Mexico, and Wisconsin. My dads family is from Wisconsin (go Packers!!) as well as my moms, however she grew up in Japan - my grandpa was am missionary there - so I have a very unique culture blend. I'm an introvert through and through (my MBTI is INTP if you're into that stuff) so I intentionally spend a good amount of time by myself. My favorite things are drawing, reading, cooking, 80s movies, and indulging in devil's lettuce (it's legal, fight me!). I also enjoy rock climbing, paint-balling and hiking but less often than quieter activities. I'm politically left but not that center-left corporate daddy excusing shit, I'm talking not-take-your-guns-away left. I only include this so nobody is surprised when I don't tolerate hateful content or requests on this site.
My Journey to this Point
Professionally, I've been working since my junior year of high-school - around thirteen years now. I started off in retail, then retail management for a bit before moving over to phone-based customer service. Moved into management there for awhile, but after about a year I just got miserable. I was getting great feedback, praise, (small) bonuses but I wasn't happy. The job wasn't doing it for me. I decided, like most American's do when they start feeling like that, to go back to school. I had always had a passion for creating and building things so I picked aerospace engineering. Hard, but math never bothered me and I love everything to do with flying even to this day. Plus the airline industry isn't going anywhere, I figured it was a safe choice. I moved my schedule around, got enrolled and dove right into school. After my first major project, that feeling of dread hit me again. This time, I couldn't figure out why and it wouldn't go away. It ate away from me until I couldn't go to work of school anymore. I knew I had to make a change so I found a new job thinking that was the change I needed. I got lucky and landed a job at a new startup in my city doing data quality work. I'm basically a human computer, so that was exactly what I needed to recover from that little breakdown. I killed it at that job too, handling an insane workload and making process improvements on top of all of it. I was promoted, making more money than ever, but it happened again: dread. It always bothered me and made me upset but this time it terrified me. If I spiraled again, the job marked was trash and I was more likely to end up homeless than getting lucky again. I needed to figure out what to do, and quickly. Then COVID happened. Most of my family an co-workers lamented the fact they had to stay home and downsize their lifestyle, but for me it gave me an opportunity to get to know myself for the first time ever. I dove into self-help books, books on how to think, how to confront trauma and figure out what you want. I saw a therapist, got medication and was able to think through why I was feeling this way. When I examined my personal values, one of the things I value very highly is creativity. Looking at my last jobs, while I was able to create processes, drive change and make an impact to the company, I wasn't getting the creative stimulation I craved. Deeper examination of that feeling led to some of my proudest projects - mainly games to play with my friends, both field and through video games like Halo Reach. Corporate work is thankless, I was missing the human element of creativity. That lead to my desire to create impactful art, and the medium I ended up choosing was video games. I was terrified of this decision though - what if I failed again? Would games, my favorite thing in the world be ruined forever? Three years, countless hours or sketching, drafting, planning, writing, reading, and taking classes later - I don't think so. I've spent more time working on learning and working on my games than my first two jobs, and the dread hasn't started coming back. There's still time for it to, but I don't think you're supposed to feel dread working on something you value. Thanks for reading!