One good thing about posting once every nine months - I'm not boring anyone.

It's been a busy time. Within a week of my last post I had a new job and a new career. I gave up the Information Systems Consultant gig (aka overpaid programmer) and took a job as a college track and cross-country coach. Making me the only running coach I know with degrees in Math and Computer Science.

Needless to say, I had a few concerns about taking the job. Can I do it? Will I be any good? Am I old enough to get the respect of the athletes? Am I young enough build a rapport with them? And my biggest concern (and why it relates to the crowd here at GS): Will turning my hobby into my career mess up my hobby?

Clearly there is a large segment of the GS community who would kill to have a career in the gaming industry. Getting paid to develop, test, market and review games looks like heaven to lots of people around here.

Personally, I don't really understand the appeal of working in the game industry. Programming is fun and, in its way, rewarding, but the C++ code behind a cool looking action sequence or a static quest log or an Accounts Payable Vendor Compliance Report all looks the same. I imagine, that after a while, the coolness of game development gets lost in a sea (or is that C) of function calls and indirect pointers.

I also imagine that writing game reviews has similar downsides. For every Gear's of War, there's at least one Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.

So despite how much fun the gang at GS make the game industry look (and they do), I never fully bought into it. It scared the hell out of me when I picked up my whistle and pulled on the (new) old school colors for the first time. I kept thinking - if this is a mistake, it's a really big MISTAKE.

Nine months later and everything is good.

I survived the track season unscathed. I got comfortable with the routine, the team colors, and rooting against my old alma mater (at least in the events I had a vested interest in). I even managed to get myself an extra title (aka - same money, exponentially more work) as "Conditioning Coach" and a real office with a real door. Sweet!

There've been a few down moments, like saying goodbye to our graduating seniors, but overall it's been very positive.

Now it's the second week of August and Cross Country preparation is in full swing. Three weeks from now the starters' gun will fire to start the official season. Plenty of work left to complete between now and then.

Life is good.

Good news: you can make a career out of doing what you love.

Bad News: the jury's still out on being able to eat, pay the rent, and afford next-gen games while making a career out of doing what you love.