Friday, August 26, 2005

But wait...

OK, so after bemoaning the fact that I flitter like a butterfly from interest to interest without actually becoming great at anything, I read this interview with game designer Sid Meier.

It's not an amazing interview, but it does hit up that he was able to define his career in his own terms:

GameSpy: Still, for someone who's been as successful as you, it must be nice to be able to work on whatever interests you at the moment -- history, the Civil War, pirates…
Sid Meier: Oh, yeah. I've been very lucky. No one ever told me "You can't do a golf game," or "Nobody's interested in pirates." I really appreciate that creative freedom.


Then there's board game designer Klaus Teuber, who has stayed focused (mostly) on board games, but they've covered everything from clay sculpting to world domination.

One uplifting thing I heard at the Virginia interview was the editor saying, "I need an idea guy." I think too many people try to hire people who are the best at what they do, instead of finding folks like me, who just randomly throw out stuff and can still get it done. Plus, it's not like we're in a hospital. If an idea doesn't work at a newspaper, you stop running it and forget it ever happened.

On a different topic, I have two things I need to point out:
  1. I had my first spam posting get through the registration feature on Blogger, so if it keeps up, I might have to add a security setting that makes you type in a wiggly word on your screen when you post. I'll try to put this off, though, because I know you people already don't like having to register.
  2. Have you tried sudoku puzzles yet? These things are the next crosswords...amazingly addictive once you figure them out. We're working on a story about them for our Learning Page.
Take care.

2 comments:

vo0do0chile said...

those puzzles.
they have numbers on them.
numbers bad.

Griner said...

We should have a Most Diverse Career contest. One of my reporters got her interview largely because her resume included forklift driver, Nepalese researcher, helitac firefighter and monkey handler. I think you can never have enough stuff like that on a resume. It makes you stick out, at least if I'm hiring you.