...For a while.

I graduate in three weeks, and I plan on taking a two-month sort of ur-luddite roadtrip around the USA pretty much immediately afterwards (the months of June and July) and then going to visit my family for a month (there goes August). On the roadtrip all I plan to take is a camera, a guitar, and my trusty '92 Ford Taurus (which only needs to survive the trip), so I'm not going to be very present on GameDev.

One of my aspirations for the trip is to purge the bad habits that come with years of tertiary education's inherent madness and lack of structure (staying up most of the night, waking up late, etc). Another is to learn more guitar, and a third is to see - and tape - as much of America as I possibly can. Originally I had planned to do a sort of "GDNet Tour," meeting up with GameDev.net members along the way, but I've decided I don't like y'all that much.

When I get back from this three-month leave of absence, I'll be returning to Brooklyn to hopefully start a job as a production assistant of some sort. I'm serving as producer on a student film project right now, but I want to get much more experience in large-scale projects. I'm not a big fan of "indie" as perceived to be synonymous with "cheap, and low production values"; I believe in "indie" as a business model, and I'm interested in the use of technology, business savvy and economic tools to make competition with "Hollywood" possible on the film front. For games, I would like to see more serious, commercial indie titles that have high production values, sell well and are profitable for their creators.

As far as GameDev.net goes, I still have a lot of aspirations. I would like to see GDNet become the premier educational resource for game development in the world, providing both electronic and physical learning resources to developers of all ages and skill levels. I would like to become the Director of Media Properties, with an emphasis on the creation of learning toolkits for educational sector use (imagine GDNet-branded material as the "textbook" in schools and universities); instructional videos and online resources for all; and seminars and lectures for indies and pros.

Frankly, I don't see how I'm going to accomplish all of the above while remaining very active on the community side of this site (I average just over 9 posts a day), so I'm hoping that my roadtrip will also wean me off the GDNet forums (which, to be frank, I don't much care for anyway). I may or may not continue my journal when I return: I have quite a few projects that are likely to interest this community, so it's probable that the journal will continue in some form. Aside from that, I'll probably be moving to the "other side of the fence."

No fake pleasantries. I liked some of you and enjoyed your wit and humor. Some of you I think are idiots. All of you have contributed to my knowledge and understanding, as much of the technical as of the social and political, and all of you have impacted me in your own way. To all of you I give my thanks.

Ciao.