Real Life 3.0: The Emerald City

Five years ago I attended PAX 2005 in Bellevue, Washington. I drove 666 miles (one way, mind) in a stick shift with Scott Wilhelm and Mike Challinger. We were powered by a giant Monstros pizza. We were there for only a weekend, but it was enough. I knew I wanted to live in Bellevue.

Three years passed. I graduated, I got a job as a graphic design specialist at CSU, Chico, and I met Lauren.

Two years ago I began a serious effort to leave Chico and move on. I had in mind any city of ~1 million population, but the Seattle area was ideal. I remembered the golden, pizza-infused days of PAX.

I applied to work as a summer intern at Improvement Direct, and was turned away.

I applied to work as a writer for BioWare in Austin, Texas, and I got nothing.

I applied to work at two bakeries in Chico, and was turned down by both.

I applied to work as a programmer for a company in the Bay area, and was rejected.

I applied to work as a product manager at Penny Arcade, and received no response.

I applied to work as a technical writer at CyberSource in Seattle, the employer of a fellow World of WarCraft guild member, and I did not get it.

I volunteered at the local Immediate Care Clinic and was accepted, and I set off down a path to earning a medical degree as an orthopedic surgeon.

I applied to be re-classified as a systems analyst at CSU, Chico, and did not receive it.

In total, I applied for three jobs at Expedia over an 18 month period.

In all, over this two-year stretch I applied for eleven jobs, three at Expedia. I traveled to Seattle twice in pursuit of employment.

Through it all I spent sleepless nights hammering new skills into my thoroughly un-technical academic background. I leveraged the immense power of the Internet to teach myself baking, writing for games, technical writing, calculus, chemistry, medicine, .php programming with MySQL database interactions, .css Web design, JavaScript, product and brand management, Web analytics and systems analyst operations. Through it all I continued writing short stories and gathering rejection slips from various editors.

And now my ego is set to be supercharged, because it's all come together. I got 'lucky', and come May 3rd I will reside in a luxury apartment in downtown Bellevue, 3 blocks from the Expedia skyscraper, my new (super cool) employer.

Five years from an inkling of an idea to reality. Handy, that. The orthopod design will have to be set on hold a decade or so. No hurries, I intend to live a long while.