Avatar photoSteven Savage

Visualization: The Beacon and the Television

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Visualizing your goals and dreams is a part of succeeding in your life and career that you can't avoid.  I am a big advocate of having a vision for your life with as much detail as possible.  I want you to not just see, but be able to taste, hear, smell, and feel the vision you have, as big and bold as possible.

Yet, if you know me and read this blog, you know that I also decry a lot of the "visualization" exercises and self-help approaches out there.  I despise "The Secret" and it's offspring and it's siblings; the idea that if you visualize it it will happen, the dream-and-be-positive exercises, and all the rest.  Yes, I advocate visualization while decrying some visualization methods and exercises.

There's a reason for what seems to be inconsistency.  This reason is not visualization itself, but the attitude taken towards in the various exercises people promote. I'm all for having big dreams, as visceral as possible – but its what those visualizations mean to you that changes what they can do for you.

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Convention Spotlight: Templecon

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The roundup of convention ideas is here.

Templecon is a gaming convention in Rhode Island, though calling it a
"gaming convention" doesn't due justice to the diversity of the
convention.  It's a convention that started as a gaming convention but
has expanded to include everything from live shows to bands to
workshops.

Of course when I see a convention like that, you know I'm going to
do a profile of it.  As you may also guess, it's a convention that has
branched into "profan" panels for people who want to use their hobbies
in their careers.  A few of these fit the convention's focus on doing
things differently:

  • Doing a seminar on legal issues in game development and publishing,
    exposing people to important issues too often ignored, in an area of
    career interest many forget.
  • A panel on game development by actual game developers – an area that gets too little attention as far as I'm concerned.
  • Assorted workshops, including those run by known authors, diversifying the convention offerings.
  • Finally, the really unusual panel – a panel on why one does not want to
    turn their hobby into a job.  Now as much as I emphasize using their
    hobbies in their careers, I applaud a little bit of contrarianism. 
    Maybe sometime I'll make it out there and have a debate . . .

Templecon's constant growth includes a lot of profan panels and
getting outside of focusing on "just gaming".  I'm looking forward to
seeing what they do in the years to come, as I expect I'll learn a lot,
I think they're a great example of keeping your focus while
experimenting and going beyond people's expectations.

– Steven Savage

Frustration Friday – The Secret of Success, Now Yours!

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Allow me to express my most heartfelt invitation to those whose lives are not going as planned to try the ultimate cure-all for their problems.  Your life may be depressing, you may not have the job you want, but I have the single, most powerful method in the world to cure your problems.  This solution has worked for untold others throughout the ages and has a long, ancient lineage.

This most powerful technique is called "Getting off of your Butt."

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