Ah, the Golden Age!

An online conversation about gaming habits with relee just now prompted me to calculate the amount of table-top RPG gaming I did during the "peak years" of high school. The summer between grades 10 and 11, when none of my friends had part-time jobs or girlfriends, probably reflects the period of greatest time investment. In a "good week", we'd be gaming on six or seven days, for anywhere between 50 and 60 hours. This does not count time spent drawing maps, writing campaign notes, or reading RPG books - probably an additional 10 hours or so each week.

A typical week would see a rotation between 3rd edition Champions, D6 Star Wars, and DC Heroes, with occasional forays into Justice Inc. , Paranoia, or Space: 1889. I still have about a dozen DC Heroes characters stowed away somewhere. Earlier, in grades 8 and 9, we were all about Doctor Who, Robotech and Marvel Super Heroes. Later in high school, our tastes shifted to things like Mage: The Ascension, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Call of Cthulhu, various GURPS settings, and the Middle-Earth Roleplaying System.

We never played Dungeons and Dragons, in deference to the wishes of my parents. I actually didn’t read the rules until I was in my 20s.

It was very involving. And girls were scary.

Lion Rampant, one year later

One year ago this week I handed in my resignation at the Canadian Office Products Association. I'd worked there for 3.5 years. They weren't bad years at all, and seem even rosier in retrospect. I had a corner office and would go hours without twitching a muscle.

I quit that job to take a position in sales and market development at Lion Rampant Imports, Canada's largest distributor of RPGs, wargames, and assorted nerdly goodness. I started working there on November 13th. By the 16th, I was starting to think I'd made a mistake. By the 21st, I was asking people for freelance work.

On December 3rd, at 8:19 AM I wrote:
45 minutes of close conference with a rubber duck in the tub last night have convinced me that I'm wasting my time at Lion Rampant...

...at some point soon - maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon - I'm walking out into the void, whether or not I have a job waiting for me. I'd be happier as an unpaid househusband.

"Maybe not tomorrow" turned out to be "less than an hour later."

I walked into work at 9:01 AM, looked at the list of calls I had to make, wrote a resignation letter, and walked out at 9:07 AM. On the bus home, I was in a sort of state of shock, mingled with absolute and utter relief, and a sort of pride at being "master of my fate" and so forth. As I settled in at home, this turned into a mix of guilt, with relief certainly the more powerful feeling. I'd worked 14 days at Lion Rampant... and 6 minutes.

As it turns out, quitting was the smartest career move I have ever made. By that afternoon, I had two job interviews lined up. The second one was for CCI Inc.. I was hired there as a freelancer at triple the pay I was getting at Lion Rampant, and was hired full-time in January. I work in an exciting neighbourhood, and get to hang out with cool people who work nearby.

This past summer, I bumped into Lion Rampant's president at the local game store. I spoke with him for a few minutes, and learned that the fellow who hired me was laid off a few weeks after I quit, along with some other staffers. I'd have been laid off as well.

It is not often that life rewards us so clearly for making a rash decision.

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