Developing a Career in Game Audio while having a Day Job (A Delicate Balancing Act in the Midst of Chaos)
It’s perfectly fitting that I write this in the middle of making for burritos on a Friday night. Got to fit stuff where you can right?
Nowadays it seems like everyone is working a day job and doing a million side hustles and having a full on social life (imagine that) and all these other things all at once. How do they do that ?
Well I’m an apprentice engineer working full time between university and my job who also has regular adult stuff like cleaning , cooking, shopping for groceries and I still want to have to relax, game , watch TV and all the other random hobbies I develop. In addition that I’m trying to get fit and stay active. On top of all that I want to develop my audio design skills so I can transition to a career in game audio. So how do I balance all that? Well simple. I don’t….
In fact for the past 8 months (long time) I basically haven’t done anything related to game audio. And I still feel extremely busy.
So why am I writing this article. Well
- In the hopes that it will motivate me to get back into doing my passion and developing this career that I so desire. And
- Because I have some ways I’ll be trying to ensure that I strike more of a balance with the many sides of life that I’m living and hope to share it with everyone.
So I’ll share how I want to approach the balance between my current career and my desired career and life.
1.Set Goals
Set goals this seems self explanatory just note what you want to achieve. However the important thing is to set goals that are actually achievable (not that the skies not the limits with your dreams); set out specifics of how you want to achieve it and set out a time frame in which to achieve it by. In addition its good to set out short term and long term goals and your short term goals should ultimately feed into those big long term goals that you have. I usually set goals for long term, project goals and goals for each session. This is important because its all good and well to say I want to be an audio designer but how can you achieve that if you don’t know the specifics. AAA or indie? Freelance or in house? Having specific goals allows you to pinpoint more of what you need to do to achieve them and means you’re more likely to achieve then and be motivated towards them.
What are my goals you mat ask? Well that’s for another blog.
2. Do Small Chunks Everyday
I know I said I started writing this on a Friday while making burritoes. Well that was two weeks ago… or so. The point is due to the time limit of having a full time day job its hard to do a lot at one time. In addition this can lead to burnout as well as being unmotivated to do anything. Its happened to me in the past. I say I’ll do a big session every Saturday because I have all the time in the world and yeah I may do that for a couple Saturdays but then it becomes unmanageable and some weekends I may have other obligations so I’ll miss doing a lot. Instead I’m trying to do smaller sessions focusing on one little thing everyday (or as many days as possible). This way I keep progressing things , things seem more manageable and before you know it I’ve done a whole redesign.
3.Schedule Time
This is how you meet the last point made and, again, ultimately, how you achieve the things you want in developing this career. Sometimes we say we’re going to do something everyday but if we don’t schedule time for it we can end up excusing doing it because of “lack of time”. Now this isn’t always the case but sometimes it can be a more of a lack of priority than a lack of time. We have 24 hours to fit all the activities of life into our day including sleep (and no sleep is not an option as much as we would like to make it). If we have alot of things to do then somethings can get put aside. By scheduling time you know that you’ll more than likely be doing audio work then and how long you have to do it. This can not only help you get it done more but it can help you plan what you can do within that time limit. I’d say dedicating atleast an 30 mins minimum (ideally an hour or more) a day is good and making sure this 30 mins is at a good time (for me just either first thing in the morning or when I get home from work depending on my shift) can go a long way to ensuring you have some time to do some audio design.
4.Show up
I think the most important is to be there when you said you’d be there. Even of you aren’t particularly motivated or in the mood to do things. This will help develop the discipline needed to keep going and ultimately the more important thing of being consistent.
5.Keep it Burning
When having an extra career choice it’s very hard to stay motivated to pursuing that career. Because the only thing keeping you doing this is you. Money isn’t the influence in most cases for 2nd jobs as you’re hopefully already making enough to sustain yourself (or not but even if money is a factor it may not get the job done in terms of motivating you to keep on it). It’s you choice to do things and so you have to continually make hard choices that get you towards your goal. One way to keep the passion going for a second career is to make things as new and fresh as possible. Keep learning new techniques, keep trying new things, do other things that help make you a better audio design that aren’t necessarily audio design. Read articles on different topics( or perhaps write your own). You have to make sure you are constantly interested, motivated and disciplined in keeping this career going.
6.Make things easier
This is something I really want to make an effort on over the next coming year. Spending time in the short term to make things easier and quicker (just more efficient I’m general) in the long term. For example if you notice you load similar plugins on pretty much every channel (eq , compression etc) create a template for that. If you need to record similar things for different sounds maybe do all the recordings in one session instead of multiple recording session. Find way which streamline your workflow and make things a bit more seamless
7.Compassion
Lastly saying all this if you miss a couple days on the grand scheme of things it more than likely will not have a big effect. If you think you’re moving a bit more slowly than your peers or even what you thought. What’s the rush in life? Of course there are sometimes urgency to these things and doing as many days as possible is ideal but if its not sustainable then what’s the point. If you can’t keep up with your schedule long term then reduce your schedule. If you can’t make a day or just feel tired and burnout every once in a while don’t beat your lself up take it off. We need compassion especially in getting this delicate balance between our current working lives and what we want our working life to be. It’s a long road with already having a career but it is worth travelling it and so be patient with yourself.
That’s all just my thoughts on this topic and how I want to treat things with myself going forward.
Let me know of you have a day job and are trying to develop a career in something else and how that’s going. What’s your strategy? What’s working? What’s not?
Signing out
