Kentucky Route Zero is a game about sabbaticals.
Impostor syndrome is one of those psychological patterns that manage to go both ways. If you feel like an impostor, you are right. If you don't feel like an impostor, you are right.
So it's CES 2014. I'm squatting in the cargo area of the south hall smoking Indica with a valet, an EE driver, and a programmer for some camera company. I was a month into a marketing job with a gaming tech company, it doesn't matter which one. The event was in full swing, was the middle of the day, I was on duty, in uniform.
I was getting fired soon. I knew that. My boss got shitcanned a few days prior. The reason being him not being up to snuff. He was an ivy league educated, highly experienced, articulate and capable individual. I was a community college-educated, socially inept, smelly, QA tester that stumbled ass-upward into a job I had to look up the work responsibilities in Wikipedia for.
It also didn't help that the other employees were penning my eulogy while I was still logged on. Here is how you tell if you are gonna get fired soon. If you are working on a project and it gets taken away from you without clear reasoning? You might be getting fired soon. If you see less and less Outlook invites for meetings pop up but you still see a lot of people entering meeting rooms? Yeah. If other employees remark to you, "They haven't fired you yet? That's weird." Then maybe start updating your resume.
I was fine with it, to be honest. I was tired. I dreamed of working in the gaming industry at twelve years old. When I broke into video game quality assurance at twenty-six it didn't feel like I thought it was supposed to, so I moved the goalpost. Around ten years later when I hit that goal, I realized there is no feeling. I could become the fucking king of video games and there would be no feeling. I made it all up to keep moving forward. Then I thought, maybe I'm not the impostor. The gaming industry is.
I realized that while I was on the show floor talking to some kid. He was fresh out of college, pretending to know everything about my product while really biding time to pull out this Kinko's fresh business card to solicit a job where I work. I started wondering how much more pointless it was going to get for me, till I wised up. I lost focus and excused myself to grab a smoke. Didn't specify what I'd be smoking.
While we were out there the programmer only said one thing. I made a stupid joke about wanting to quit my job and become a magician. I said magician because there was a Criss Angel poster right across from me and I'm simple jack. He replied, "I quit my job every day, then just show back up." I was like, alright.
Anyway, long story long I survived that snakepit for a few years, then went somewhere else, then somewhere else, failing forward the whole way. I haven't found the feeling, I don't think it exists, but I keep showing back up, so what the fuck do I know.
Anyway, Kentucky Route Zero is finally bagged. It's not a great game, it's a great anything. The funny part is Jake, Tamas, and Ben's real-life story is better than the game. Rip TB Rip TC Rip Tall-T. Love is wise, hatred is foolish. Get out there and do great things, we believe in you. Also Jobs.
The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : Arriviste
