Embrace the uncertainty…decades in Gaming

August 2022. I’ll be 69 years old this month, beginning my 70th year on the planet: “Service in the World Since 1953”.  It astounds me that I’ve survived and thrived for 7 decades.  When I was asked to write a letter to my younger self I thought of things I wish I had known, things I might have done differently, my choices and their consequences, regrets, highs and lows…a flood of memories.  I landed on gratitude and this letter is mainly about saying thank you to my younger self.  Starting with: I’m grateful I didn’t know then what I know now.

The knowledge and experience gained over time require an element of mystery. Exploring the unknown is necessary to create faith in the future. I know, without a doubt, that if I knew the pain of the trials and challenges I would experience, in advance, I would have shriveled up in fear of my impending doom! Thereby losing the chance to gain the wisdom of resilience. I also know, with equal certainty, if I knew the awesome blessings that waited ahead, I would stop working, learning, and growing and just sit and wait for them to arrive. Of course, in that context, they never would and I’d have missed learning how “hope” works with faith in the creative process of the imagination. I have survived and grown due to the ability to use my imagination to create my future. The gift of imagination is my foundation as a designer and as a human being. I’m grateful for an imagination nourished by parents who taught me how to work and provided all I needed to reach my potential.

Not knowing the future is OK. Good even.  This is an insight discovered through time and chance.  My truth about my younger self?  You have everything you need now and for the future, inside you already, waiting for your discovery as you walk your path today.  You will discover what you need exactly when it’s needed when you listen to your heart and use your imagination.

1993. I’m working as a freelance industrial designer for Design Continuum in Boston.  One day, during lunch, I walked into the office of an engineer.  I say “Hi”, he ignores me, staring intently at the screen of his CAD monitor.  I look over his shoulder and my jaw drops.  He’s killing demons.  I’ve never seen anything like it before.  The game was DOOM and I was mesmerized.  The journey from Boston to return to California and from industrial design to entertainment had begun.  I was deeply determined to make this move, change my career and the circumstances of my life.  To my younger self I say thank you.  Thank you for following your heart and for your courage to always commit to change.  Doors opened, my life was reinvented, a series of unforeseen circumstances conspired to aid my journey and I’ve never looked back.   2023 will mark the 30th year of my leap into the unknown.  I owe my fascination with games to a chance encounter with DOOM! And later that year, MYST.

When I was 7, we moved from Canada to Illinois.  At age 12 we moved to Lompoc, California, where my father worked at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Vandenberg was, at the time, the planned western launch site for the space shuttle.  An artifact of moving to California was my introduction to the public library.  On those shelves I found the food that fed my inner life of imagination.  Restricted to only 10 books at a time…I read Asimov, Bradbury, Le Guin, Norton, Arthur C. Clarke, Baum, Pournelle, Niven… the artifacts of the future on every page.  My heroes, from those years as a kid, still inform my life now.  I’m grateful to my younger self for his constant wonder for and persistence at finding things out.  For his curiosity and devotion to right thinking and action in the face of adversity.  Without young Duane’s devotion to reading, old Duane would never be.

I look back with gratitude and carry it with me into the future.  Thank you.