Old Blog Posts: World Experience

                Chapter 2 focuses on Walt’s tumultuous childhood, his life growing up on a farm, his early artistic career and jobs, his experiences with the armed forces, and the many difficulties he faced as a youth.

                Based on what I know about people, when it comes to moving they tend to be in extremes-they either hate it or enjoy it. However, I recognize that the tone of a move depends on why it’s happening. The one move I experienced that I didn’t like was the one that took me away from the home I had mentioned in my last blog post. I’m noticing more of what I mentioned in my last post about how difficult it was for Walt to leave the farm, as it was like watching one’s world disappear.

                I find it interesting that Walt was deemed “too young to do much useful work” (8). If my parents had seen that I was well and fit enough to get dumped into creeks by hogs and wander around dense woods all day, they would think I was well enough to do something-and they did. I can barely remember not having chores. It makes me wonder how parenting perceptions might have been different back then, or if perhaps it was part of being on a farm and even the most menial fetching tasks would have been beyond Walt as a child. However, also unlike Walt, I don’t know many people who were subjected to intolerable amounts of work the second they were able, as noted when Watts recounts Walt’s early job as a paper boy. Perhaps it balances out that way.

                The chapter also speaks gratuitously to Walt’s boundless energy and work ethic-something I tried to capture in my presentation. I find it interesting that Walt favored mental labor over physical jobs; I certainly understand the appeal as someone who has chosen a creative career path, but some days I can work on something for hours and I won’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything until I get up and do some physical work-make some impact on the physical world. It doesn’t make sense to me. What does make sense to me, though, is the aversion to poverty. I’ve heard it from my Mom as well as many of my older friends: when one spends an extended period of time living hand-to mouth they become so opposed to feeling that way again that they’ll gladly put in the extra effort to make sure their children or other loved ones get something better than what they got. I would like to think that that’s a fundamental part of anyone’s work ethic.

                This chapter talks a lot about the many jobs Walt took to facilitate his artistic education, and I feel like I can relate. As one who is studying game development, people bother me a lot asking me why I don’t play more video games than I do. I hardly play any games at all because I always end up putting something else before it, to the point where a lot of “hardcore” gamers would just call me a poser or something. For some reason, I keep having to explain to people that understanding what one needs to know to create such a thing requires infinitely more than what playing games can teach a person. What I learned isn’t going to do me much good if I put off my primary education to do it, and all the time I spent playing games is only going to matter so much when I walk into an interview. By the same token, I feel like one might look at Walt and wonder why he didn’t take part in jobs that were more relevant to his career, as opposed to working on the railroads or delivering postage (or why he didn’t focus on his art more intensely). In both cases, I feel like the two key things are priorities and exposure. When one limits their focus to just the one thing that they desire and allow for no deviation, they limit their capacity to fulfill that desire. In keeping one’s horizons broad, one can better understand what about that goal is truly pressing or important.

                Overall, very enlightening-there’s a lot of that “lifting the veil” type stuff in this chapter. A good read, and I’m liking how I’m relating to a lot of this as I reread it.

Old Blog Posts: The Early Days

I know the class is essentially over, but I wanted to make up my blog posts on principle; I just didn’t feel right not doing them. So, I’ll just be summarizing the chapters I read and offering a little commentary (I would like to still do a movie review, but it will probably have to wait until after finals. We’ll see). Chapter 1 of the Watts book reports on Walt’s early life: his fascination with his hometown and its values, its impact on his creativity, and its popularity despite the decline of small town America.

I can’t help but wonder what things would have been like if Walt hadn’t grown up in such a small, idyllic, idealistic community. I have similar feelings of where I grew up-I lived in the neighborhood across from my elementary school, and it was small for us because we lived in a tiny subdivision of the neighborhood. I could spend all day running and walking and playing and I was safe, because there was nowhere to go. Being in the absolute heart of Orlando, we could walk out into the middle of our street and see all the fireworks from every theme park anytime there was a celebration. We had annual passes and spent every Friday night at Disney, and I spent every free day either playing in my room or vanishing outside for hours on end. Everyone loved each other and it was great, and I know for sure it had an effect on me. Some people I know think I’m too nice, and I contribute it to my upbringing. I never needed to know how to “put up a fight” or be really assertive because nothing bad or confrontational ever really happened there.

Furthermore, growing up this way left me comfortable and happy enough to let my imagination and creativity do as they pleased; I imagine that this would have impacted Walt as well, in addition to the fact that his portrayal of the rural Midwest stems partially from the fact that he spent very little time in it as a child. When one finds that environment that provides the perfect conditions for this sort of dreaming, it’s going to be painful every time one has to be pulled away from it, and this happened to Walt quite frequently.

It makes a particular amount of sense to me because I think my childhood had a big impact on my career choice-I grew up in this wholesome little place and spent most of my time playing video games, usually those made by Nintendo. Nintendo has always marketed themselves as a family and children’s company and to me they always appeared more optimistic and light about the future of gaming than any other company would. I owe them for making the vast majority of my childhood into the bliss that I remember it to be, so by deciding I would like to one day work for them I not only return the favor they gave me but I also increase the odds that I may capture some of that childhood idealism. It didn’t occur to me until now, but it makes perfect sense to me that many of Walt’s career endeavors reflected this same thought process-I don’t know why the Watts book carries so many accounts if his friends and family finding this surprising, because now it seems so obvious.

Overall, the kind of read that’s better the second time around. The first time I read this chapter I was so focused on looking for details that would be relevant to my presentation that the real substance of it was lost on me, so I’m glad I did this post and forced myself to revisit it.