It is time. I've learned just enough about software design to be slightly dangerous and will soon begin to focus on programming games in my spare time. The community at Gamasutra is amazing and amazingly talented and I will be mapping my progress on this blog to be in their company.
I'm a 31 year old in the midst of a real career shift. My background is in the fine arts and I had a good career in that field for a number of years. Computers and technical thinking has always appealled to me and in 2009 I went back to school for programming at my local community college in Madison, Wisconsin. It's been a good experience, but it has increased my hunger to do something with my programming skills apart from solving business problems... not that there aren't some very interesting business problems to solve!
Perhaps someone else in a similar situation would enjoy or benefit from reading about the steps I have taken and will take to accomplish my goal of designing a game and releasing it on the Xbox360 Indie marketplace.
I have no illusions that it will be simple work and I'm far too intimidated to work with any other developers at this point. It will be slow, and plodding solitary work as I have a day job, am still finishing school, and have an awful lot to learn.
As a favorite author of mine wrote:
"So high! So low! So many things to know!"