The Tree

College was hell. I’m sure that’s not a unique statement. As I’m sure I’m not the only one who suffered through it. But it seemed that for everyone else, it paid off. I spent most of college both trying to be a student and trying to learn to be an adult. Half of the time my head was buried in a textbook or glued to my laptop at my work, and the other half I was working a soul sucking job waiting on other people. When my studies didn’t make me feel like a complete loser, my work certainly did.

Still, like a dung beetle, I trampled onwards. And after graduation, instead of getting a nice job, I got a job at a Q&A place. Where developers sent in their games to test for game breaking bugs. I had gone to college to learn how to make games, so I figure breaking other people’s games was good enough for now. It was long hours, and tedious work. Not something I wasn’t expecting, but certainly wasn’t expecting how hard it was. It was made even more difficult when I would turn to social media and see my fellow classmates posting about their new careers. I pushed on, developing my own game on the side after work. But somehow, spending twelve hours a day debugging other people’s games didn’t exactly put me in the mood to work on my own. I fell into a dark rabbit hole, of simply crashing and watching Netflix shows I’ve seen a hundred times before in college, or simply spiraling down a long YouTube rabbit hole.

Suddenly, wedding and baby photos seemed to fill my Facebook timeline. When the hell did that happen? How long had I been at this dead-end job to where now my former classmates were starting all these new life journeys? Why did I care so much?

And then one day, I snapped. I couldn’t do it anymore. So, I tossed away the last bit of my pride, and called my mom.

Like most moms, I’m sure, she was more than encouraging and comforting. She asked me exactly what I wanted to do, and I just told her I didn’t know. I told her that I was quitting my job, and she asked if I had anything lined up. That question always stung if you’re a college graduate, because the answer should always be, “OF COURSE! I HAVE THIS FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLAR INVESTMENT OF COURSE JOBS ARE LINED UP!” But the answer is almost always no. So, I told her I just needed a break. I needed to catch my breath. I felt like I had been winded since my first semester, I felt like I couldn’t keep up with this race anymore. So, she told me to come back home.

Moving back to your hometown has its perks and flaws. The perks are the familiarity. You know where the best spots in town are. The restaurants that your family used to eat at still serve some heart-warming food that’s good for your soul. And for my hometown, it was a lot smaller than the city, which meant less traffic and less busyness as it would seem. The flaw is the familiarity. EVERYBODY knows you. So, everybody wants to know what you’re up to now. They know you went to college. They know you went away to chase your dream job. So now you had to let them know that it didn’t work out.

I always tried to put the best spin on it that I could. ‘Oh, I just came down to take a break.’ ‘I needed some family time.’ ‘Dad could use some extra help at the shop.’ ‘Wanted to focus on my own ‘game’.

Technically these were all true. I needed a break and hadn’t spent more than a week with my family since starting college. Dad certainly needed some extra help at his shop. And I still wanted to create my own game that I could release independently.

The responses were always encouraging, but I couldn’t help but still feel like a failure. I kept getting anxious anytime anyone asked me ‘What I’ve been up to now?’, like I was being interrogated. Like if I didn’t tell them, “I SCREWED UP!” that I was somehow giving the wrong answer.

It made me want to avoid people all together.

Despite being in a small town, time seemed to pass just as quickly, if not quicker, than living in the city. A year had come and gone since I moved back down. Still no indie game, and still feeling like I was always on edge. I lived with my parents for some time, but my dad and I started to get into some arguments. I was helping him out at his shop but not as much as I could, but I just couldn’t stand it and wanted to work on my own game. After the hundredth ‘slacker’ comment, I decided to move out.  

Which also meant that I had to either take up more hours at my father’s shop or take another job. I chose the latter which didn’t improve our relationship. But it was also another dead-end job, where I worked alongside either college minded teenagers, or parents of college students. I was right in the middle, my own unique demographic. I avoided conversations with the other two as much as I could. The teens all were looking forward to getting out of this dead-end job and their dead-end high school, and so college looked to them like a golden shimmer on the horizon. For me, it was a bleak part of my past. So, it was depressing to them, to hear my story, and just as depressing for me, to see that switch turn in their eyes saying, ‘Well I won’t end up like this guy’. And the parents, they always seemed way too sympathetic towards my situation. Always, ‘Oh this economy is tough. It’s hard for anyone to find a good job nowadays.’ Meanwhile, they try their best to avoid mentioning that their college-educated children are doing just fine at their corporate jobs.

If all of this makes me sound like an ass, or just a bum, then you’re right. I’m certainly not disputing that. But at this point, I wasn’t ready to fully accept that.

The first year home came and went, now my the end of my second year home was approaching.  Most people could get a degree in that time, what I done with it? My degree was a Bachelors, so I was away for four. And now I was halfway through another Bachelors, still a bachelor, and still at a dead-end job that mostly teenagers and other adults who just needed extra holiday cash worked at.

And since I had been home for some time now, anyone who heard me talk about my attempts at creating my own video game, was now interested in ‘how it was coming along’. I’m sure in their minds, it’s been nearly two years, surely there’s something to show for it. When there was nothing. I had nothing to show, except a one paged document with about a dozen ‘Elevator Pitches’ written along them, all of them just as equally as shitty.

Because a dead-end job can barely afford you a studio apartment, and because that apartment felt like a prison, I tried to get outside much as possible. And doing stuff that was either cheap or free was the preference. So, for one reason or another, I found myself at the library. Maybe it was because you’re discouraged from making noise at the library, that I thought I could avoid conversations there in case I bumped into someone I knew. I brought my laptop in a few times, thinking in some weird way that surrounded by books would put me in the right mind for creating a video game.

Eventually on my way out, I noticed a community board that was tattered with flyers and posters. One caught my eye. For whatever reason I still don’t know. It was labelled ‘Everyday Photographers’, and it was a beginners photography class. I’m not sure what made me copy the information, but I did.

My mom and I would have a weekly hangout, where she would buy me lunch somewhere and we would discuss how everything was going in our lives. I tried to keep the conversation focused primarily on her to avoid talking about myself. But eventually, dreadfully, when the question was passed onto me, I somehow mentioned the photography class.

“That sounds like fun! You should go!”

“I’m not sure,” was my reply. I mentioned that work was so exhausting, all I wanted to do was to sleep and just focus on my ‘game’. But she pressed on.

“Sometimes doing something new will ignite a creative spark!"

I agreed that she was probably right, and thinking about it more helped me to decide on it.

So, I showed up that day, arriving at the conference room at my library, and almost instantly felt out of place. Thankfully, there wasn’t anyone that I knew in that class. But it was filled with seniors? Had I misread the flyer?

Everyone also seemed to know each other and had mentioned lessons they learned in this class. So, I began to suspect that this wasn’t a beginner’s class either.

Then the teacher appeared. And she seemed to be older than the rest of them. Yet she was very lively. She came in very rehearsed, setting her stuff down on the front table. Without looking at the class, she began to say her hellos, letting everyone know how her day went. She seemed to start to go into her first lecture when she finally lifted her head and noticed me in the corner of the room, and she instantly lit up.

“OH! A new student, how wonderful!” She immediately introduced herself as Ms. Ross and encouraged the other students to introduce themselves as well. Thankfully, I still didn’t know who any of them were.

She eventually went into her lecture, talking about how phones can be both a major distraction, they can also be very helpful in our everyday lives. Since most of them have cameras on them, they allowed us to become ‘Everyday Photographers’.  That having our phones allowed us the joy of taking wonderful photos.

Eventually there was a fruit basket set up in the middle of the room, atop a small little column. She instructed us to each individually go up and take our pictures. She didn’t give much technical instructions, other than to take your time and find the shot you wanted. I was the last to go, and before I went, I was feeling embarrassed. Obviously, most of these students had taken this class before, and perhaps this assignment was simply being pulled out because I was new. But as each silver fox went up to take their photo, I noticed a certain intensity within each of them. Some seemed to approach the fruit basket as if it were a dangerous animal, walking up cautiously, as if not to startle it. Others approached it like it was a high fashion model. When it came time for me, I simply took a close-up picture of a fruit I thought was interesting.

After each individual shot, Ms. Ross went up to each student and asked us about our work. She asked me why I chose to make the banana the focus of the fruit basket. I hadn’t though much about it, and perhaps scrambling around, I simply stated, “I thought the bruising on it provided some nice contrast.”

I felt like I had given a good answer, after all, I had used a very technical art term at the end there. But she simply smiled, seeming to know something I didn’t, and stated, “I see.”

I showed my mom the many photos I took of the fruit baskets the next time we met up. She was more than thrilled to see them, but seemed more thrilled that I had something new to show her. Still her excitement was infectious. And I must admit, later that night, I did get some work done on my game. I now had two pages written up of shitty elevator pitches.

Our next class assignment was a far cry compared to our first. We were to go to the park. Our teacher gave us one rule.  

“Only one subject! You can take as many shots as you want, but only of one subject! So, take your time! Remember that Andy Warhol started a revolution because he freshly observed an everyday item of a Campbell’s Soup can! So go out there and find your soup can!”  

I must admit her energy was as infectious as my mom’s earlier excitement. Still though, I was a bit disheartened to know that despite being a lush green park, we were only allowed to take photos of one subject. But it did seem to encourage us to really explore before we got trigger happy so to speak. I made one lap around the park. Eventually, I spotted a tree I thought was interesting. I’m not sure why, I don’t have a green thumb and only know about oak trees and palm trees, and this was neither. But for whatever reason, I watched it, studied it, found the best angle, and took my shot. Only one, despite being allowed to take many more.

Afterwards of course, Ms. Ross examined it, and asked me why I had chosen this tree. I studied the photo again carefully on my phone before answering. The tree was the centerpiece, and the way it stood, slightly bent, but stoically with a crown of leaves above it, made it feel majestic in a way. Its white bark made it stand out against the contrast of greenery around it. But I said none of that, and simply stated, “I just seemed peaceful.”

“Hmm,” said Ms. Ross amusedly, as if she again knew something I didn’t, but maybe I did in this case.

That following night, I didn’t work on my ‘game’. But I also didn’t go to sleep with the help of electronics or my many streaming comforts. I simply lay on my futon, thinking of that tree.

The next class we watched a video called ‘Four Artists Paint a Tree.’ It was a video by Walt Disney back in the sixties, about how four professional artists interpreted and painted the same subject, in this example, a tree in a park. I’ve seen this video before once in college, and I understood the messaging back then. It was about perspective and uniqueness in each artist. But for some reason, it took on a different meaning for me that I couldn’t explain. That day Ms. Ross set up a single subject for us to take a picture of a Rubix Cube. And we were each instructed to take our own unique photo of it. The class got a kick out of the assignment, especially when I jumped atop the table to take a bird’s eye view of the cube from above. There were some other unique photos that surprised and intrigued me. One student took a closeup photo of just one singular colored corner of the cube. Others tried to capture three sides, and another student took a photo from underneath the table the cube was on, not capturing the subject at all. He called it, “The Pressure of Success.” I liked it.

After that class, I went in my own free time to see my tree again in the park. The video made me think that there were other ways I could be seeing this tree again. I took my time, almost the same amount of time it took me to find this tree in the first place, examining it and its properties. I examined the roughness of its bark, noticing some features that I hadn’t before. There was a spot where a branch had seemed to be carved off it at one point. And lower down it seemed to be rougher, as if hundreds of little hands had run themselves along it. I wondered if the weight of people hanging off it when it was smaller caused its bent shape. Then I began to observe the branches, how the sunlight changed as I viewed it from below the green leaves. How each branch, curved and twisted, shows possible different paths this tree could’ve taken. Why had this branch grown out this way and not this way? Then I observed a single green leaf that had fallen off, how it that one leaf, was its own world, its own universe.

I took several photos that day, but each one was intentional. Intentional on interpreting that tree in a fresh new way. Perhaps not fresh or new to anyone else, but something new to me. Something I hadn’t seen before.

I’ve continued to work on my ‘game’. Though it hasn’t made much more progress beyond two design pages. But that’s fine. My relationship with my father has improved, I realize now that he is just scared for me, though he expresses it in a way that isn’t helpful. And my mother is always excited to see more of my photos, which makes me happy. I’ve started to see the passion in my younger fellow co-workers as inspiring and embrace the kindness of my older ones.  

I have begun to look at things in a different light now. How that, despite not everything going according to plan when I originally left here, that they still worked out. That I’m still here. That like the branches of the tree, there were so many twists and patterns my life had taken. Some unseen cuts and bruises, some busted egos, and some crushed dreams. Yet still hope, still sunshine, still another day. And still, I was uniquely me.