I’ve loved video games for as long as I can remember.
As a kid, I fought my brother for turns on his Game Boy so I could play “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3.” I spent hours playing Neopets games to earn Neopoints for my virtual pets. I remember peeking over my mom’s shoulder while she played endless rounds of solitaire on our family computer, impatiently waiting for my turn to load up “Frogger 2: Swampy’s Revenge.”
Although I loved games, I never saw them as a realistic career path. Instead, I pursued a stable career in military intelligence that left little room for creativity — but seven years into that job, I realized I missed writing, art, and connecting with people through work.
Around that time, I became interested in UX design and decided to earn a master’s degree. I started participating in game jams and collaborating with indie developers.
The more I worked on games, the more things started to click. I realized the gaming industry needed UX researchers, people whose job was to understand players and advocate for their experience.
For the first time, I could see a path that connected the things I loved with the kind of work I wanted to do.
I thought I had landed my dream role
I started freelancing with an indie studio and slowly built experience through contract roles and side projects. For nearly three years, I worked toward one goal: landing a UX research role at a major gaming studio.
Eventually, I got the interview I had been waiting for.
The job-application process spanned months and included roughly six interviews, assignments, and many emails. When I finally received the offer, it felt like everything had changed overnight.
There was just one problem: The job was in Southern California, and my life — including my boyfriend of over a year — was nearly 3,000 miles away on the East Coast.
The company did not cover my relocation costs, so I took out a $12,000 personal loan to fund the move. I also accepted a roughly $15,000 annual pay cut because I believed this was my dream job.
Looking back, there were clear warning signs that this wasn’t the best choice, but I convinced myself that the job would be worth it.
The move felt exciting until I arrived
A friend helped me make the drive from Maryland to California in a vintage RV. The trip itself was stressful, but exciting: We ate breakfast at Cracker Barrel in the morning, listened to romantasy audiobooks during the day, and spent the nights talking about the future.
For a brief stretch, it felt like an adventure I hadn’t experienced in years, but underneath that was grief.
The hardest part was leaving my partner behind. I had gone into the move believing that the distance would be manageable, but even knowing that we were committed to each other, leaving still hurt in ways I hadn’t fully prepared for.
When I finally arrived in California, reality set in almost immediately. Pushing through the dry air, I lugged my cats and everything I could fit into my car across the parking lot, shaded by tall palm trees, and into the luxury apartment I had rented sight unseen just one month earlier.
My apartment, which cost about $1,000 more a month than my last place, was mostly empty, with boxes still in storage back on the East Coast.
The loneliness was immediate, but there was no time to sit with it. Work started almost right away.
My dream job became a source of anxiety
On paper, the job felt like exactly what I had been working toward: a full-time job in my dream industry. The pace felt stressful, though — I was still learning, but I often felt like I was already behind.
At the same time, there was a wider sense of instability in the industry. Layoffs at other major studios were part of everyday conversation, and security anywhere felt nonexistent.
Long workdays became my new normal. Still, I couldn’t keep up — it felt like there was always more to do than time to do it in. On some nights, late calls with my partner were the only thing keeping me grounded long enough to make it through the next day.
One night in fall 2024, after almost a year into my role, everything finally clicked. I was sitting in my apartment, exhausted and afraid of layoffs.
Around that time, wildfires were burning in the distance, and the mountains outside my balcony were lit with a faint orange glow under a sky filled with smoke. I was alone, burned out, and deeply unhappy, while the world outside my window was burning.
I remember looking around my apartment and realizing I had built an entire life around a dream that no longer felt like mine. That night, I decided to leave, and I submitted my resignation soon after.
Leaving California helped me find the life I actually wanted
Once I returned to the East Coast, I moved less than an hour away from my partner so we could see each other more often. After almost a year of seeing each other only twice, being together regularly again changed everything.
Not long after I moved back, we got married, and about a year later, we welcomed our first baby.
I still love video games. I still work in the gaming industry through freelance projects, but now I do it on my own terms, with more space for the parts of my life that exist outside work.
As it turns out, my real dream was building a life with the person I loved.
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