I've written previously on how Geeky/Fannish jobs, cool as they are, are also bloody hard at times. I want to follow up on that by praising one of the best traits of the job search and career growth that many geeks have more than they realize.
Endurance.
If you want to succeed, you need endurance. You need to outlast competitors, downturns, re-organizations, and economic meltdowns. You need to keep going when no one else is sure what's going on – including you – to get to the other side of whatever you're dealing with this year, or month, or week. You need to outlast a lot of challenges, including your own flaws and fears.
If you're a pro-geek, this probably goes double for you. Videogaming is constantly changing, social media is shifting, your small startup has just been bought and reorged twice, you've just been rejected by your tenth editor. We pro-geeks do cool things, but as cool things are hard work, you'll find part of that hard work is LASTING.
Fortnately, a lot of us geeks and pro-geeks are far better and endurance than we give ourselves credit for.
We're the people who can follow a manga series for hundreds of episodes. We can spend a weekend writing fanfic. We can spent an evening making art for our friends. We can track sports figures inour heads. We will stand in line for a con, concert, or autograph.
We do things that we love, that we geek over, and we'll put up with all sorts of things or go for amazing efforts to do them. I've seen people run conventions with more spirit and conviction than many companies I'd seen.
You are geek. You endure.
– Steven Savage