fzygirl-gameon

Tegan rolls over and turns off her alarm clock. Too bad, since she was really enjoying the Doctor Who theme. Tegan has seen the movie at least thirty times since it came out twenty years before she was born. Doctor Who was the catalyst that launched Tegan into Geekdom, driving her to complete both computer engineering and video game design degrees. She pulled on her glasses and TARDIS handwarmers, careful to pull it over the brace she wore when typing. For now, though, she went to her home mini-gym in an attempt to make sure her health was strong too.

It had been a year since she had gone into indie game developing. Nothing hard, a simple runner game to start. She was working on her next game, hoping to push it out to all the mobile platforms.  Everything was going as smooth as could be. The coding, despite being a one person job, was going well. She had commissioned a friend to help with the art. A few friends had offered to beta reader the story, a couple really liking it and one not so much.

The only thing that made it even more depressing was her family. They had never been supportive of the tigress. Even her tail twitched now as she thought about how unsupportive they were. She had sat down to work on some coding for the day, though the thoughts lingered. Her claws clicked even more against the keyboard until she started to code all wrong. Tegan let out a frustrated roar and slammed her laptop's monitor shut in frustration. It shattered the glass and rendered it useless, the tiger's strength that mighty.

"Damn it!"

She was lucky that she had the funds to replace it, but that wasn't the point. Once again she had left herself in the need of validation from her parents and left herself vulnerable enough that she broke her computer and herself. The feline growled again and nearly punched her mirror. She grabbed some clothes, changing out of the pajama bottoms and long t-shirt she had been wearing.

It took her the entirety of the day to find the brand of laptop that she liked. Tegan actually found it for sale to boot. And for once in her life, she didn't ask anyone else's opinion about it, or talk it over with anyone else. As she walked open, her stance and walking went from stomping and grumpy to medium to happy and light.

As soon as she got home, she booted up the computer, thankful that all of her stuff was usually in the cloud anyway as an automatic back up. The first thing Tegan did was installed Skype and called her mother. The joys of living across the country.

"Hello? Oh! Teaga--"

"Listen, ain't got much time. I just wanted to say that I no longer need your validation. It's realization I came to today. I've been killing myself in depression and my business with it, all trying to please you. and I finally just realized that I don't need it anymore. I'm my own woman and it's about damn time I acted like it. It's the whole reason I moved across the country from you. Goodbye, mother. This will be the last time we speak. You're hurting my life and you're hurting my spirituality."

With that, Tegan hung up and uninstalled the program before her mother could respond. She sat back, sipping the lemonade she had bought while out and reflected before giving herself the day off, satisfied that she finally had her life to herself.