Ah! The naming scheme is a bit strange but I like it for what it is. A comfortable length, much more than long enough for what I need as of now. I may have touched on it in the last post but things have been running dry in the ideas department. With some self analysis I feel that it’s become clear why that is, and in my opinion it relies mostly on the fact that I haven’t garnered any new experiences or been reminded of past ones that were enchanting enough. The most recent project has practically been put on an indefinite pause as both the person working on it and I have just seemed to lose desire to add to it. A lack of clear idea from the start clouded our vision in my opinion and the scope alongside gameplay shifted drastically from the original. This isn’t bad by any means; I simply am aware of the state of the project.

Touching again on motivation. Even while being intrinsically focused and pushed forward, I find it challenging to start a project of any kind by myself. Questions arise and the game creation aspect becomes exponentially more difficult when your ideas are still developing. At the moment I’m returning to music creation in an attempt to get shot with inspiration, as that helped carry me through the development of Obscura. The track for the third level in the game was created long before the game itself and genuinely inspired certain aspects of it. A strange process to people outside I suppose but I believe it comes from the idea that with a song as a constraint ideas can blossom. Having free reign to create truly anything I want is overwhelming when I don’t have a burning desire for a single game in particular.

Being back home is a welcome change, even with the unfortunate pushback of school by two weeks do to the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Every time there’s light at the end of the tunnel a new little guy pops up and we’re back to square one. I miss huge crowds, as insane as it may be; seeing people in full force makes me feel less alone. I don’t often feel this way but seeing packed streets or locations reminds me that there are so many other individuals with lives of their own. Not seeing that condenses it down to the few I know, a fact I’m sick of. Extremely glad I’m back home though; cold weather is a difficulty I’m not ready to face quite yet.

Learning Japanese and going to the gym have been two of the only things to keep me sane while struggling through the creative process, as with those I can at least tangibly make progress. The difficulty to find motivation is something I know as fact will be a challenge throughout this career I’ve managed to jump into but is one I believe I’m prepared for, I simply need to slow down. As a kid I would analyze the grass, the sky, the bugs, or anything that held my attention as my perception of time was far slower. The vivid memories I’ve garnered that stick out in my mind are all from moments I can pull experiences from. I want to be healthy in both mind and body; when a computer is right in front of you, both become more challenging tasks than one might expect.

I’m sure I’ll write another blurb around the time of the new year and take some time to reflect. As for this moment, I want to look towards the future in the most positive light I can muster. I like to think myself an optimist in most situations as life has tended to prove me right in the nature of time. From the world I want 2022 to be the final year of Coronavirus, and from myself I want to create and release a game of any kind that’s substantial enough to release on Steam. I’ll firm these up and add some progress in a later post but as of now those are my biggest dreams. Money is still a concern but I’m growing to not care, something upsetting but necessary. In the coming year I want to worry not about investment in money but instead using it upon projects. The things I create will pay for my retirement, not fake pieces of digital art or market manipulation.

While this post was a long one, I hope it helps me explain to myself what I’ve been thinking, as convoluted as that may sound. I want to compile experiences into a helpful set of posts and may start that little side project soon to give this website some use. The current URL may not stay this way forever; personal websites are a bit tacky and though I’m using it largely as portfolio I still wish to restructure it. Something along the lines of Sloperama, a website a friend of mine showed me awhile back. Cute little website. Regardless, I’m sure I’ll have more to talk on soon, and as for now wish me luck in not being entirely unproductive this break.