[v2.1.32] – 2022-11-06
Removed
- My YouTube content schedule altogether
Fixed
- My drive for action
I’ve listened to this one podcast episode probably close on 10 times by now. Each time I do, I come to the realisation that I’m doing something wrong.
This time was no exception.
Last changelog, after talking about my game-plan for ditching the daily uploads in favour for the weekly and working quickly towards a Steam release, something still wasn’t sitting quite right with me.
I still had a general idea of “I should really be productive and making some content” rattling around my brain.
Recently, I’ve realised that it’s not the timeline of the videos that’s the issue here. It’s the idea of a timeline altogether. A fixed update schedule implicitly drives me towards making as much progress as possible so I can stuff it into a YouTube video…
“look how productive I’m being, aren’t I great!”
Is the general line of thinking here.
Yet… it’s just status-seeking at its core. It’s me trying to be some kind of productive game dev giga-chad for internet status points. However successful or unsuccessful I am at that, I believe it’s fundamentally the wrong approach in both my work-life and documentation efforts.
So it’s time for some serious rejigging.
I’ll focus more on my solution to the work-life side of things here, but I’ve also got a hint of an idea for reconciling the content creation side of this. I’ll save that for future though.
In regards to work, I’ve decided to opt for a more bottom-up approach. Starting right at the very root of my motivation.
What do I want to do?
What’s my biggest bottleneck preventing me from doing that right now?
Over the last few years I’ve loaded up my plate with alllll of these courses, tasks, and resources that I’d like to work my way through.
Except, this entire time, I’ve been putting them on the back-burner to serve my “game dev goals”
Yet (and here’s the absolutely fucking comical thing) the only reason I was even working towards these goals, shipping all these projects and trying to push for game releases is because I felt like I should be embodying this spirit of the productive game dev guy.
“Look at all these games I’ve made! Aren’t I great!”
…
I’m starting to see a bit of a pattern here.
While I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with wanting status. There is something fundamentally wrong with the explicit pursuit of it.
I think a much better plan of attack is to completely shed this notion of trying to do/be/create anything and instead just do what I want to do. Trusting that everything will work itself out if I surrender to this bottom-up approach.
Trust in the process.
I’ve come to this conclusion a couple of times now, but entropy keeps knocking me out of it.
So once again, here I go.
I’m focusing on what I really want to be doing in this present moment, without any regard for how “productive” it looks like to people on the outside.
Passion above all else.
At the moment that’s landed me in a spot where my biggest priority is some personal development stuff I’ve been neglecting for far too long. I won’t bore you with the details.
While my primary focus at the moment will remain a little shrouded in mystery, there are a lot of hours in the day and there’s a bunch of cool shit that I’m working on in parallel.
I’ve been diving into the world wide web this week. For literally the first time in my life, I’ve been actually figuring out how the internet works. I’ve spun up my own debian nginx server and am wreaking havoc at 45.77.204.29
I won’t spoil the surprise of what I’m working on, but I reckon I’ll have something ready for ya next week.
Until then, best of luck with your own efforts. Take care.
randy