On getting back on the horse
Since the middle of August I’ve been doing nothing. Not in the casual sense, but in the more literal one: I basically quit all the projects I was working on, because I knew that I wasn’t approaching them in the right way.
What followed was a lot of unhealthiness that eventually turned a corner towards something better: my therapy started clicking, and it felt like I was making more progress in two months than I had in years.
I basically figured out that a lot of what I was doing was placing unnecessary pressure on myself when it came to what I created. I had lost the process of just making stuff that made me feel good; ironically, this stuff is usually what ends up the most successful.
By always having a project (or well, getting distracted with new ones every couple weeks) I never really fixed my problems. Instead, I just kind of careened between things I wasn’t going to give my best effort towards, and then getting frustrated at the lack of results; because I never stayed focused on something, and ONLY that thing, I never had the chance to get better or establish a good foothold for improvement or growth.
More context here: https://medium.com/@mattdeme…/on-the-hard-break-cd5bbfef740c
So here we are, a couple months later; I’ve lost almost 100 Twitter followers and still have days where I think “man, I used to do something or be someone.”
However, a larger (like, significantly larger) amount of time is now spent separating my work, fun and social life into more manageable chunks, instead of it all being balled up into esports; I thought it’d be a lot more stressful having to balance all three instead of one, but as it turns out, it’s a lot better to not have EVERYTHING suck if one thing does.
The video linked below is the first thing I’ve made in a while that actually clicked and felt awesome to finish.
I took a look back at what I really enjoyed doing — without the pressure of “making it something big” — and realized I wanted to learn more and think critically about some of the most “classic” video games in a certain genre. It might be a niche thing, but for the first time in forever, I don’t care about its potential or growth or market demographic: I just want to make it, and have it be that. Creating something that’s good for the heart.
Thanks to everyone who’s put up with venting, problems and just general “me” for the past little while. I’m nowhere near fixed, but I’m starting to feel better about myself, and am more confident that I can talk about more than “me having a hard time.”
In the meantime, it’s just going to be about trying again until something else clicks. I have some goals, but whether I achieve them or not isn’t going to define my self-value anymore. Thanks for reading.
