I know it’s ridiculous to be upset about something I can’t control, but tomorrow… I will turn 55.
No, I’m not talking about the election. Already voted, straight downballot blue, because I’m not a fascist. Nothing else I can do about it, the results will speak for themselves.
So I’m primarily focused on me and the things that matter to me.
Every year I have the same basic pattern, there are the sort of three days that demand reflection: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and my birthday. I invest these in making plans for the upcoming year, spending Rosh Hashanah thinking about what I’ve done well, and Yom Kippur thinking about what I should have done better. Then in the lead-up to my birthday I think about what I should be doing about those things. I make a plan, and I put it into action - not on my birthday, but by my birthday.
So going into tomorrow, all my plans and efforts should be already in play. I am putting more intentional effort into making my days productive, writing more frequently here, posting a second video on Wednesdays, and maintaining some kind of art timelapse for Fridays. The “Sketch Weakly” stream has been taken offline and renamed “Showing Up,” since I am doing less sketching these days but I continue to show up. I have started thinking more about putting my art on the t-shirts I sell through Amazon, and trying to build more t-shirt designs.
Another thing I’m beating myself up about is spending Too Much Time on my art, while spending effectively none on music and game development. I need to crank out a soundtrack for Groping Festival, at least, along with designs for the ten filthy perverts and at least one complete level with full UX design.
I’d like to do a full suite of outfits for a main character, and it is probably a good idea to put together a vertical slice for Stop Groping Me. Most of the art isn’t going to be reusable there; I need sprites, if I’m doing pixel art, or some chibi designs if I go Bopsey-model. That’s a choice I need to make, too.
The good news is that the art for Stop Groping Me will be mostly reusable for I’m Not Going to Let You Filthy Perverts Grope My Little Sister at the Hot Springs. The soundtrack work will, of course, be reusable throughout the series. It’s pointless to do more than a single loop for Groping Festival, but I want to have some migration and dynamism to Stop Groping Me, so I need to build an infrastructure for that.
I don’t know whether any of the actual development should go on video. I will probably record some dev sessions and just bank them for later posting, closer to release. There’s literally no point to posting gamedev videos for a game you can’t show people in something approximating its intended form.
I’d also like to get more done on the actual book, The Badass Manifesto. It’s a fairly big project, but most of the elements are already outlined; I just need to write it out and finalise it.
Something I don’t really talk much about is my sense that there is a moral imperative to teach others what you have learned. If you learn something meaningful or useful, you are obligated to tell at least one more person that same thing, and in many cases it’s necessary to keep telling people until someone actually listens to you.
I feel that more and more over time. That I know things, I have learned things, and I have… not told anyone. They are just my things, that stay with me, and nobody else has them.
And it’s been a keener feeling as the years go by. That these things need to get out there. That I have an obligation, a moral imperative, to put them out there.
Anyway I am going to go pretend I don’t know what day it is tomorrow. I’m going to distract myself. I don’t… like birthdays.
I like them less every year.