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Weekly Update 2020-5 (Personal)

5 years ago - Edited 5 years ago2,183 words

Here's some scattered thoughts about finding a daily routine that maximises productivity in the long term, a CBT-based thing I can do to maybe tackle my annoying avoidance issues, being uncertain about when and where to release my old music that I've recently been converting, and a little bit about another game that I've been playing!

For the first few weeks of the year, I felt I was getting into a really effective routine. I felt more awake, more productive, and more focused on what I needed to do. Things have slipped a bit this past week, and I've been feeling more tired; I've got less done and replied to fewer comments, which is annoying.

I've written a few times before about how, since I'm my own boss and it's up to me to timetable my tasks, finding a perfect daily routine has been a bit of a holy grail for me. Deciding when to do things, and for how long, really does seem to be the key to getting the best out of every day and maintaining psychological wellbeing.

You might have seen this image somewhere; I first saw it on Reddit a week or two ago. It's the daily routines of famous (though I've never heard of a lot of them) creative people:



I'm sceptical about how accurate this could possibly be, since I can't imagine they all robotically stuck to some rigid routine for their entire creative lives, or that they recorded it in excessive detail, but I suppose the point of the image is to show the variety, or something? Especially of sleeping and waking times. It's also interesting seeing how much time each of them devoted to creative work each day, though since this was made by someone who likely idealises them, I imagine it's exaggerated.

I just made one for the daily routine I've been trying to maintain recently, which looks something like this:



Or at least that's the plan. I wake up at 6, have breakfast, then get started on development work at 7. I aim to do four hours of focused work during this period, which I consider the main part of my work day. Four hours isn't a lot, but doing four focused hours is probably more than a lot of people manage in Normal Job settings, even if they're technically present in their work environment for a lot longer (my step-dad, who spent decades managing people, said it's rare to get more than about three hours of work out of a good employee on any given day).

So far, I've been managing that quite well, and I actually look forward to this period! However, while planning plot stuff, I only worked during these four hours, and spent the rest of the day doing other not-exactly-work-but-related stuff like drawing characters. These past couple of weeks, I've been trying to cram in a second work period in the afternoon, but I think this is what's leading to the burnout. If I work for less time each day, then maybe I'll get more done than if I were working twice as much but with only a third of the focus. Or something. I don't know, I'll have to keep experimenting.

A few months ago, I made a tool for myself where I could record my daily tasks. I wrote a barely-viewed blog post about it, and I've used it every day since then. It helps a lot! But it could be better, so I'm going to improve that this weekend. Maybe it'll improve productivity if I do.

While I'm doing that, I also thought of another thing I can make for myself. I've yet to seek therapy for my CRIPPLING MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES, since I've not really had the time for it. When I had therapy before, I learned how CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) works for anxiety - I also learned about this while getting my psychology degree recently - but my goals and hopes then weren't very clear so it wasn't very useful to me. I wanted to broaden my social connections, and I craved intimacy in particular, but the biggest problem was that there wasn't exactly a "Friend Centre" I could just go to to find these things, if only I had the courage!!! So doing the CBT stuff felt like "learning to swim while living in the desert", as I thought at the time. The main reason I went to university was because I had no idea where else I could even go to meet other young people in an organic way (and the results of that were... certainly something).

Now, though, I have specific goals, and the anxiety is acting as a clear barrier. I need to increase my fanbase so then I can actually earn a living from my games, so I need to involve myself in communities, engage with people, put myself out there, and I don't because I'm scared of messing up.

It's annoying though, because the amount of attention I get now is just right for me. I'd much rather have a small following who comment in depth, rather than a huge horde of fickle people who just parrot the currently trending sentence fragment memes or whatever, I don't know. Replying to the amount of comments I get currently is about as much as I can comfortably manage (I often don't even have the time/energy to get to as many as I'd like, though I do read them all).

But I'm aware that I need to get some bigger numbers if I want to have any hope of earning any money from this. Ugh.

From what I remember of a CBT thing I did for anxiety a few years ago, it was about recording things you were avoiding, along with how you expected you might feel about them, then how you actually felt about them afterwards, to see whether your expectations and the reality lined up. The aim was to train your mind to see that things aren't going to be as bad as the anxiety makes you expect.

So I might try building something like that for myself. A tool where I can enter anything I'm avoiding, along with an expectation of how I might feel if I do it. Then, I'll force myself to do it, and record how I actually feel, both directly afterwards, after a day, and after maybe three days and then a week, something like that.

I imagine there are already many tools and apps and things for this, but making one myself won't take long, and I'll be more likely to stick with it if I'm in full control of how it works. I've stuck with the task management/recording tool for many months because it's custom-made.

It sort of annoys me though how CBT is built around the assumption that things won't go wrong. That seems so naive to me. "I'm really scared that if I ask that girl out, she'll reject me!", "Okay, I did it, and now I'm in prison because she considered my approach sexual assault. Whoops!"

Still, I think I'll give it a try. I haven't made any efforts to increase my influence all year. With every new post here, new faces are appearing - and it's always great to hear from new people! - but the view counters aren't exactly increasing. If anything, they're going down. My posts on Twitter aren't getting more and more attention either; most of my tweets end up with something like 10-30 likes. There are a lot of things I should be doing differently, so maybe this'll help me pursue them.

(I've been trying to tweet once a day with a new image on ∞ my Twitter account ∞, if you aren't already aware of that. Some days I don't have anything to post though. I don't involve myself in the community or follow anyone else though, which is one of the things I'll need to try to change.)



I've been thinking for a while about uploading all my music compositions somewhere, but I'm not sure where. A couple of weeks ago, I converted the music for the original Raider game into an mp3 soundtrack format (I thought I'd start with an unpopular one so then I could experiment with things), but now I'm not sure what to do with it.

I've got a Bandcamp page, but it's called Fig Hunter, and I don't use that name anymore. It's technically possible for me to rename it Alora Fane, but then it seems weird having old Fig Hunter games' music on there if it's called that, plus people who are already familiar with that link (I'm sure there are sooo many!!) would maybe think it's gone. I could have both Alora Fane and Fig Hunter Bandcamp pages, but that seems redundant and stupid.

I've also got a lot of non-game music that I'd like to make available somewhere, but I'm not sure where. I started a Soundcloud account ages ago for that, but I've barely used it - I haven't even looked at it in a billion years - because that just makes music freely available, plus last time I checked there was a very severe limit on what you could upload in total. Bandcamp at least allows for sales, but I can't imagine many - any? - people would want to pay their hard-earned cash for my weird non-game music.

Maybe uploading it there would give a greater chance of finding new people, including other music creators, but I imagine the kind of music pretty much everyone else makes is very different, so I don't know.

Are there any better places to release than Bandcamp? I think I've talked about this before too, and I did a bit of research, but it's not clear. I mean, it's not as if I'll ever be earning a living from music, which is fine, but it'd be nice to maximise the revenue trickle as much as I can.

Though I hate talking like that because I'd much rather prioritise ~sharing my creativity~ by giving things to people to add something to their lives, rather than taking things so then I can continue to live mine. I do need money if I want to continue doing creative stuff though, so until the day money's abolished, it's something I have to concern myself with...

I've also got old games to re-release, but I'm still not sure about what to do with those. I'm thinking it might be better to wait until after I release Divine Dreams, so then more people might be attracted to me and there might be a greater chance of earning something from them. Ehhh...



Finally, I actually started playing a new game this week! Well, sort of new. It's Yooka-Laylee, which I started after Mania mentioned the sequel (which I'd never even heard about) in a comment. I started with this because I already owned it and played it a couple of years ago, but never finished it because of movement-related bugs that essentially made it impossible. I'd been left with a not-exactly-positive opinion about it, which I assumed was because I wasn't quite the target demographic (it seemed to be designed to appeal to the nostalgia of people who'd played Banjo-Kazooie, which I never did, so I felt like I was 'somewhere I shouldn't be'), but I suspect those feelings were largely a result of other terrible stuff in my life at the time (I think this was around the time I was actively suicidal; fun times), plus the bugs. I've actually been quite enjoying it the more I've got into it, though, so that's something. I'll write a post specifically about it when I'm done, which should be quite soon.

Here's a weird thing though: A couple of days after starting that, I was looking in a drawer that I rarely have reason to open, and inside I saw - for the first time - a N64 cartridge for the game Banjo-Kazooie. I never played this during my N64 days (unfortunately), plus I lost my own N64 years ago when moving countries, so why it's in this drawer eludes me. I don't know who else it might have belonged to! It's one of those little things that makes the universe feel less random or meaningless than it seems, and I like indulging that little bit of wonder rather than being sceptically dismissive because it's nice to think there's a bit of magic in the world (as long as it doesn't lead to dangerous behaviours or beliefs!).



Oh, and I haven't had any more lucid dreams, so that's disappointing! I read all the comments people left on that post, but there are a bunch I didn't reply to because I didn't have the time/energy, which is a shame because I found what people shared really interesting! I'm hoping to rekindle my passion for it and have more myself rather than just giving up again...