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The usual darkness, brightened by a look at progress

4 years ago - Edited 4 years ago1,460 words

I'm depressed and unmotivated. Again!! However, it's interesting seeing how much actually has changed for the better since another miserable post 3 months ago...

It's been a while since I wrote a purely personal post, it feels like! A large part of that is that a lot of what I feel the need to write about is the same stuff I've already written about a bunch of times before: I'm depressed, I'm worried about whether I can keep doing the games thing because of money woes... But I suppose I keep writing about those things because the thoughts will continue to build up until the situation changes, and a change to the situation isn't something that can happen quickly.

I was just looking at some old blog posts though, to see when I last talked about this stuff, and the last post seems to be ∞ this one ∞, from 3 months ago (late May). Much of what I'm feeling now is the same as what I talked about in that, but it's interesting how much has changed, too. I mean, I'm still in essentially the same position, but there are a few details I mentioned in that post where there's been some progress:

I hadn't put the MARDEK port on Steam when I wrote that post (suprising; it feels like forever ago), and was concerned that only 344 people had added it to their wishlists. I said:



Currently, MARDEK has sold a total of 1334 times, for a gross of $13,889, which is ~$9722 after Steam's 30% cut, which is equivalent to £7440 in my Great British The Queen's Royal Pounds.

Additionally, the extras have sold 758 times, for $3063 gross, or $2144 adjusted, £1641 in my money.

So I've currently got a bit over £9000 for porting this old free Flash game to one platform with no promotion. It still falls short of actual job salaries, but it's not nothing, and I am grateful.

Also, while most of those sales are from release week, 167 were during the last month, for $1410 gross. That's about £750, after the adjustments. It'd be amazing if that kept up, though I know it won't. Perhaps if I have more games available, though...

Another thing I said in that post 3 months ago was:



My Patreon is now active, and I have 51 patrons helping me with $279 (or £214) a month. I've actually been posting on there quite a bit, and I enjoy doing so, though I'm unsure how many of the patrons actually even read the posts since only around 10 people explicitly Like them each time.

I'm glad I keep this blog, because I can look back on things like this when I feel I'm in a rut, and it does help me see the big picture, the growth. So that's good!

It's not all progress though. I also said this:



I've still yet to brave posting on Reddit. I have, however, started following a handful of indie devs on Twitter! At first I felt surprisingly calm about it, even excited; I was breaking down barriers, doing things I'd avoided for ages out of fear of negative emotions, and it felt good, I felt 'free'! Or something. Procrastination is born of the same desire to avoid negative emotional states (like struggle or drudgery), so maybe you can relate to this mental-illness-weirdness if you've ever put off an assignment or job forever and felt relief when you finally pushed yourself to actually do it.

However, it seems the emotional effects of it were just delayed by a few days. The initial relief to be facing my fears and escaping my bubble have been largely replaced by the predicted discouragement after seeing how many other indie devs there are out there, how mediocre my attempt is compared to theirs, and how some people do have impressive projects and post a lot but still see no financial gains from it. I'm actually relatively lucky to have as many Patreon patrons as I do, it seems.

That's due to MARDEK's influence, obviously, but that's a source of some pain too. It feels like a lot of the few comments I get these days make reference to MARDEK in some way, as if that's the only thing I am, have done, ever can do. I'd love it if people were interested in Atonal Dreams... but I know there's a universe of difference between a game you spent fond hours of your childhood immersed in, and one you're only getting glimpses of the early development of - and might not even fully understand what it is - through occasional posts. The MARDEK port also came more recently than it feels like, so there's that, too.

Maybe it's also a big reason the view counters are worryingly dropping on these blog posts; people got their fix, and now don't have the desire to check on how my new project is coming along.



I know that I need to finish something to break out of the current situation, though progress has been lagging this week for a few reasons. The emotional expenditure of facing fears definitely cost a lot, plus there's been some somewhat heavy personal stuff I'd normally blurt everything out about, but... eh. Maybe I'm becoming more paranoid of saying something wrong these days. I don't know. I end up keeping a lot to myself.

It's also frustrating that you can't accurately schedule creativity. One of my biggest tasks this week was 'design some monsters'... but that's not an easy task! I've been fumbling with ideas for most of the week, but they're not coming to me as easily as they did ∞ when I designed some monsters for Divine Dreams' Dreamcave a few months ago ∞. I'll talk more about that in the dev post on the weekend.

I've got the progress bar thing, but I'm quite behind with it because of creative blocks. I did expect this, and left a lot of catchup space, but even so I feel like I'll need to revise the list of tasks associated with it at the weekend so they're more numerous and specific, rather than huge, vague milestones like "design and make all the monsters!" or "finish the overworld".

It's so frustrating feeling depressed, though! Knowing what I need to do to get out of the situation, wanting to work on things, but just feeling like I'm wearing a suit of lead armour, like everything's heavy and joyless and what's the point anyway the only possible outcome is failure. Bleh.

Like I always say, though, it's like the weather. The external weather's been contributing to it, actually! It's been either thunderstorming or too hot or both! But that'll pass, and the inner weather will pass. I also continue to record my moods throughout every day, and it's been useful to look back on how I've felt on other days when the darkness feels all-encompassing.

For example, here's today:



And here's Thursday two weeks ago:



It goes up and down. Even earlier today, there was a moment where I was enjoying what I was doing, though it's hard to remember or even imagine it now, just a few hours later. Strange how that works.

These are from a mood-recording app I made for myself a while back, and which I really get a lot out of adding to every day. If you struggle with mood or motivation issues, I'd recommend looking for mood tracking apps to use for this purpose!

I feel like writing this out has helped a bit, too. Also I'm currently too hot! Bleh!!