Getting Back in Action

These past 6 months have gone by fast. It doesn't seem like too long ago I was changing my Unity3D and Blender diapers, but alas, 6 months is a long time. The time since my last entry has been spent on a variety of things - almost none of them productive in a creativity sense, but not all of them trivialities. There's such a thing as having a life even if what one man deems "life" isn't what another deems it to be, and while my definition of "life" isn't always quite what I live, it is, indeed, my life.

I'm like Yogi Bear: hibernating in a cave until spring returns, but instead of getting down to business stealing pic-a-nic baskets with my sidekick Boo-Boo, I'm twiddling my thumbs while trying to decide which is the best basket to take. Before you know it, winter has returned and it's back to hibernating with nary a basket stolen. There just simply isn't enough time to do everything I want to do, and while I'm busy trying to figure out what that even is, the clock keeps ticking. Such is the life of an overly indecisive person.

Really, though, my summer was spent working and making money, with my terrible time management preventing me from doing much of anything else... oh, who am I kidding? I got sucked into an MMO and then Animal Crossing: New Leaf shortly after my last entry, so I had no time to be productive and I put off my Unity3D and Blender tinkering indefinitely. Sure, I'd mess around with them every now and then, but it was nothing serious and usually just to put off doing something else.

The outcome of one of my random Blender spurts.

I did eventually get sick of playing those games, but work still played a role in eating my time. The free time I had was spent relaxing and catching up with everything I'd missed - pretty much everything but something productive. When I felt like being productive and doing something creative, I got overwhelmed by the fact that I wanted to do something else. In other words, I'm a procrastinator by trade and a developer on the side.

Now winter is upon us once again and I'm no longer working, so free time is plentiful. Unfortunately, my indecisiveness has been preventing me from accomplishing much of anything as my desire to work on any given project changes with every passing hour. I can get myself motivated to work on something, but soon afterward the motivation fades away because I want to work on something else.

I've come to realize on more than one occasion that the reason for my ever changing project motivation is that my ideas are evolving far too quickly and I get overwhelmed. I plan too far ahead and don't focus enough on the present, so I ultimately begin to question whether the project is the "right" one for me at the moment or if I should make something else. This kind of thinking is discouraging, but it's difficult to get out of the mindset when you're piling everything on your plate in one sitting.

The solution? Scrape the excess junk you just filled your plate with off and eat what you originally had planned. This isn't to say you should eat your ideas, but rather that you should focus primarily on your original plan more than the afterthoughts. It's less overwhelming when you stick to the basic foundations of your idea than it is when you attempt to pile everything else on top of it.

I came up with an idea for a game for a winter competition last week: it started out small and simple, but the more I thought about it, the more it grew into something I didn't want to work on due to its scale. I've decided to focus on the original plan and disregard any afterthoughts. If I get to the point where I can add more to it, then that will be the time I start thinking about doing so. I can't keep thinking too far ahead of myself - I'll never accomplish anything if I keep doing that.

Then there's my time management and procrastination. When I am feeling productive, more often than not I decide to do something completely unproductive - such as taking a nap or looking up random stuff on the internet. During this phase, I still feel productive and usually convince myself I am actually being productive because I'm thinking "productive thoughts," but these thoughts are often what end up causing me to become overwhelmed by the idea. It's something I must work on, indeed.

I believe that if I stick to my guns, focus on the basic requirements of my project, and keep my procrastination and future planning levels to a minimum, I will finally accomplish something. If I can get into "the groove" that is game making, I will have finally achieved my goal. It'll take discipline from here on out, no doubt, but it'll worth it in the end.