Game Update
I’m not sure how many times I can say that we are working on levels before it starts to get really old but that’s what we are doing. Still I am chipping away at them. It’s a lot like taking inventory at a really large facility. The work is pre-determined for the most part and it just needs to get done.
I guess a lot of the jobs I had when I was younger led to this. One of my first real jobs was cutting nails to make crosses for a local pastor. He ran the business out of his basement. The work was mostly uninteresting and repetitive. The pieces were later soldered together. I used the money for my first major purchase which was a 20” TV at $230 so I could play video games in my room. Even then I had a passion for video games.
Personal Update
I turned 41 this past week and I think I might be in a bit of an existential crisis now. I asked my father if he had a mid-life crisis at my age and he told me that he didn’t because there wasn’t time to think about what he had accomplished. I’ve set myself up so well that much of my life is automated and I make good money now so I have more time to think about what I should be doing to push myself.
More and more it feels like my passion for making games has been pushed off to the way side. I guess it’s good that I didn’t become a commercial game developer after all. Although back in 2019 that was all that I wanted in the world, well that and something else.
I find myself looking around and I often say that I am very blessed. That’s very true, but if I really got down to what I wanted my life to look like now it wouldn’t be exactly as it is. That feels pretty bad as I know that I have a real abundance that other people at my age don’t have. It’s a real circular logic moment of “I feel bad but I shouldn’t feel bad which also makes me feel bad.”
So how is my midlife crisis going, assuming that I am having one? Well I’ve narrowed down my focus to 3 items which are working with homeless/disadvantaged people, working out to build the body I want, and making more money to build up stock passive income and exit the rat race.
The one that’s the most uncomfortable is working with homeless. I feel pretty helpless in this area. This would really push me. I submitted a form to a local shelter to help out, but that was last Friday. I’m not sure when I will hear back. I like to think there may be something bigger than working for a local shelter that I’m uniquely suited for, but I need to understand the problem better first. I keep thinking that with my skill set maybe I can build an app that will leverage gamification to shape behavior of the homeless. I’m not sure how many of them even have phones, but something tells me the answer is more than you would think.
My fitness journey has hit a fast brick wall as I was sore for 4 days after my first real lifting session. I have been losing weight however and so there might be light at the end of the tunnel. The book Atomic Habits talks a lot about having habits that will eventually produce a lot of positive outcome all at once. I didn’t do as many treadmill sessions as I wanted to last year but I still had around 200 which is pretty good. I think I finally started to see the windfall of that this past week as for the first time in maybe 5 or 6 years my weight dipped below 210lbs. Being sub 200 would be great but I’m not sure if that will be possible at my 6’2 height.
Making more money is in a word, boring to me. I need to find a better way to energize myself to do it. It’s another situation where I just need to save properly and put the money away to make things happen. I picked up a job for Momo Con and I might also go to GenCON this year for work. It’s been so long since I have been there I can’t wait for the opportunity. Hopefully a lot of the mask restrictions will come down this year. I’d like to get my D&D premium idea running as well, but it hasn’t really taken off since when I first started working on it.
I had a great couple of dates this past week. This girl is much more of a slow burn of passion. She’s probably just what I need to be successful right now. She was so thoughtful with our time spent and her gifts for my birthday. I’m thankful to be in a place to have someone so special in my life. I promised myself not to cave in on my convictions and stay on my path this time. I feel like that’s going to be the best thing to do in order for this relationship to have a chance of becoming something long lasting.