Writing For The Sake of Writing
It's getting too long a gap between entries again, though I find I have nothing to talk about. I think I write when something is bothering me and I've got little of that going on. At this point I have little interest in examing the past further. I feel like I've mined whatever there is to be gleamed from that and anything more is repetitive or possibly holding me back now. It's possible I need to find a new approach or guiding principles for this journal. There's only been 2 things on my mind as of late.
The first is trying to push passed the last of the baggage of the blow up with Mariah. It's been harder to get up in the mornings since then. It's been harder to focus on getting things done. I spent most of the last week trying to power through those things, not let it derail my positive efforts as of late. The hard part was for a few days trying to figure if this was the sort of things I was supposed to power through and let it pass or yield to it and find some way to deal with. It's not always easy to tell which of those is the healthiest way to go. I went with the former and so far that seems to be the right choice. As I processed the sense of guilt and loss of it, all I really feel remaining is a sense of anger. I expect that will fade in time.
Work on Rylera has been monopolizing my thinking more as the weeks have gone on. 5 weeks straight I've met my quota for writing. I haven't cranked out work this quickly since I first started work as a designer close to 10 years ago now. The sense of pride I feel hasn't lasted as long as I thought it would, but it still feels good each week to type up an email intro as I send out my work for review each week. That's probably a more realistic feeling for the long-term. For the first time in several years, I feel a sense of hope I can actually finish this game and see it come to life. It still has years of work to go, but I can measure the progress being made, which makes the final product feel real, something I can see, and the faith that it can be done.
The amount of time it's taking to get the writing done each week, that I'm not so keen on. Difficulty focusing or just not knowing what to write, I'm putting in 25-30 hours a week to crank out 14 pages about. Maybe that's an ok average to hit, but it feels very slow and inefficient. Then again, I'm also comparing this to the way I could write in college where I would take 1-3 weeks to mull over a paper and then crank out some 10-15 page tirade in 3-4 hours. I can't write like that here.
I've broken away a lot from the first 2 weeks of extensive reading I was doing, mostly for long walks as a primer to getting back to the gym after being sedentary for so long. But some mornings I'm putting into writing instead to make up for progress not made in the afternoons. And I'm not making effective use of my evenings, not in the sense I want to be productive than, but that I'm not finding sufficiently relaxing activities to rest for the next day. The day start to blur together and that isn't good. Not enough differentiation in experience. I think that's the big problem currently. I have room in my life for a little something extra that isn't so routine or draining and I don't have an answer for that. It's odd, but I'm also feeling like there's not enough time in the day, but I know it's more that I'm not making good use of the time I have.
I've been dreaming more about the future, trying to imagine what it could look like. The dreams have changed lately, being scaled back. It hasn't hit a solid shape yet, I'm still trying to make sense of how to get the things I want, how to make the pieces fit together and move.
Paradoxically, I feel a dark cloud lingering just ahead that my actions have already set in motion. Which will not end well for the cloud.
The first is trying to push passed the last of the baggage of the blow up with Mariah. It's been harder to get up in the mornings since then. It's been harder to focus on getting things done. I spent most of the last week trying to power through those things, not let it derail my positive efforts as of late. The hard part was for a few days trying to figure if this was the sort of things I was supposed to power through and let it pass or yield to it and find some way to deal with. It's not always easy to tell which of those is the healthiest way to go. I went with the former and so far that seems to be the right choice. As I processed the sense of guilt and loss of it, all I really feel remaining is a sense of anger. I expect that will fade in time.
Work on Rylera has been monopolizing my thinking more as the weeks have gone on. 5 weeks straight I've met my quota for writing. I haven't cranked out work this quickly since I first started work as a designer close to 10 years ago now. The sense of pride I feel hasn't lasted as long as I thought it would, but it still feels good each week to type up an email intro as I send out my work for review each week. That's probably a more realistic feeling for the long-term. For the first time in several years, I feel a sense of hope I can actually finish this game and see it come to life. It still has years of work to go, but I can measure the progress being made, which makes the final product feel real, something I can see, and the faith that it can be done.
The amount of time it's taking to get the writing done each week, that I'm not so keen on. Difficulty focusing or just not knowing what to write, I'm putting in 25-30 hours a week to crank out 14 pages about. Maybe that's an ok average to hit, but it feels very slow and inefficient. Then again, I'm also comparing this to the way I could write in college where I would take 1-3 weeks to mull over a paper and then crank out some 10-15 page tirade in 3-4 hours. I can't write like that here.
I've broken away a lot from the first 2 weeks of extensive reading I was doing, mostly for long walks as a primer to getting back to the gym after being sedentary for so long. But some mornings I'm putting into writing instead to make up for progress not made in the afternoons. And I'm not making effective use of my evenings, not in the sense I want to be productive than, but that I'm not finding sufficiently relaxing activities to rest for the next day. The day start to blur together and that isn't good. Not enough differentiation in experience. I think that's the big problem currently. I have room in my life for a little something extra that isn't so routine or draining and I don't have an answer for that. It's odd, but I'm also feeling like there's not enough time in the day, but I know it's more that I'm not making good use of the time I have.
I've been dreaming more about the future, trying to imagine what it could look like. The dreams have changed lately, being scaled back. It hasn't hit a solid shape yet, I'm still trying to make sense of how to get the things I want, how to make the pieces fit together and move.
Paradoxically, I feel a dark cloud lingering just ahead that my actions have already set in motion. Which will not end well for the cloud.