I find myself unable to do any form of programming for myself recently. I still do my work for my college classes and I get it done just fine, but I've been struggling with working on my own personal projects as of late. The previous blog post talking about how "projects beget projects beget projects" ended up being some foreshadowing into how I keep making new projects instead of returning to old ones that are in dire need of repairs.
To put this into perspective, here's all the currently active-ish projects I have.
And this is only scratching the surface of all the projects I have in the works in one form or another. There are easily a dozen open projects that I have forgotten to post about here and will likely not remember until later whenever I get my PC set up again.
I'm going to be away from home for over 2 weeks. I will have my PC, but I'm going to treat it as a retreat for a while. A way to isolate myself for some time to get some personal projects done, away from the distractions at my parents' house. Some time to be alone and able to focus on my silly little projects. A place where sunlight better dictates my bedtime, allowing for me to get up at a reasonable hour, and to sleep before 2 AM.
The ability to be in solace, all on my lonesome, able to think out loud freely without annoying others, is one that I always enjoy having from time to time. I can only attribute this love for vacations such as this to a youtuber I watched a LOT of during Covid Lockdown, CGP Grey.
Grey doesn't talk much about it in his videos but on his podcast Cortex, he talks a lot about what he calls "Grey-cations". Grey-cations are an extended, often month-long, vacation where Grey gets himself a hotel room and lives there until he gets whatever important project he wants to get done completed. It's his form of forcing himself to get work done, and it's a concept I love the idea of and have tried to do in the past.
I had an opportunity earlier this year to give myself a "Grey-cation" since I had to house-sit for a relative, which went really well! In fact, that little house-sitting session was where TooManyCrates-Godot began! I took that 1.5 weeks as an opportunity to start on a big project and take the time to expand my skills. I felt like a wizard in a tower, honing his skills to learn sorcery and to become more powerful than ever before. Taking a project where I barely knew how to make a character move, to making a nice feeling player-controller and a weapon system (which I had never made before).
The problem was though, I only had my laptop at the time. The laptop I use for college can run Godot, but struggles with 3D Godot projects. In fact over time as the laptop began to overheat, some of the scrollbars in the UI would turn to textual madness, text would become random graphics that were loaded into memory, etc. That laptop could not continue to carry TooManyCrates-Godot. I had to stop development on that laptop out of fear of damaging the laptop permanently.
But now I have my desktop PC. Sporting a Ryzen 7, RTX 2070 Super, and 16GB of RAM. I can easily develop TooManyCrates-Godot further. Unrestricted by overheating components and slow compilation times. Free to create with Blender, Pixel Composer, and Aseprite! Mainly Blender. Blender cannot run on that laptop and even the Eevee render engine causes it to crash and burn within minutes. I'll finally be able to make the models needed for the game, the textures for the models, and the nice shaders that I want some of the objects in the game to have!
It's been a hectic couple weeks, and while it can be stressful, it is important for you to take care of yourself.
Have you done everything on the list today? Given your body the care it needs?
Do you know what your body needs? If not, here's a good list to follow.
Your mind and your body rely on each other to take care of one another. The mind controls the body, and if the mind isn't in a state to take care of the body, then your body will suffer.
CGP Grey made a fantastic video during Covid Lockdown where he talks about the relationship between the brain and the mind (using isolation as a way to highlight the importance of the two working together). The video does a great job showing how when the body fails, the mind follows, and vice versa.
You can find the video here ---> CGP Grey - Spaceship You
If you need someone to talk to, please reach out to the 988 Hotline. They have services available for LGBTQ+ and deaf people and are always available to talk with you. The website has many resources to help you find ways to get help for your situation.
Take care of yourself, and you will see the benefits quite quickly. Reach out to friends and family. Call 988 if you need to talk to someone right now. We will see each other again soon.
I believe in you. You're stronger than you think. Stay strong.