33, you’re on your way, every day’s a new day. - 100 Years
Well, here’s how my thirty-third year on Earth went. 2020 annual review here.
What went well this year?
Violet. Our little girl was born January 5th and she is the biggest success of the year. She is everything I could have hoped for. She’s a very happy baby, ahead of her milestones, and I feel like my wife and I have done our part. If the average parent performs at 50% their capacity, I’m comfortable saying we ended her first year at 90%. I think that’s a good level of dedication for us, and often enough, I felt the (good) grind of wanting to do something for myself but sacrificing for her instead.
Our reward is who she is now. The recipe to our secret sauce: stay humble and educate yourself, dedicate your time, limit (and scrutinize) screen time, feed your children quality food, and buy Montessori-inspired toys. You have an obligation to yourself, your child, and the world, to give your very best.
Personal fitness. It was probably asking a lot to “be in the best shape of my life” with a new baby and how busy I’d be with my own work. But this is the best shape I’ve been in in years. My shirts fit a little tighter. I found a solution for pectoral exercises. I even started glute workouts for fun. I’ve started what I call Protein Days, where I just load up on protein and work out every muscle group I can. That seems to be working well for me and relieves some pressure on days where I just want to write code.
Of course, it’s mostly strength training. I don’t like to run when caffeinated, and our land is too uneven to run on comfortably. Cardio is important and I’ll have to figure out something in the future. I walk daily with Violet (and sometimes Abel), but it is only enough to maintain stamina; not build it.
Web development. I took some agency work that helped me branch out. I don’t love working in PHP, but I’m happy to get paid to learn Laravel and hey, GAM3′s built in PHP, so it doesn’t hurt to get incrementally better at it. I especially enjoyed pentesting our software with BURP.
In my own work, there weren’t too many technological advancements. I got better with Svelte and learned a bit from code-reviewing World Seed’s frontend.
Game development. It was hard to feel like I kicked ass given all that I wanted to achieve this year, but I went through every update I’d released and felt better about how far I’ve come.
I’m nearly finished with adding the crafting system to GAM3. It is, from start to finish, both the most complex, and best developed feature I have made in my career. I’ve coded battle systems that were simpler than this! But I absolutely loved making crafting recipes; to get to be a game designer, take balance seriously, make fun items. It’s what I make the tech for.
It will be a long road to finish the game I want to make. I’m doing the work of two Vaels but I know it is what must be done if I want to stand out in the industry; and if I want to live off my work some day. I try to remember that Alexis Kennedy was 38 when he started Failbetter.
I also finalized tinydark’s mission statement.
Made some new friends. Two, and a handful of acquaintances as I make my tiny waves in the gaming industry.
What didn’t go so well?
Lost a friend. He broke up with me. It was hard on me at first but I agree that things had started to feel forced between us. Still, he was my oldest internet friend, dating back to our Furcadia days. He moved to upstate SC because of us and I hoped our children would get to play together, but it was not to be.
Mismanaged our finances. I’m a web developer of over 10 years; I make good money, and got into the habit of thinking I was invincible and money would always be there. So we needed a new SUV; I dropped a hearty down payment. Cleared 0.75 acres of our property. Abel’s overnight camp: done. I had only a vague notion that I was probably spending too much, but when it came time to buy some patio furniture, I realized I didn’t even have enough in the bank to cover our mortgage. I had to take a loan from my boss just to cover it. I didn’t feel great about myself, and looking back at it, I understand how it happened, but I simply cannot believe I let it happen.
When the agency I contract for mentioned they had a large, “greenfield” project, I didn’t care what it was for: I expressed strong interest immediately. I had no choice, and as I type this (bearing in mind first year of baby, especially buying quality, is damn expensive) we are safe, but not out of the woods yet.
Worked too hard. I might as well just copy-paste what I said last year, because nothing has changed and it won’t. See Goals.
Cognitive performance. I describe it as such: I maintain a large capacity to perform mental tasks. I can, for example, sit down and architect a complex feature. I can learn at the rate I need to. But my speech is atrocious, I need a coffee to feel alert, I’m the most forgetful I’ve ever been, and excluding sleep, I’ve managed to take care of myself. My working theory is I just have too much going on.
What did I learn?
How to manage our finances. We sat down like proper adults and made a budget. I hold off on purchases until the next month if we’re over budget. It’s wild. If you haven’t looked over your transactions in a while, you really should: we discovered we’d been paying for a Shudder account for over a year when we weren’t even using it.
You might want software to help. I recommend Budgetwise for its clean interface and low price. The software pays for itself once you’ve made a goal and stick to it.
How to raise a baby. It’s been such a great experience. There are things I wouldn’t repeat again (like alternating sleep schedules 😱), new things I’d like to try, and overall I’m feeling like we’ve sufficiently refined our processes for the next one.
Goals and Expectations: 2022
Have another kid. We’re trying again.
Release a game. Black Crown: Exhumed. The original game, written by Robert Sherman, went offline many years ago. Failbetter were kind enough to release a database dump to Rob, who then released it to the dead game’s public repository. I have his personal blessing to resurrect the game, so that’s what I’m going to do.
Start saving. We’re going to need to build another house. We found the perfect floor plan, but material costs are ludicrous and we are nowhere near ready for the 20% down payment.
Stay just as productive; for better or worse. I am permanently “switched on,” and workaholism is a fine affliction. I don’t want to stop doing things. I know that I need more recreation time, but then I remember how great it felt to finally be able to sit and make content for URPG. With a new baby, a release of a major game which could very well make headlines, a new house and the release of the fabled roleplaying game I’m making: I just can’t see myself slowing down. I’ll do what I can from time to time; I’d like to take late February off for the Guild Wars 2 expansion, get 4-6 hours of gaming in per day, and what did Eve have to say about it? “Yeah, good luck with that.“ She knows me well.
Stop cursing. Really have to dismantle the pagan ritual circle in the back yard. No, just kidding, I need to stop saying bad words because I have a toddler who’s more receptive than a CCP surveillance van.
Make an actual company. I honestly forgot about even doing this; I really need to register tinydark as a real entity. We stand to make money this year (hey, we made $80 in 2021… before server costs) so I should really do this Thing.
COVID will get better. I can only speak on the US here. My predictions have been right so far. I think omicron is a good trend toward the inevitable weak, contagious strain of coronavirus. I expect 2021′s holiday season (up to Jan 15th, 2022) to have been the biggest spike of the pandemic in the US. My family will still be sticking to outdoor activities in 2022.
And that’s a wrap. See you next year, probably with three kids.
Vael