Yup. Still working. Slightly buzzed at the moment from sitting on the back porch, sipping a bit of Captain Morgan and Coke. So, no, not really working right now. But I have been. Busy. Doing stuff.

 

My little game project is moving along, though a bit slower because of the summer heat (and pleasant summer days) and encroaching responsibilities.

 

 

I’m writing again. I have a novel out in the mail to a handful of publishers (2 rejections so far; they came back really fast; modern technology has really stepped up the speed of rejection). I have another novel that I’m planning to self-publish as an ebook. I contracted out the cover art and I’m looking forward to seeing how that comes out. And how the experiment in “indie fiction” goes.

 

That’s what I’ve been up to. Some of it, anyway.

 

-David

 

 

Last week, most all work was suspended in the run up to my folks’s 50th wedding anniversary. Which turned into something of a family reunion with 2 folks, 1 folks sibling plus spouse, 7 children plus 4 spouses, 14 grandchildren plus 1 spouse and 1 boyfriend, and 4 great-grandchildren (not all listed are in the picture below, but most are; I’m in there; so is Dug).

 

 

So, yeah. Not a lot of work got done.

 

Despite that, though, my tools are good to go. And the artwork is beginning to arrive. I even (with my wife’s help) came up with a new “company” name to release the game under.

 

Progress, ho!

 

-David

 

 

…and have the patience for things like this:

 

 

My 16-year-old son has long been a gamer. The past year or so, he has taken his hobby in a different direction.

 

It all starts with a 3D mesh. Which he turns into a UV map (of sorts) and prints out on #110 card stock. Then he demonstrates some mad scalpel skillz to cut out the mesh in such a way that it can be folded and turned into a physical 3D object. After that, it’s fiberglass and resin for structural support, Bondo for smoothing and additional shaping, various and sundry accoutrements from The Home Depot and the local pet store, and finally a coat of paint.

 

Yes. I’m once again showing off what my boy can do. Be impressed.

 

-David

 

 

13 years ago, on 15 March 1999–which was also a Monday–I booted up my Dell desktop for the first time as a fully self-employed indie.

 

I still have that Dell desktop. I had purchased it the year before (July 1998), so it was still pretty spiffy at the time, with it’s 400MHz Pentium II processor and…I think?…512MB RAM running Windows 98 SE. It was the first computer I ever bought without using credit.

 

I developed The Journal 2 (1998) and 3 (2001), and did most of my work on Artifact (1 & 2) on that computer.

 

I wrote The Indie Game Development Survival Guide on that desktop.

 

I bought a shiny new graphics card for that computer so I could launch the (twice doomed) Paintball Net/Torque project.

 

In June 2003 I (finally) replaced the desktop with my first laptop (bought with advance money from IGDSG). The laptop cost $1000 less than the desktop had, 5 years before.

 

That desktop was still used somewhat regularly (by the kids) until a year or so ago, when even Web games were overpowering it. The no-longer-so-new graphics card was probably the only reason it lasted as long as it did.

 

I should just put that computer out of its misery. I’ll probably Craigslist it.

 

-David

 

 

Over the weekend I read The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss. There are sections of this book (especially the parts relating to personal assistants) that remind me a lot of The Power of Focus by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Les Hewitt. However, while the latter book was all about focusing on your strengths so you can put in more work, the former is about focusing on your strengths to work less and enjoy life more. Sorta.

 

I think the biggest takeaway from The 4-Hour Workweek is this point: You don’t need a million dollars in the bank to live well. You just need to control your time and make enough to live the life you want now–instead of deferring your life indefinitely into the future.

 

I’m so out of the self-help loop these days that I missed this book when it first came out in 2007. I bumped into it indirectly a couple weeks ago, through an article in the NY Times and a blog reference. The premise intrigued me, so I requested it from the library.

 

I’m not the primary demographic for this book. In fact, once I started reading it, I realized I had achieved a lot of what the author was advocating:

 

What did strike me, though, is how much I had begun to re-enter my old full-time-employee mindset. I blame myself and how I approached work on The Journal 5. I worked on that project exclusively for a solid year. Except for taking a week to shoot GDC last March, I focused on The Journal 5 day in and day out. I even let the project encroach on my weekends. Worse, even after releasing The Journal 5 last August, I’ve never really let it go. I tried to participate in Nanowrio back in November, but I just couldn’t shake my must-work-on-TJ5 habit.

 

It was that renewed FTE mindset (“time to make the donuts”) that had made the book appeal to me when I heard about it. I wanted to escape.

 

Which is almost funny. I’m the only one walling me in. Which means it’s not funny at all. It’s eff-ing sad.

 

Now I’m reading a very different book, My Life in France by Julia Child. One aspect of this book that jumps out at me is the very different approaches to lifestyle and living between the US and France. Granted, this book is referring to a period of time over 50 years ago, but I think some of the differences remain firmly in place. I especially loved this paragraph:

 

 

The 4-Hour Workweek advocates a similar, less-stressed approach to work, though less eloquently.

 

So now I’m forcing myself to take a few deep breaths and remember how much I enjoyed myself before I went head-down-death-march on The Journal 5. I want to get to that point again. Plus, I want to try to remember this and do better on my next projects, whatever they may be, and not imprison myself in a gray cubicle of my own making.

 

This might totally reconfigure my goals for 2010. I can live with that.

 

-David

 

[1] I love being able to say that.

 

 

2009 was my second full year of weight training. A lot of what I posted in last year’s post-mortem on weight training still applies, so I’ll focus on what went right or wrong just in 2009.

 

 

 

Besides a few weeks I took off for GDC 2009 and needed breaks throughout the year, I continued my daily workouts. The schedule evolved over the course of the year, which I’ll talk about in more detail shortly, but I kept it up.

 

Overall, the good results that started in 2008 continued into 2009. I still have a bit of paunch, but my chest looks good, my shoulders are improving, my arms are bigger, my back feels better than it ever has, and my legs are becoming even less chicken-like.

 

NOTE: When weight training, it’s important to take a week off every 8-12 weeks. This allows the body to fully recover, which is good for continued progress. It also helps preserve the sanity of the weight trainer.

 

 

After reading and researching, I realized that my workout could stand some streamlining. The workout plan I was following at the beginning of the year was comprehensive, but there were some muscles that were being exercised too hard/often. Plus there were some exercises that just didn’t seem to be effective for me (everyone is different).

 

In the late summer, one of my younger brothers loaned me his power rack to use while he was at school. I took that as an opportunity to reconsider my total workout. For example, I shifted some of the exercises (like bench presses and shoulder presses) from dumbbell to barbell to take advantage of the power rack. I also took advantage of the rack in a more traditional way, by going much deeper in my squats.

 

I’m planning to continue to evolve the workout in 2010, probably swapping out certain exercises over the summer.

 

 

I did no cardio at all in 2008. In mid-2009, I decided I wanted some cardio, since that would have a more direct impact on the accumulated (and only slowly dissipating) mid-section.

 

To that end, I bought a used bicycle from a friend of mine and got it all spiffied up at a local bike shop. But my weight training was taking 5 days a week–and I prefer to do as little as possible on my weekends. To make room for some weekday neighborhood biking, I reshuffled and streamlined the weight training so that it took only 4 days a week.

 

 

For $75 I bought a very nice set of used Olympic free weights and barbell. I then sold the barbell to a friend for $35 (he had just found his own set of cheap, used Olympic free weights sans barbell).

 

I don’t expect to need to buy free weights again for a long, long time.

 

 

 

I’m still in the process of getting the bike riding into the schedule. But I have a spiffy-nice bike and a workable helmet (our neighborhood streets can be kinda scary for the unarmored cyclist), and the weather won’t be tundra-like forever.

 

 

First the power rack, and then a bunch of new free weights (which required a new rack to put them on) … my weight training equipment now takes up an 8′ x 8′ space in our family room.

 

On the upside, I don’t think it will get any bigger.

 

 

In fact, after 2 years of weight training, I think I only qualify as a “novice”. And while I look fit, I don’t look like I lift weights on a regular basis (which my wife assures me isn’t a bad thing).

 

Weight training is another of those activities that build slowly–so it’s a perfect fit for me, since I seem unable to pick up hobbies or activities that I can become good at quickly.

 

 

Like last year, my goals for 2010 are:

 

And maybe getting 16 inch biceps.

 

-David

 

 

Granted, I expected it to evaporate a *little*, since I was participating in NaNoWriMo again, and because we were hosting Thanksgiving this year (complete with in-laws staying for a week or so), and because I was working on The Journal 5.1. But it evaporated a *lot*.

 

NaNo didn’t go so well (though I did have some success), but the other parts went OK (I’m suspecting that I got as much work in on TJ5.1 as I did because I was avoiding NaNo, but that’s a different topic).

 

Still … *evaporated*. November started, then ended, in quick succession.

 

Now it’s December (already), and I have to wrap up 2009 and plan for 2010.

 

Planning for 2009 was pretty simple: Finish The Journal 5. In fact, I think that single-minded focus through most of the year is a big part of why November evaporated. I got stuck “betwixt and between” a completed (major) goal and the end of the year, unsure what I was supposed to *now*. The Journal 5.1 came out of that existential spinning-of-the-wheels since it was easy to keep doing what I had been doing. Certainly easier than thinking up and writing a batch of new stories (I got 9 done, plus I [finally] wrote the [long overdue] ending of a novel). So wrapping up 2009 should be pretty simple, as well.

 

Planning for 2010 will require a bit more thought. Can’t have it evaporating too.

 

-David

 

Friends and family, growing fatigued of my single-minded focus on The Journal 5 over the past months, looked forward to the actual release of the software last week.

 

“Then you can relax again,” they said. “Maybe take some pictures or write something again.”

 

I gave up trying to explain that releasing software doesn’t let you relax. Far from it.

 

No, a new release takes all the pressure and anxiety of the development process and condenses it into one really long, hard week. At least.

 

In addition to the fairly standard, stress-inducing, ulcer-causing questions of “Did I do enough testing?”, “Did I miss a bug that’s going to eat people’s Windows?”, and “Are the existing users going to hate it?” (not to mention “Will new users hate it–and stop purchasing?”; that’s a rough one), there’s a near total upheaval in customer support processes.

 

Customers, both old and new, are asking new and different questions–questions I don’t have copy-and-paste templates prepared for. Existing customers want to know where you moved their favorite feature to–and why you chose those awful, irritating new icons.

 

And they’re all asking these questions at the same time.

 

So…yeah…relax.

 

I’ll put it on my to-list. Is next week OK? I’ll pencil it in…

 

-David

A friend has taken to jokingly calling me “rich” and “well off”. After all…I don’t have a job in the normal sense (or really, any sense at all [1]). I can work on whatever project I want (and sometimes do, against all better sense). And I seem to be making money.

 

It probably didn’t help clarify anything when I bought that expensive, pro-level camera last year. And then an expensive, pro-level lens for it this year (in my defense: hobbies are supposed to be expensive). And before that was the move to the new, big (by 1970’s standards) house. And then hitting 6-figures annually with The Journal [2]. And I plan to once again take November “off enough” to participate in Nanowrimo 2009.

 

So, yeah, there’s grounds for confusion.

 

On the other hand, I still drive a nearly 14 year old Saturn SL1 that I bought (new; paid it off twice now) in 1995. And me and the wife have never had more than 1 car in over 16 years of marriage.

 

My office desk and chair are the same ones I bought back in 1999 after I first went indie (my wife looks unconvinced when I say I need to upgrade my office chair–to an Aeron).

 

The laptop I’m writing this post on (and which I use for all non-programming work) turned 4 years old last month.

 

And someday I’d love to be able to buy health insurance from the government–because I sure as hell can’t afford family coverage from private insurers.

 

So I figure I’m solidly middle-class. Independently middle-class, true, but still middle-class.

 

I still look forward to being rich, of course. And when that happens, I’ll be the first to admit it. Loudly. While jumping up and down and screaming. There won’t be any question when that happens.

 

-David

 

[1] My wife likes to say that we beat the current recession by my quitting my job just before the last recession.

 

[2] Hopefully the release of The Journal 5 achieves that for 2009. Otherwise I’ll be reduced to fondly remembering those 6-figure years and hoping for better times to come.

 

 

 

 

Overall, though, I’m optimistic about 2009, and looking forward to see how it all works out.

 

I’m looking forward to (in approximate order):

 

Project Vee dominated my life in 2008. So I have some life I need to get moving on in 2009.

 

-David