SUBSCRIBE| <<prev 2008-06-03 next>> Yesterday was my first day working for myself free of the corporate world and man was it strange. I got up at the time I used to always get up and got ready to go to work like usual but then I realized that I don't actually have to go to work. I didn't feel like programming on Beat Me Up Too right away so I decided to clean the apartment instead... and do the laundry.... and do the dishes. I still didn't feel like programming so I set up the domain for my business, Andrograde and put a small test message up. By this point I finally had an inspiration to code so code I did. I programmed for several hours until my inspiration wore out (I could tell because I was getting frustrated and stuck) then I decided to take a break. I prepared and marinated a london broil for dinner and went to the gym for a while. Everyone at the gym was confused as to why I was there at 4:30; didn't I have to like work? Yes, I did have to work but what they didn't realize is that creative endeavors like creating a video game aren't like normal work. Contrary to what the entire game industry believes; you can't just pound away programming on a game for 8 hours straight each day especially when it's your design (not some idiot designer who barely graduated highschool... but I digress). True creativity doesn't follow schedule; it comes in bursts of hyperfocused ingenuity followed by deadzones and creative blocks. This is what I decided to set my schedule up as... or rather lack of schedule. When I'm inspired, I do something... when I'm not, I don't force myself to unlike the rest of the industry. And No I don't believe this approach will ultimately impact the release date of Beat Me Up Too because inevitably what ends up happening when you are trying to work through creative blocks and deadzones is you end up on Reddit or YouTube or other time waster sites which bank their popularity off people being bored and/or unmotivated at work thus getting nothing done anyway. In fact, I can say that I actually worked maybe just 70% of the time when I was in corporate America. Don't get me wrong, I had plenty of work to do; I was just unmotivated and/or burnt out but I had to look like I working though from the social pressures at work because everyone else looked like they were working even though I knew they were doing the same shit. In conclusion, this test of a schedule is what works for me and only time will tell if it will actually serve me to release quality products or not.
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