Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Mid-2022 Catch-Up

Basically I am writing these entries for myself at this point (hey, if anyone else is still keeping tabs on me, more power to you - although I appreciate your tenacity at this point). I wonder if any of my exes are reading any of these things. I'll tell you, exes, I don't ready any of YOUR things. Well the previous one's, a bit, but that's all business stuff anyway, so doesn't really count (plus she is aware of that). But yeah - the ones I lived with before - also that one brief fling I had a bunch of years ago, who I was actually very infatuated with (probably because she treated me particularly terribly, we all know how that goes). Anyway I don't hold anything against any of those people - whatever happened was just so many years ago, and we are all different people in the time since. If any of you are out there, I hope you are happy and living a satisfying, successful, fulfilling life. I hope you at least remember one or two of my dumb jokes.. at LEAST..

Anyway, like it says on the tin, here's another half-way point of another year. Getting on 2AM and I am in that state where I am both tired and restless - Lisa is asleep in the other room (for a couple of hours now), I am sitting hunched over at my desk, tweaked some code in Unity, procrastinating collecting some hours to send off to (one of my) boss (es), before winding down to get a little shut-eye myself before a meeting in the AM. Not being too productive, just surfing a little aimlessly around on the usual social media sites. I am kind of tired of all of them at this point - I deleted insta off my phone maybe a couple of months ago, and just removed the FB app off of it today. Yeah I will still look at some of this stuff on my laptop, but I have been realizing that it's probably less unhealthy than forever having those things at literal arm's reach nearly every waking (and sleeping) second of every day. I'm hesitant to check the logs and see just how many hours I log into those things on my phone daily (well, I guess the FB one just got obliterated, so no choice there really).

Things are going ok, otherwise, I guess. I would say I am not terribly fantastically happy just these days, but life certainly isn't bad. I am feeling a fair amount directionless, aimless, uninspired. Not totally with any of that, I am fortunate to still have lots of things in the to-do list of my head and plenty of things to get lost in as far as "cool projects that I wanna work on." About a month or so ago I decided I was earnestly going to try to put together a legit proper VR Space Invaders project - I've seemed to get strangely hooked on OG Space Invaders pretty good in the past couple of years - and so I've put in some days' time concentrating on building a very faithful clone of the game as a base from which to expand from. I cannot lie, it has been a LOT of fun building just that - yes the game is bone-simple, and not really a complex project by any means, but definitely very enjoyable figuring out how to piece it together very efficiently and scale-ably. I feel like I should just employ the same treatment for a whole bunch of old, tried-and-true games just to keep getting my brain wrapped up in creativity for how to organize different logic and designs for all kinds of little projects. 

But I do really want to get some of these things actually done, as well. I know I have talked about it - for literally MANY YEARS now - but I did finally go in some months ago and start rebuilding my puzzle game 180 from scratch. Yes I know I have mentioned it, in this very blog, that I was dipping in and out of that very thing for a bunch of years now, but - well, what I had done (from what I understood at the time) was nice for prototyping, but again a lot of it was simply not scalable, and just VERY prototypey. The new re-do is a lot easier to just read and makes a bunch more logical sense, and is so much easier to pick up and tinker with. There are still some kinda complex problems I've not really tackled with it yet, but as it was starting to get a fair amount more complex than I was willing to hunker down and deal with, seemed like a good enough idea to let it sit back in the fridge for a bit - and I am fine with that. Trying to do one thing at a time over here (well - in addition with the things I am getting paid to).

Speaking of - I am shy of 6 months since my last gig wrapped up. Disappointing, I was enjoying it for the most part and always learning a lot - and I had put a ton of work into that project. Now with so many months since touching it last, and considering the size of the thing, it is upsetting to have that be out of my life for so long. At the same time - kinda was feeling like going in circles, and I don't miss it terribly (other than making it nice and efficient under the hood). It was getting frustrating to see the direction things were going. I am still tuned in with those guys, but it feels like that ship has kinda sailed. Sad, because we really did have some nice potential there for awhile. Ah, startup culture.

A couple of other opportunities popped up in the meantime, I had to crunch pretty hard for some highbrow tests to see how far I could get with those. That stuff - well it wasn't the most pleasant experience, but I am glad I did what I did. It's been sobering though. Getting older and looking for work in this industry can be exasperating at times. Fortunately I do have a lot under my belt that keeps me competitive, but with all that's been going on (and considering what I have worked on in the past) I guess I am a bit spoiled, I would love to just get access to some more of the manner of dream projects which I KNOW I can ace.  I guess that will be more accessible when the time is right, if things line up as they could. Anyway, got my hands plenty full with all that is keeping me occupied in the meantime, and I am excited with the possibilities (some really cool stuff) that they are directly affording me, so - steady as she goes-

Still haven't got COVID, neither Lisa nor her immediate family, nor mine - a bunch of friends have had it by now, nothing approaching any kind of horror stories. Still don't want that, but at this rate it does seem sort of inevitable. Honestly I am just really tired of the background noise of it. Not going all Bubble Boy over here, or anything, but for the most part my general lifestyle feels pretty safe as far as that is concerned. Will be interesting to see what I've got to say on the matter whenever I've got another entry or two in the future, in here..

Whoa! Long little entry here, eh? I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of things I'd like to get off of my chest, actually - it is cathartic, kind of miss this I guess. To be honest, I just don't really communicate any of what's bouncing around in my head much at all, for awhile now. I don't really have anywhere to go with it. I used to fill journals like this, ALL THE TIME - for years. Then it kinda fell off a cliff, and maybe that isn't such a bad thing. But I do feel like I have to do something to get it out, maybe just getting lost in my work is something. I have definitely had my usual demons otherwise, nothing hugely life-ruining but certainly.. well, they are DEMONS, not just irritants. As you get older, that stuff really does as well. So who knows - just gotta use the energy from that stuff to try to drive you, and when you slip up, well, try to keep it from being too messy. Nobody is perfect, we all make misteaks.

Yeah, guess I will sign off at this point. Hopefully when I write in here next, I will have some steadier things going on in my life, a more even-keeled outlook, writing in a more "hey let's proclaim victory!" fashion than "ahh I am bumming about XYZ" that I am dwelling on at the moment. Better times to come.