Belated Christmas Posting

I didn't want to write on Christmas, because, truth be told, I had a bit of a personal crisis that night.

In review, it does seem like I did okay. I found a job despite the pandemic. I learned things. I achieved some of my resolutions from last year. But when I look at the external things, such as finding new friends, making a game - I haven't really made the progress I desire.

If one were to ask my father, he would say these things are secondary, and now is the moment to build career and wealth. If one were to ask my mother, she would say I should stop playing video games and chase those things instead (and somehow fit doing more household chores in there). I don't think they're strictly wrong per se, but they're not exactly right, either.

Firstly, the truth is I am not my parents, who work all their lives and derive a majority of their self-worth from that work. My parents became this way because they were driven by survival in a Singapore that was much poorer. I am instead driven towards achieving a higher state within Maslow's hierarchy (without forgoing the base my parents have built).

Secondly, I was under the impression that playing games would provide me greater "inspiration" for my own designs. After all, the original idea for my designs came from two games. Yet it's effectiveness has been quickly diminishing, and I admit I've been in a "block" for the past 3-4 weeks. Not to mention I also stumbled upon this piece of advice from a developer a couple weeks ago:

Saw some vague discourse about "getting pro skill at game design". "play more [digital] games" is a myopic (and potentially prohibitive) answer imo, especially considering that most of the greats of the last century predated the current medium as we know it 

I feel weirdly about this one because it's generally good advice to play a lot of games bc it's shorthand for developing systemic intuition, but studying genres you like/are working in can be a slippery slope towards homogeneity

I already dedicated myself against playing Hades, Diablo, or Grim Dawn for the time being, but I think I've been spending too much time playing similar games e.g. League of Legends that have little relevance to my actual goals. So my mom is right, but not for the reasons she thinks.

Anyway, my point is that I really need to realign my goals. It's been absolutely great that at least I got something done this year in spite of COVID-19. But I really need to be a bit more focused and ambitious if I want to make next year better.