self expectation

over the last few years i have worked at making some changes to my lifestyle. spending more time with other people. getting more exercise & generally having a better relationship with my body. spending less hours in front of a screen, remembering to take regular breaks when i'm working to stretch & avoid rsi. learning new things. i am just in a way better place now in terms of physical and mental health.

i make games more slowly than i did a few years ago. seriously like in 2012 i released Game Title, Lost Levels, Zaga-33, Kompendium, VESPER.5, O, Corrypt, various smaller jam games. in 2015-16 i released Imbroglio. sometimes i feel pretty bad about this, i miss being more productive and i feel inadequate for not making a dozen more games at the same time and also porting to more platforms. i feel confused about why i am less productive. plus i feel bad about not keeping up with other game makers, like i never played all the latest games everyone talked about (half of them are console exclusives anyway) but i used to at least follow all the work of people i know personally and now i don't.

i just put these trends together and went "ohhhhhhhh". it is obvious when i think about it but as these have been slow trends and changes of habits it is not always easy to see. i am spending less time sitting at a computer, so i am getting less done in that time. i think somehow i expected to be so magically productive that i could do a bunch of extra things without anything else diminishing. but i actually have limitations and i have to make choices about how to allocate my time. i have to recognise that while i enjoyed being so productive back then, part of what enabled that level of productivity was constantly overworking myself, lifestyle habits i've realised were unhealthy for me and that anyway were unsustainable. i could still just sit down and jam out a game in a few days i just can't expect to do that while also doing what's best for my body. i still am able to make things now, it's not like i am unproductive, i am just comparing myself to a standard that i feel like i can achieve but is not realistic over the long-term. & if game-making time is a more scarce resource than i thought then i guess it's reasonable that i am not spending it on the little jam games?

ok moving forward i try to have more realistic expectations for myself. keep working on all of life and also games. really important to keep learning and trying new things, i don't want to be stuck in a loop of only making the kind of art i was capable of making five years ago (but integrating new ideas takes time too, i shouldn't expect to be able to express them straight away). accept making games at a sensible pace. not sure what this means for the equation of "can i continue to make a living from this", but i try. next game when it's ready, no rush, ok.