Spent a bit this morning optimising some stuff, or at least pretending to do so. I set up the YYC compiler and did some cursory tests: it seems to work surprisingly well. I haven’t encountered any issues with it yet although I certainly imagine that it’s only a matter of time. I spent the afternoon playing Siege. I don’t particularly enjoy it, to be honest, but it’s the only thing that seems to really work to keep my thoughts steadily and completely occupied. That, and sleeping, I guess. I’ve been doing both of those a lot lately. Even just a few minutes on my own, I start to unravel. I can’t stand this. I hope it ends soon.
First day back to work in-engine in what feels like a month. So much has happened just within the past week alone, I don’t even know where to begin to recount any of it. A part of me feels at peace, yet another part of me feels just completely hollowed out. I feel alone again. I guess that means I have to start working again. I don’t know what else to do. I feel like if I don’t, I’ll start coming apart.
Took a day off to rest, and then spent most of today catching up on the previous day’s responsibilities, which included finishing the final cut of the trailer (for good, this time) and recording some kind of introductory video, which was a complete failure.
I feel a little bit better about it now, it’s slightly more interesting than it was before and taking a day off to give it some space provided the necessary distance to be able to evaluate and address its shortcomings more pointedly.
Taking the rest of the week off after tomorrow’s meeting.
Finished and submitted the trailer. It’s completely forgettable and falls short of just about any measure of adequacy, but at least it’s done and I can finally rest. I still need to do a few touch-ups on it tomorrow and record an introduction video, but the worst of it is now in the past. I’m going to rest until the weekend, and then start working on the game again proper.
Burning the oil on the trailer. It’s going to be complete shit, but at this point, I no longer care. I suppose, though, in a roundabout way it is a very honest and accurate reflection of where I stand on the project. I’m sick of all of this.
I’ve been spending too much time in the world. I don’t belong here.
Spent last night with Haolun, until this afternoon. We had a long talk today about my difficulties with work. I feel better about it, or at least more motivated. I guess we’ll see how I feel after tomorrow morning’s meeting.
I realise I’ve completely lost touch with the essence of my work. These past few months I haven’t thought about any elements within the game itself. All I’ve been thinking about and struggling through are questions about how I think others may perceive this project: whether through the tutorial, or various mechanical systems, or the marketing, or this goddamned trailer. I haven’t thought about the characters or the ideas driving this work at all in what feels like over a year now.
After this trailer is done, I’m completely pulling back. No more of this, all of these distractions. I’ve allowed myself to be buried by all this irrelevant noise. I need to reorient and rediscover within myself what makes this game matter at all to me, and just spend time with that alone, on my own, moving forward. Everything else is just static.
Returned last night from seeing a new friend. This morning, immediately upon sitting down at my computer again, I was overcome at once by a wave of despair so great I nearly collapsed. I didn’t work on the trailer. I didn’t work on anything at all. I must confess a rather inconvenient and terrible truth that’s dawned on me. I’ve grown to resent this project deeply. The work has become meaningless. Dull and unbearably pretentious. I despise working with my publisher. I get the sense that I am utterly marginal and deprioritised in their schemes. I’ve grown sick of all of it. The meeting last week was the final push. Any remaining hope that I might be able to recover some semblance of joy, or meaning, or even just plain curiosity from this project in its present state has been buried. I just want it to be over. Now that I’ve felt true happiness, I can no longer bear the deception, the delusion of the rest of it.
I woke up this morning to discover that my choice in music for the trailer – which is to say, in other words, the very backbone of its composition – has been deemed too legally risky. The few options I was given to remediate this were effectively all non-options or, even worse, inadvertently humiliating. In practical terms, I’ve been left with just over a week to a deadline to discard all my present work and completely redo the trailer altogether.
Well, to put it lightly, I’m demoralised. Not just about the immediate future of the trailer (which, to be honest, I was already thinking about redoing in its entirety anyways), but also about the longer future of my relationship with the publisher. More and more lately I’ve been feeling a mounting frustration with how they’ve handled – or I suppose, are handling – this project. I’ve realised only recently just how much it’s drained me both personally and in terms of my interest in, and motivation to work on the project.
To be fair, I don’t think any of it is a fault of their specific practices, I should clarify: but I feel like I’ve been repeatedly deprioritised this entire time to the point where just about the only benefit they’ve provided me in practical effect so far has been the money (which, also to be fair, is certainly no small thing). But if money was the only thing I was looking for, I could’ve gone with virtually anybody else; and there were likely even better options in that capacity as well. I suppose disappointment is the best way to put it. Disappointment in their relative lack of involvement, yes; but more so, disappointment in myself in thinking I could somehow be an exception.
Finally back home, and more or less settled back in. I can hardly even begin to describe the events of the past week, let alone adequately. The best I can offer is that I’ve come back changed, and not necessarily for the better.
Fortunately my desire to work has been rejuvenated wholesale. I spent the night going over the existing cut and adding a few more pieces. It seems to be coming along alright, although I definitely need to shoot a lot more footage. (There’s also the question of whether I should reshoot the old footage for sake of visual consistency, but I’m not quite ready yet to consider the necessary tedium of that suggestion…)
I’m also thinking about significantly cutting down the actual song length, or even more radically, just using another song altogether. I’m sitting at almost an exact minute right now and still have an entire minute of audio left. With the speed of these cuts, that’s a massive amount of material I’ll need to shoot in composite, for which frankly I doubt I have either the time or patience. I’ll be working on this all of tomorrow, so I’ll see what I can do about halving the length, or even using a new song.
Didn’t end up finishing all the footage for the trailer, but I feel good about the work I have left. I’m going to put some final touches on it tomorrow, including editing down the song length proper, and then submit it for this week.
After talking to the doctor, I feel much better about the upcoming trip as well. I hope that by the time I come back, I’ll have enough energy in reserve to push through it all at once the week I return.
I had the strangest night last night. Not at all in a bad way. It completely cleansed away the distaste of the preceding day. In any case, I got back late enough that I just didn’t bother going to sleep and instead worked on the trailer for a while. I’d like to get the layout done and submitted by Tuesday. I didn’t attend service today. I wanted to go but I felt like I needed some time to think about things on my own.
Feeling pretty drained. Woke up late, spent most of the day pretending to write this month’s update. I had planned on working proper tonight, but ended up having to attend to other matters. I think I’ll go to sleep early instead and immediately start working as soon as I wake up tomorrow.
Submitted the initial “draft” of the trailer yesterday. It seems to have been received well. It was immensely relieving. I feel like it’s the first time anyone’s been excited about the game in a while. I know for certain that’s not true, but unfortunately reality so rarely ever corroborates feelings, for better or worse. I’m beginning to feel better about the project again. I’m feeling cautiously optimistic about this announcement.
I’m hoping to get all of the new assets done by the end of this weekend. I’ll be out for a bit Saturday night, but otherwise it should just be straight shooting from here. I didn’t work at all today after the meeting, but I feel pretty good about things.
I finally finished this cursed animation that’s occupied the entirety of the weekend. It looks pretty good, actually, so maybe it was worth it ultimately. I struggled for the rest of the day in terms of how to lay out – and then, naturally, fill out – the rest of the trailer.
I was visited just now by a tremendous surge of inspiration, however, which has almost singularly changed the direction of it. I will continue working a bit longer throughout the night.
I’ve spent nearly two consecutive days (only a handful of hours per day, to be fair) working on a single animation and I’m not sure if it’s been worth it. I suppose I won’t know until it’s done.
Returned from visiting several old friends. I have been left deeply moved by this experience. I believe I have learned a new kind of love from this, a kind that can only be realised through a certain ellipsis of time and perspective. I have missed them all more dearly than I may have realised, and now confess.
Started working on assets for the trailer this afternoon. The bulk of it is animations: I’m trying to keep as much of the footage for the trailer contained to stuff that actually appears in the game, rather than complementary stuff I have to build specifically for this. Helps keep things focused, and saves me some work in the long run as well. If I work diligently, I may even have a content-complete first draft by the end of the weekend. We’ll see.
Another day with limited apparent progress; but I feel much clearer in regard to my vision for this trailer than I did before. I’ve decided to drop the hymn for this one: I’ve been having too much difficulty coordinating a flow of images to it with what I currently have (and am willing and able to produce, for that matter) within the limited few weeks I have left. I also have begun to feel that, at the current stage of the project, it feels like there’s a bit too much potential for it to be misinterpreted tonally, and I don’t feel like I can do it justice now. Hopefully for release though…
The new idea is pretty interesting though, and it feels very clear to me. I started working on a proper treatment late tonight. It’s unfortunate, and immensely frustrating that it came to me so late and that I won’t be able to have a proper deliverable by tomorrow’s meeting. I’m cautiously optimistic about this idea though. I suspect it may not be as immediately and broadly impactful as the last trailer, but if I can get it right… I think it’ll be good. Conceptually, it feels right.
I didn’t get as much work done today as I would have liked, but I still felt marginally more productive than I have in the past several weeks, so I suppose I should count that as some kind of progress.
Of course, I must admit that feeling in itself has little bearing upon actual material progress, of which unfortunately I can’t report much: I’ve begun to realise that my energy is seemingly much more limited than before, and that spending time in anyone’s company is enough to thoroughly deplete the rest of the day’s reserve of attention.
I don’t think that this in itself is a bad thing by any means, and in fact, I think I feel more fulfilled now by the presence of others in the immediate than I did before. But it’s become rather difficult to establish a rhythm in which things may get done at a reasonable pace, while also holding so much space for others. I wouldn’t mind if it was just the doctor. But lately it feels like every other day I have to meet someone or the other – for reasons I often willingly and gladly volunteer myself, to be honest – and it feels nearly impossible to settle into a pace of work that allows meaningful thought without disruption.
Thankfully winter is not too far, at least in terms of the temperament of the weather if not the seasons themselves. I hope it will provide me the refuge of an excuse that I desire. Else, I’ll be stuck making excuses for myself, and then regretting them irreconcilably.
First day back to work. A terrible humidity has set over the next week that bodes ill for the near future. Regardless, I must resume a steady schedule. I promised my producer an initial draft by this week’s meeting. I’m hoping that tomorrow I can finish most of the graphic assets for the intro sequence, and get the bare text laid out. I reckon I should probably draft a proper treatment too at some point, not just for the sake of a submission but to set it in stone.
September. It seems the period of greatest confusion may now be in the past. A sobering clarity has set in. I have fallen into a profound sadness; but I’m no longer confounded in purpose. I’ve been able to start thinking about work again. This afternoon, I finally found within myself again the ability to conjure and maintain a much clearer vision of my work than I have in months.
The end of a season. Unofficially, anyways. The weather cooled significantly today. Still nothing to show for any of it. I’ve become beset by an intense paranoia.
I missed service this morning. I don’t know how, but I just failed to wake up. I had a terribly sad dream. I’ve been thinking about killing again lately. Everything just seems to set something off within me. I fear that I’ve grown apart from the people I’ve cared about. I fear that I’ve wasted all of my talent away. I spend all my days and nights trying to come up with new and interesting ways of killing myself. My work feels meaningless. My relationships feel meaningless. I’ve grown sick of talking. Talking never goes anywhere. I was never going anywhere anyways. In my dream, everyone turned against me. I’ve grown sick with longing. I missed this month’s update. I’ve fallen out of love. It’s all gone stale. It’s not that I’ve lost faith in God, just myself. All I can hope is for me to get better. I’m no longer enough.
Talking to the doctor didn’t help at all this time. I don’t feel like she engaged meaningfully with much of what I’d told her at all. Too many interjections of her own biases and assumptions, to the point of being annoyingly unhelpful. Or rather, more charitably, I’m deeply frustrated that I wasn’t able to articulate my concerns effectively. Either way, I’ve come away with an even greater sense of disappointment.
I suspect that this failure of communication has, unfortunately, somewhat significantly accelerated the progression of my symptoms as of late.
A profound sadness has once again taken hold of me. I know now it’s not simple burnout, but something much worse and unforgiving.
The past few weeks have felt, simultaneously, interminably long and yet also unbearably short – and nearly every one of those moments in between has been quietly excruciating in retrospect. My days are filled with a constant, languishing weariness. By noon each day, without fail, I find myself completely depleted of any ability to hold compassion or grace for others, least of all myself. And all my nights are even more exhausting, dominated by thoughts of suicide and sharp, painful bouts of paranoia. I used to think that if hell were to really exist, it would be the best day of your life, and the worst day of your life re-experienced so many times that they become indistinguishable from one another in effect. I’m beginning to feel that way again.
It’s not that any one thing in particular has been distinctly bad, to be clear; but admitting that, too, further confounds and frustrates my thoughts. It feels like any progress I may have made in the first few months of this year have been utterly undone, in the sense of an unraveling. Little bits and pieces from everyone, from every direction… all manner of minor misunderstandings and misschedulings and misinterpretations and miscommunications just piling up day after day in a slow but certain metastasis of disappointment and frustration beyond resolution. In every part of my life.
I have lost my ability to trust others: neither their intentions nor their feelings, least of all in their apparent efforts towards sincerity, which in my confused state feel like, at best, mocking pretence. I no longer trust my own feelings. My heart has betrayed me. I have felt my old inclinations rise within me late at night. In the cramped, stale silence of the afternoons. All of it makes me sick. I get the distinct feeling that, in my efforts to improve myself, I have instead somehow managed to make myself much worse.
Spoke to my producer about my thoughts and feelings regarding development. Fortunately I was met with understanding, and I feel more prepared to handle the next few months knowing that I have some support. My next primary objective is the trailer. I’m going to spend the next week preparing a spec sheet for it so that I’ll be able to break things down week by week. I’m not going to focus on anything else until it’s done. I hope that in working on it, I’ll be able to regain a sense of connection with the overarching plot and themes as the audience will experience them, and create bookends for myself both visually and in terms of implementation.
I feel I’ve arrived at a certain amount of peace regarding the past several weeks’ worth of uncertainty, although I can fairly confidently say I still do not feel like I’m in a position where I can resume working. It’s strange: emotionally, I guess I feel pretty stable, like I’ve worked through most of the things that were troubling me. But physically, and in terms of my ability to work, I feel utterly debilitated: my thoughts are completely scrambled, my memory and ability to form and maintain coherent thoughts have both completely dissolved, and I constantly feel afflicted by a sense of persistent, indeterminate hunger and fatigue which never seem to be satisfied no matter how much I eat or sleep.
I haven’t completely stopped working, to be honest. I’m working with Sam now on the soundscapes and the audio for the trailer, which is exciting. I’ve also got a thing with a magazine coming up to which I’m looking forward. Both, I feel, have restored a bit of my personal interest in the project, and have at the very least reoriented me to the possibility of resuming some kind of work.
The obvious, and extant problem here, of course, is how my publisher will react to all of this. I suppose I won’t know for sure until this week’s meeting, but I’m cautiously optimistic. I’ve come up with a fairly cogent plan for the next few months, and a clear argument (at least in my opinion) for why I feel like this would be good for the project overall. I hope they’ll be receptive to it.
First day of August. First day back to work as well – technically, anyways.
In truth, I feel absolutely terrible. I barely managed to get the strategy document written and submitted just now, at nearly 3am; I’ve yet to even think about anything else. My mind just feels totally flatlined, like I can’t produce a single cogent thought.
I’ve been overcome by a terrible sadness. It’s the onset of a depressive state, I’m certain now.
My thoughts have become entirely clouded by a dismal pall that hangs over every moment of the day.
The thought alone of having to open up the project file and actually work on something, let alone get something done, let alone get the demo done, feels abjectly inconceivable to me at this present moment. Even having taken an entire week off, I feel no better rested or prepared. In fact, I feel even more unsettled and uncertain of the state of both my being, and the future of my project.
It feels like this is going to go on forever, even though I know that it won’t. I’m thoroughly tired of all of this though, and to be honest, I hate working on this project, and I’m pretty sure I hate making games too. If I could do anything else, I probably would. But I can’t.
The other guys couldn’t make it into the office today either, after all. Another no-start day.
If I’m being honest with myself, I’m certain I’m on the knife’s edge of burning out. I can feel its weight pulling me down every time I try getting started. It’s the little things, really: waking up in the heat only to realise I’m gonna be spending the entire day moving around UI elements pixel by pixel with virtually nothing meaningful to show of it by the end of the day. Or opening up some code thinking I’d need to make a few adjustments or additions here and there, only to realise that I don’t understand a single thing I wrote years ago now.
It’s not even a matter of bloat so much as it is just pure noise. It’s like every step I take, even if I’m certain it’s in the right direction, it’s met with a nearly opaque wall of noise that discombobulates and utterly disorients my sense of both purpose and direction. For the past six months, maybe even a year, it’s felt like nearly every time I’ve sat down to work on something, I’m just stumbling endlessly headlong through darkness with no measurable sign of progress.
Realistically I should take a break. But I’m already too far behind where any time I stop working it just feels wrong. I’m gonna bring it up this week at the meeting. Until then, I think I’m just going to try my best to take the next few days carefully.