January Recap + Kairosoft Project
Hi welcome to this January review of things that happened around me and a collection of all the interesting things I’ve been doing for the past month.
Normally this would be split up into two post, but because of vague hand gestures it took me until the end of the month to get anything written, and it is my goal to start and finish stuff no matter how bad or unfinished they are.
This is part of my 2021 yearly theme, which is The Year of Interesting. I’m gonna do a proper article on that later™, but knowing me it probably won’t happen because I want it to be perfect *chef kiss
Therefore let us start with the first Interesting Thing™ that I did in the year 2021, Kairosoft and Video Game Programming
1. Kairosoft and Video Game Programming
After around 4-5 years, I’ve finally decided to get back into coding. The premise was simple, I was confused why there was no Kairosoft games on the computer and due to that I decided that “Fine, I’ll do it myself”
Thanos Ill GIF from Thanos GIFs
Fine, I’ll do it myself
I wanted to do it because it was fun, and it started the very fun journey of me trying to learn Unity and writing it down in a devlog to remember what I went through.
I like this, this is really fun. Getting back into the groove of making stuff and seeing how pieces of words can create real things are a really empowering experience. I talked about this to my mum and she was also really excited because she was the one that introduced me to these games.
Sadly, that only last for a few days as motivations was shafted by other things. I… didn’t have fun doing programming anymore. It was a slog to go through the tutorials, up to a point where I just decided that it wasn’t fun anymore. Mostly, it was caused by a mental shift from me trying things out in Unity to following a tutorial. A shift from exploration to following the map. Now there was nothing wrong with following the map if the goal is the destination, but my goal was not the destination.
Well, it kinda is and not at the same time.
While I decided to start because I want to make the game, there was an implicit reason that I forgot to explicitly define which was that this is my first journey of starting things due to desires.
I wanted to do this. I didn’t have to, but I wanted to.
This is really important because I have problems with initiative and lowering the barrier of entry and exit for new projects is important if I want to do exploration. This also ties to my process of aesthetic exploration (which I’m gonna get into later) where fucking around and doing stuff is an important part of that process.
And so, I was at a conundrum. Should I continue this game making endeavor even though I no longer enjoy it, or should I just cut loss here and start something else?
There was a lot of other different thing that I found more interesting than this slog of a game design process. I could be doing Discourse™ with the ingroup, there’s this cool ceremonial cocoa thing, Stardew Valley looked interesting, I could start cultivating my aesthetic and a lot of other interesting thing that would bring more value to me right now.
It took me around three days of fucking around to find the answer that my heart want, but it took me 11 days to write it out. I am stopping the game design process, closing it for now, and this piece is my review if I ever want to go back
there is resistance within me. i do not know why.
i think that what i "vibe" with currently is the status quo, and the way toward the next, better "vibe" takes more energy than i am comfortable with
Was it fun? Yeah! Very! There was a lot of lesson learned about what sort of things I find fun, interesting, and the process shined toward a few quirks of mine that I wasn’t able to fully acknowledge.
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A lot of my decision making is based on how my parent reacts. This is extremely apparent when I told my mum that I would be stopping this progress and her reaction was devastating to my mental mind.
This, I think, was a coping mechanism that I used in order to choose my battles appropriately. Choose project that fits my taste and also my parent’s taste.
I won’t say that taking their opinion on things is necessarily a bad thing, however as finding my Individuality is an important part of my current growth, I have decided that I will slowly lower the effect that my parents reaction have on what I want to do.
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I have a big perfectionism problem, and it is killing my ability to just do stuff. Currently I’m trying to challenge that urge to be perfect by starting and ending things willy-nilly, doing things as a reaction to my emotions. This means doing stuff that I might not usually do, and stopping things when they feel bad.
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Relying on tutorials, guides, and maps, WILL kill my desire for exploration. I feel like there is no use in exploring an explored territory. Therefore, it is extremely important that I DO NOT engage with things that I want to write or do, until I’ve done them.
This extend primarily to the realm of thinking, as I’ve been reading a lot new ideas and philosophies that I can feel my own eroding. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I want to at least write them down first so that I can compare the growth (if any), and use them if I ever need them in the future.
And so, I say THANK YOU, to the Kairosoft project that was a lot of fun and sparked a fuck ton of introspection about what I want to do in the near future. I might revisit you in the future once I have more time and experience under my belt, but for now, this is it.
Everything Else In January
So… yeah. January is certainly a month! It felt both so long and so short at the same time. Since I don’t want this to be too long (the format is supposed to just be a recap of all the things that has happened and the kairosoft recap took the place for the recap), let’s blitz through them, and maybe explore them in a different post (remind me to link them here if that ever happen. if)
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I started becoming nocturnal! Probably have something to do with me trying to regain some semblance of control that I lost due to me living with my parents again. It’s been fun, with the addition now I can be active when the Discourse™ happens!
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Doing 100 experimental ceremonial cocoa! Interested to see how cocoa could be use as part of my aesthetic as ever since the middle of January, I’ve been running on cocoa!
🍫✨ EXPERIMENTAL CEREMONIAL COCOA THREAD ✨🍫
imma make 100 cocoa h
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I started taking my own personal aesthetic way more seriously! I bought a pair of socks that I liked and started doing the ceremonial cocoa thing. I also started to cultivate my music taste to understand them a little bit more.
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A lot, and by a lot I mean A LOT, of really interesting thoughts and discussion happening on ingroup, but not much movement over at @yudhistirags_ due to insecurities and stuff! Hopefully in February I can write more stuff that fits that account!
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I had a few calls with online friends, namely ollybot, honjo, and @Empathy2000! This is such an underutilized medium, and hopefully I can do more of these!
On less me centric news, here’s a few titbits that I think future me should remember about this month.
- GME STONKS! SUCH A FUN TIME!
And… that’s it I think. January have been fun but I wasn’t doing enough note taking so I kinda forgot what else happened LOL. A note to do more note taking in February.
Closing Remarks
There are so much more that I want to write, however time is short and I need to get this out in order to fight that pesky Perfectionism problem of mine! I think I’m gonna write the odd numbered month in English and the even numbered month in Indonesian, in an effort to write more in Indonesian. Really looking forward to February as I am now ready to do more cool shit, and I am in the middle of writing my manifesto.
If you want to catch up in real time what I do, you can follow me on Twitter at @nobu_hibiki & @yudhistirags_!
That’s all from me this January, see you next month.
o/