Blog: Working to Yourself

Today I will dedicate the post to the self-employment lifestyle, or at least, how I’m dealing with the fact that I’m working for myself.

This is no secret, I’m a workaholic, I always preferred to work from home than the office, however, I also enjoy the office environment, usually being the one breaking the ice and removing tension from co-workers.

I began to home office before it became the new normal in early 2020, and while different, this did not impact how I interacted with co-workers, it just changed. Instead of invading their office desks I was nudging thru Slak to have a quick chat. I needed the human contact, but it was easy to replace increasing the gathering with friends and family.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I’m not only a workaholic, I also have a Show Off personality. It doesn’t matter how much effort I have to put in. Being able to share the hard work with people who care drives me and increases my productivity. It is a need, like a dog waiting to be pet along the “good boy” words.

And here comes the problem, while I’m not alone in the project, we are just two doing Letalis as a part-time job, we share our progress between us on a regular basis but over time, somehow,  for me it is not enough to keep that same motivation. Also, even when we have a clear goal and to-do list to complete the game, having our own weekly goals, leads me to my true topic, (sorry for the long preamble)  When is it enough work for the day?

This year I started working full time on Letalis, eight hours per day, five days a week, no more, no less, but…

With all I just said, I hope you can imagine how I feel. There are productive days where I look back and say to myself “WOW! I cannot believe you did THAT much in just one day” and other when I say “OK! I did this, I can call it a day”. Is the latter really OK? Do not believe it is a simple project or tiny game because it looks like a Gameboy game. We have a ton of things to do. Game balance, RPG character, Combat characters, Profile Pictures, animations, battle backgrounds, tilesets, level design, puzzle design, systems design, narrative design, weapons, combat animations, Game balance (yeah! It is twice! haha), menus, UI, transition animations, sound effects, background music, all the coding!!! (I don’t dare to explain how many tasks are involved here). This list can be longer! So… when is it enough work for a day???

I hate myself when I call it a day on my "OK" days. It is not easy to find the motivation, even less when you are working on the things you like the least - in my case, UI and Backgrounds. But it has to be done! And it is fine if it takes longer than the thing you enjoy or are motivated on doing, but it is also no excuse to comfort yourself for a poor work day. At least, that is how I see it, maybe it is the workaholic speaking, or maybe it is the fact that I want to finish the game. There is no more time for hiatus.

I hope to be invaded with motivation after we start sharing the game (happening soon!). I know I need all kinds of feedback to awake the showoff monster and who knows, work even harder than what I’m doing right now!

I want every day to be a “WOW! day”

Happy friday!
j.