Rethinking my growth strategy

G’day g’day, another x amount of time passes. I’m thinking about making a mailing list for people to keep up to date with what I do. I’m also rethinking my whole strategy of slowly building an audience by showing off what I do. Instead, what I should be doing is advertising things I can do for people or products they can buy or use.

What I’m doing now is just posting what I do on a lot of social media and hoping people will be interested in this cool thing I did. Based on the fact no one around me gives two shits about any of the cool things I did, I don’t think anyone online would care either. What I should instead be doing, is framing it like things people can use.

For example, with my game I made for a game jam, I did well because I was advertising a game people could play. Whereas with my personal website I was just like ‘Hey, look, I remade my website, doesn’t it look cool?’. I’m not sure how I can re-frame that, it’ll take brainstorming or whatever.

What I’m currently doing

First, I’m working on my own game. Specifically, I’m working on making multiplayer (local and online) work together.

Second, I’m making a VRChat avatar for myself. It’s going to work on quest and be super pink and e-girly. I’m hoping to give it a lot of cool little features, but I’m not sure how hard that’ll be.

Third, I’m working on my university assignments. This includes, but is not limited to, writing a manifesto, making a game in unreal, experimenting and doing a lot of things, and finally writing a rendering engine in OpenGL.

Fourth, I’m writing my own rendering engine in Vulkan and OpenGL.

Fifth, I’m learning Japanese.

Sixth, I’m working on my artistic skills. This includes playing the keyboard, drawing, and 3D modelling.

Seventh, writing this blog.

This is vaguely in the order of which I’m prioritizing them, although it’s very loose and obviously university comes at the top of the list when necessary. Japanese also comes top of the list everyday at some point because I’m trying to use Anki everyday until I hit some arbitrary amount of words where I can start using comprehensible input. Also, this is just what I can think of off the top of my head, I’m probably doing more stuff.

My general plan is, and this is mostly so I can write it down and get it out of my head and thereby stuck into my head, to work on longer-term big projects alongside smaller ones I can show off about once a week. In this instance, getting a degree, learning Japanese, making a rendering engine, and making Speedrounds are the longer term projects. The short-term project I’m working on right now is the VRChat avatar.

I’m working on so many long-term projects so that I don’t get burnt out with any one of them and can switch when I feel like it. For example, just before writing this I was working on Japanese, and just before that I was working on the game in Unreal for university. I was getting tired of that so I did Japanese for the day, and I’m still tired of it so I’m writing this blog. After doing those two, I’m ready to get back to the grind. It’s all about balance, and this is how I’m balancing myself.

Giving up all forms of media

Over the past… I want to say two months? I’ve basically given up all forms of media for the most part. Of course I still watch the occasional YouTube video and play games with people at least once a week, but that’s just about it… Once a week. Months ago, end of last year, not even that long ago, I was being hit hard by cyclothymia and couldn’t do jack shit aside from binge YouTube all day everyday, it was genuinely the only escape I had from constant misery attacking my emotions. I was in constant emotional turmoil and genuinely had physical convulsions from how bad my emotions were all of the time, for months without end.

Then, this magical thing came over the horizon, called ADHD medication. Sweet dear fucking lord, I’m more proud of myself that I’ve ever been in my life. I praise ADHD medication to the ends of the earth. It’s helping me lose weight, and I’ve turned into the constantly-working robot I’ve always looked up to and wanted to be my entire life.

I make my constantly working state sound worse than it is with words like “constant” or “robot”, but I couldn’t be happier with myself. Sure, there are days I just can’t get anything done for several hours, but they’re few and far between in comparison to what it was not too long ago. I think… I think I’m starting to genuinely love myself… Oop and here the tears come.

For me, thinking about loving yourself felt like a fake fantasy people just said more than did, I could never be who I wanted to be. Now, I’m on the trajectory I’ve always wanted to be on. I don’t love who I am, but I love who I’m turning myself into, and for that I love myself for doing it in the first place. Every hour I improve myself just a little more, and I love myself for doing that. That, plus being on estrogen and losing weight… It all is building into this feeling like I actually fucking matter or something, it’s kinda crazy for me.

It sounds like losing weight and being on estrogen are small factors to it, but I just want to say they are by no means small factors. Nothing is even visibly that different yet… Just knowing I’m on that trajectory though means more than the world to me.

New longest blog post

I’m close to 1000 words for this blog post, which I think might make it my longest. Oop and there I just hit it, lovely. I think I’m just avoiding more work and waiting for someone to reply to me with time, it’s her birthday and we’re going out to eat dinner with some of her friends, I’m quite excited. I added the title of this section after having written it.