It’s May 21st, and that day holds a lot of meaning for me.
It is the anniversary of the day I became a full-time indie game developer, after having given two weeks’ notice to my day job two weeks before.
Unfortunately, only a couple of years later I ran out of money and ended up back on “corporate welfare”, and I’ve had a day job ever since. But I still like to observe my Indie Day.
A couple of years ago, I realized it was 10 years since that day, and I wrote a post lamenting how long it has been, how much hasn’t been working out for me, and worrying about not putting in enough time and effort to get back to being a full-time indie.
Last year, I acknowledged my Indie Day with a more upbeat post about letting go of attachments to outcomes and enjoying the process more.
I wrote that I decided that my Indie Day should be a personal holiday from the day job. Well, of course it fell on a Saturday this year. B-(
Since last year, I have published a game, and while it took me probably way longer than it should have, I took a multimonth break from regular development, and only recently have i started working on desktop ports.
I participated in Ludum Dare #50, my first LD since #33, and created a game with a design space I want to continue to explore.
I have reset my goals to be more in line with my current possibilities based on data from the previous year, as opposed to goals that are aspirational yet unrealistic.
I’ve grown my mailing list slowly with an audience of people who want to learn more about my games.
I have a strategy, and I’m adjusting course as I go. My plans are flexible yet focused.
I still feel sad about what could have been, but I don’t focus on it as much. Instead, I spend more of my time figuring out how to spend my time today so that the future could be more in line with my goals.
My wife asked me if it was healthy that I still treat today as a special anniversary, and I think it is. I no longer see it as yet another marker of a year in which I failed to get back to full-time indie status, and instead look at it as a day that reminds me of what I had done and what I can do again.
So to observe my Indie Day today, I’ll spend some time journaling, I’ll acknowledge what’s going well and what I can improve on, and and I’ll try to get some more game development time in than I usually do.