Hey everyone! I paused the campaign for another month. I mentioned it before, but I will likely keep it paused until the end of the year while I recalibrate things. I'll get into more detail on my discoveries lower down.
This month I participated in the Falling Block Jam and made a game called Ice Careen. This was my first time working as a programmer as part of a team. I feel like it went OK overall, though I pushed myself really hard during the jam to make things work. Proud of the result!
I also added 2025.5 Pocket Playground OST into the !Albums folder. Bits of this were shared before, but now it's all wrapped up into a neat little bundle. I'm hoping to make good progress on the Friend? album and get that shared by next month.
Finally, I uploaded the song Coalesce to the shared drive (looped version too!) I'm trying to get back to form with writing music and the Dubtech genre is a good chill way to create atmosphere without overcomplicating things. Hope you like it!
I've been doing a lot of soul searching to figure out what happened this year. I'm still trying to figure it all out, but I think I'm pretty close to the root causes.
One of the big focuses this year was collaborations and commissions. I always thought of myself as someone who played well with others, but I kinda learned this isn't always the case.
The majority of projects were smooth. Sometimes though, there was a personality, intention, or schedule mismatch and everything just ground to a halt. Nothing against the other people, sometimes life happens or the chemistry is off.
When it comes to projects, I'm pretty bad at multitasking. I struggle bouncing between two things. So when one project is stuck, it's difficult for me to simply move to another one. I am often reminded of the Simpsons clip where a doctor tells Mr. Burns he has Three Stooges Syndrome where all his diseases are trying to get through at once and blocking each other.
On top of all that, there's the psychic damage from the general state of the Internet as an artist. Most streaming services are becoming pretty hostile to music producers and I've made the decision to no longer post to Spotify. Probably other services as well as time goes on.
Bringing all this together: I'm burnt out, overwhelmed, and disillusioned with current ecosystem of digital music.
A shift in perspective is needed.
Part of that shift is making things for the love of the craft. Not to worry about follower count or income and to simply follow the muse. If I want to make games, I'll work on games. If I want to make music, I'll work on music.
I spent some time last weekend rebuilding my collective task list and plans. Trying to divide problems in existing projects down to bite-sized tasks that can be done in a sitting. The idea being that if I want to work on music, but don't know what, I can jump right into an existing project without being overwhelmed with choice.
There's no guarantee that this will solve my problems, but my brain craves structure and there hasn't been a lot of that this year. I'm hopeful that this will help calm the thunderstorm a bit.
October is shaping up to be a nice month to put these ideas to the test. Finishing some game projects, wrapping up an album, working on the book more, and maybe starting some new songs? I can certainly make the month as busy as I'd like.
If I'm feeling up to it, I'll be doing the NaSoAlMo in November. I'm giving myself the grace to skip this year if I'm not feeling it though. I'm definitely getting the itch to get back to writing music, so that's a positive sign!
I'm off to donate to the kitties. Thank you all for your continued support and patience while I figure this out. Hope you are doing well! <3
-ben