Take care of yourself…is there a statement more obvious than this? Obviously we should do what it takes to stay alive. Obviously  we should get enough sleep every night. Obviously we should take vacations from our projects if we're getting burnt out. If it all is so obvious, than why do we keep forgetting to take care of ourselves?

Burnout is common in every profession. When we're hit with burnout, it actively harms us to continue our profession. Counseling and other mental health careers stress the importance of maintaining your work/life balance, and we still have therapists struggling with burnout. Careers in game design can be brutal and chalk full of deadlines, unpaid crunch, and compassion fatigue. How do I know? Well my favorite game series, Spyro the Dragon, was made by the company Insomniac. Can you guess why they chose this name?

Now how many of you have a career in game design? How many of you got burned out on your project when it was supposed to be a hobby? I can count at least one person who can attest to this, myself. For the past four months, I've been grinding to get Philistine's story done. While I did, I found myself hating the process, probably because I've been in development hell for SEVEN YEARS. It's still my baby, but I'm ready to be done. And sadly only the demo is ready to be released in February. I still have over 100k words to edit, alongside marketing the darned thing.

"Skill issue! Take a month off and stop complaining. It's so obvious". And this is sound advice. Problem is, I want to get the demo ready for February's next fest. And even if I pushed it back to June of 2024, I don't think I could. I fear that the more time I spend away from my project, the further and further back the release date is. I want to show that seven years amounted to something… Isn't the Sunken Cost Fallacy fun?

At the height of my distress, I lashed out.  One of the artists I was working with ghosted me, and now I had to get his assets redrawn. That's a net loss of $150 mind you. I tried to contain my temper. I tried to go on a walk to cool off, I tried to get my coffee in, but nothing work and I wound up going on a rant on a discord server. While I never said anything too outlandish and remained respectful of everyone present, I still got permabanned. On a side note, that day also taught me to treat mods like C'thulu..

This is just one of the many consequences of overlooking your mental health. Had I taken a month off, or simply stayed away from social media, I might still be a part of that server. I'd probably be a better coder if I did that too. Stress makes people crazy, and some mistakes can't be taken back. People can be slow to forgive, especially online. And if I accomplish anything with this blog post, it's helping you not make the same mistakes I did.

Below I've listed a few elements that have helped keep my head on straight. A lot of them seem obvious, but I still list them because we forget tend to forget the obvious more than anything else. If anything, see this as a quick review on how to keep your head from exploding.

• Friends - I've found that community is absolutely necessary for any indie developer, but colleagues you can depend on may as well be your life support. Had I exploded to a friend rather than that server, said friend would've understood or at the very least, not gotten me booted. I feel stupid because naturally after the incident, I reached out to all of my friends, telling them how silly I was. Let's be honest, indie developing can be a slow, thankless job that rarely bears rewards. You NEED colleagues to survive! You need someone to relate to when you feel like you're going insane! That camaraderie and empathy will help keep you going when times get tough. If a discord server is good at one thing, it's reminding you that you're not alone in your struggles.
• Journaling - I've been journaling ever since I got banned.. Heck, writing these blogs is a form of journaling and I underestimated how much they kept me going. Journaling is a much safer form of venting. it allows you to splurge all of your darkest demons onto a page for no one to see but yourself. If you're feeling sad, write about you feeling sad. The catharsis will help you come to terms with why you're sad, and what you can try doing. Some of my best ideas came from blogging. I'm a smart(ish) person and have the answer, but need to filter out the emotions to find it. Journaling as a whole is good for the psyche, and all you need to do is get a blank notebook or the DayOne app on your phone and type. The hard part is building the habit. It's easy to journal when we're going through Hell and forget about it after the fact. What helped me was dedicated two minutes a day to journaling and nothing more. Start small, than increase to five minutes a day. 
• Taking a break - This is so obvious, but I cannot state it enough! One project I was in collapsed because the director burnt herself and exploded on her team members. Workaholism is a real problem, especially in our hustle culture. But remember this, you're probably not a AAA developer. You're not forced to crunch to get a game out before Christmas. I imagine most of my readers are hobbyists just like myself, and if you aren't, will one day off kill your game? No, than what about a week, a month, two months, etc. I can't speak for everyone here, but taking even a night off works wonders.. So if you can afford to take a week or two off, take the vacation! Indie dev is a hobby for most people, and sometimes we need time away from our hobbies. Most people will understand but even if they don't, the captain takes the ship with him if he goes down. Remember this!
• Abandoning your Project - This is exactly what it sounds like everyone. Most indie projects fail. Game development is hard, and learning how to finish a project is harder than learning how to start one. And I'm not listing this to toot my own horn, I'm listing this because it's something I will be doing! That's right, Philistine has been going on for seven years and I don't want to spend seven more grinding out what Chris Z. calls a bowling ball. I will release the demo, run a kickstarter, and it fails, good game. I can always come back later or release it under a different medium (I really want it to be a fighting game!).Sometimes, we need to acknowledge that either our project is too ambitious, too expensive, or too advanced for us to direct. There's so much to learn in game design, and pursuing a magnum opus for the first game and expecting it to be a hit is a fever dream. Bad marketing will make the best of games irrelevant, your game's idea might not hit an audience big enough for it to sale, you might be releasing it when Baldur's Gate 4 comes out, and so on… However, the opposite can happen as well. Lion King was the side movie whilst Pocahontas was developed to win an Oscar. Minecraft was meant to be a hobby project that exploded. Projects with good intent and love flop all of the time, whilst more "niche" ideas go viral. Just because it's good to you, doesn't mean it'll be received well by the community. So if you're struggling to finish a project you've put hundreds of hours into, it might be time for you to hang in the towel and try again later. Or don't, both solutions work.
• STAYING OFF SOCIAL MEDIA!!! - This is in red for a reason…

I don't know how to conclude this blog, so let me just remind all of you that you are all awesome! You are all undertaking a hobby that most cannot pursue. You are pouring passion and creativity into a medium that changes lives. You are dedicated, intelligent, talented, and are a privilege to be around. No I'm not licking boots, I'm just reminding you of the obvious. Don't tell me you forgot…

If you enjoyed this blog, please leave a comment down below and tell me how awesome I am. If you'd like to support me, follow my itch.io OR play my prototype here https://totalleeaweaomw.itch.io/philistine. Let's become better developers together!