I’ll Take You Back to the Start

I honestly feel like I’m going nowhere. I feel like I am not making any progress. I feel like I’m living in a Coldplay song.

Looking over some of my unfinished stuff while muttering to myself about things I not done, I seem to forget how much work I actually have done.

To be honest this is a short update of my life as it is at the moment, to the few that keep up with what I’m up to.

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I’m back at University, studying again. It’s amazing how old you can feel doing something among people only slightly younger than yourself. The vim, ambition, joie de vivre; increidbly cloy.

The hectic struggle to work on assignments, work, and work on other commitments and promises can take a toll on a person. Trying to keep the plates spinning is making the balls I have even harder to juggle. I am getting there; past the fits of anxiety, the tiredness, the oppressive feeling of not having enough time; I am getting there.

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I may still be coding occasionally on personal stuff.

. . .

. . .

I tell a lie. I barely have time to even think about Ludo in the past. . . 5 months, 6? How long has it actually been? I’m not too sure, but It definitely has been a while. My creative mind seems to be arrested by other matters that seek my attention, trapped in a jail of responsibility, committment and promise.

My very nature is to not be one to say no to a challenge. The goal of at least trying makes it easy to fall in way over my head.

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So I’m back where I started when I began this site. I have a vision of what I wish to acomplish, I am tied down by specific factors that make this vision seem like an earnest dream out of reach that will require time and effort I don’t seem to have enough of, and a fear that I wouldn’t be able to accomplish it.

Before, I wanted to make a game to tell myself I was capable in spite of the feeling of inadequacy.

Now, I want to make a game to tell myself I am capable despite the uncertainty of how attainable the goal can be.

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I’ve flip-flopped on what it should look like, this game of mine.

What will it look like?
What will it sound like?
How many levels will there be?
Will there be a story, characters, over-arching theme?
How about you make it more like D&D, with stats and diceroll based events?
. . .
Should I even call it Ludo by this point?

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Nobody said it was easy,
Oh it’s such a shame for us to part.
Nobody said it was easy,
No one ever said it would be so hard.
I’m going back to the start.

Coldplay, The Scientist

This song was one I used to play repeatedly whilst on lonesome, miserable days. The lyrics portray a sad, dying romance that is indesperate need of revival.

For me, this song in it’s limping melancholy, is about trying to find love in something you’ve lost passion for and justifying the need to keep going.

The thing is, I love games. I love gaming. I love exploring mechanics, casually easing my mind by being something other than my pityful self for a while.I love triumphing in breaking a milestone, that feeling of acomplishment.
And I love programming. I love the puzzle of it, the poetry of it, the thrill of bug-hunting and seeing the glorious endpoint of it.
I love music. I love emotions without words, a spirit not confined by language.

I love all of this. . . The passion is just gone.

Take me back to the start. I want to go back to wide eyed naïveté. I want to go back to self confidence and the, ‘Say no to saying no’ attitude, but just for myself. Sometimes, in life, you have to be a little bit selfish.

. . .

I’ll get there.

. . .