I'm going to be frank—I've basically been unmotivated for the past two months.

Went from trying my best to schedule and reschedule tasks, cramming everything in through literal sickness and injury, even if it meant sleeping significantly later or consuming all my free time—to scarcely trying at all. That primer extreme definitely wasn't great for health, but the point is—I was making progress. And now I'm not!

I did think about whether or not I should actually write this since it's yet another "it's not done yet" post lol surprise...but then decided that when I do achieve success in the future, it's good to know that this kind of thing happened too. I'm also completely aware of the reasons why I'm slacking, and will cover them below; I just need to figure out an actually effective way to stop.

Why

Two main reasons, though the one of significantly greater impact might surprise you.

The lesser reason

There is one time-wasting activity I have decided to introduce into my life against my better judgement: gaming. Specifically, fighting games.

A few particular factors made me go "welp I guess I have to buy this now", and while I did first plan to limit my hours each day to just one or two—which I did actually follow for the first week or so—there were several hours that I spent on not playing the game, but researching several aspects of it, that I didn't account for. Watching tourneys, looking up character measures, looking up frame data, watching tourneys... And the better I got, the more I wanted to keep winning, which meant the more time I needed to research and test things out and the more interested I became in watching fucking tourneys holy asdjakshdlasd can you stop being so hype?

I also want to make a fighting game. Actually playing one helps. Watching design documents and actually concentrating on them instead of drawing whilst listening to them in the background helps. I've wanted to make games for a long while now—actually graduated with a specialization in game development—and a lot of times I type plans into the night, have so many ideas where I finish writing and think "I'm a fucking genius" ha...but none of it is going to amount to anything if I can't even get this comic out first.

Given the clear amount of time I've been putting into this, the reason why it's not the bigger factor in my lack of comic motivation is because there were several weeks where I had just lost interest in it. There was even a whole month where I didn't touch or look up anything about it at all; I've had the game for 5 months now, and I've got just over a 100 active hours on it. Didn't touch it the several days I spent on and off writing this blog post either. And yet, even on the days where I didn't indulge in it, I still barely made progress. And that's because of...

The greater reason

Scheduling, and the fact that I'm not working on the comic itself.

It's easy to schedule and measure progress when I'm working on a comic page; when I finish a panel, I've finished 1 out of x total panels and added +1 to the progress bar. Each one I complete brings me closer to a defined, concrete end goal, and there is a clear order and separation between tasks. Thus, each task only needs to say "Rough page 1", "Lineart page 2", etc.

But that's not the case for the assistant package I've been working on for the past three (!!!) months now. Firstly, it's hard to define the end goal; I could always add more here and there, in both the number of tasks and amount of detail within each task, and have in fact added a shit ton of things from my initial inception of it as I realize more and more things that an assitant would need to know. Adding +1 to a progress bar that keeps on growing feels, and sometimes is, the same as not making progress at all, especially when that +1 in and of itself can be a huge amount of work.

Secondly, because there's no order to anything here—working on a character reference has no effect on me introducing a 3D background, making a shading tutorial, or writing down necessary lore—so any time I don't feel like working on a particular task (which is regretfully often), I can choose to work on something else. I can start a million things, never finish them, and not be blocked in starting a million more. Everything has the same priority; nothing needs to be done first. And thus—nothing is done first.

While I did task everything out, I had avoided putting those tasks in my actual schedule; what if I don't want to work on that thing that day? It's not important to do 'this exact task', so I want to give myself the flexibility to do anything else—and that 'anything else' becomes 'things unrelated to the assistant package'. The fact that none of the work is going to make it to public eyes is also not the greatest motivator, despite me knowing full well that I need to finish it in order to start publishing anything.

My lack of self-control

I have high self-awareness. I know when I suck ass and need to do better. Unfortunately, just knowing this almost never translates to taking action.

When actually working on the comic, I can spend several hours straight just drawing or planning, thinking that I'll go get some water or finally go to the washroom after just finishing up "this little bit more". Four hours later, neither of those things has happened. I have a timer set every 20 minutes to remind me to take a break—but I just close it on reflex, or forget to turn it on entirely.

Is this diligence? Am I just godlike at putting in the effort when I get into the zone?

No lol I just can't stop myself. No matter how much I know I should.

I can be just as diligent in wasting time; thinking "I'll read just one more chapter", "I'll watch just one more video", etc. only for that 'one more' to be closer to 10. My sleep sched is also fucked for the same reason; I've managed to mostly fix it now via prioritizing it over everything else, including comic work, but for a long, long time, seeing 6am on the clock was just daily life. I have the Flux app on to turn my screen yellow when it's late in order to try and coax myself to sleep, but I've gotten so used to it by now I can just flat out ignore it.

Attempting to fix it

• Realizing I have a problem ✔️
• Planning out measures against those problems ✔️
• Actually taking those measures ⚠️

I'm trying!

For the past three weeks I have been doing mostly well on my sleep sched. It's recently been dipping into the 4am sleep times again, but at least I now manage to employ enough mental power to tell myself that I've fucked up and need to sleep right now. Unfortunately, this drive is nonexistent during the 'earlier' hours of 1am - 3am, as can be evidenced by my current typing into the night at 1:27am like nothing's wrong.

I've also tried to encourage leaving the screen every 20 minutes by telling myself that all I need to do is two jumping jacks. This takes no time, allows me to go right back to work without losing my train of thought, and when I actually do leave the screen I always do more than just two. It feels good to stretch out, good to look away from the blue light once in a while—but this is definitely not something I would actually follow if I told myself I had to do more than this bare minimum. The problem is...

I keep forgetting to set the alarm lol I've just gone too long without it.

My ability to put things into action is also trash

Even without reading this post, my inability to complete nearly anything in the (sometimes generous amount of) time I give to myself is a good enough indicator of this problem, but to put things into perspective: creating this website, drawing a few episodes, completing 3D models and doing all this assistant/prep work—is honestly the furthest I've ever gotten. In any of my personal projects.

I've had previous projects planned for years upon years with hundreds of pages of plans; some of which I've given up on, and a select few others that I intend to get to once I finish this comic fuck when will that be.... I have enough confidence in them to say that there are some amazing ideas in there...but as mentioned earlier in this post, all ideas that don't take actual form are ideas that amount to nothing. Sometimes I feel that I'm glad I waited things out, so that I could smooth and iron out all the fine details, fix any plot holes, etc. but doing all that is, in itself, a waste of time if I don't actually turn those ideas into reality.

Even now, I'm writing down and sometimes even brainstorming all these fighting game ideas when the existence of the game depends on the completion of the comic—the comic that hasn't even published its first episode yet. I'm definitely not saying I should just forget those ideas instead of noting them down and fleshing them out, but it would just also be really disappointing if they're never released in playable form. I want this game to happen. I want this comic to happen. But I've wanted my previous projects to happen too. What am I trying to say in this paragraph? I don't know. Maybe I'm just looking for a way to translate my desires into action.

But it's fine (mostly)

I mean, having mental deficits is not fine, but at the very least I'm trying to improve. There were months were I worked day and night on the comic, just as there are months now where I don't. While it's definitely not ideal for comics that require a stable release schedule (or in my case, releasing it at all), for the single-person team that I am right now, with other responsibilities and a life—it's normal.

And so, it's fine. People don't start off with perfect time and project management skills, and some will take longer than others to find what suits them best. This post is really just an acknowledgement that this kind of thing happens; and the most important thing is that I'm not giving up.

Intention isn't everything, and I'm really just chipping off at the iceberg of necessary work here, but at least something's being done. Eventually, I'll find the drive to take off bigger chunks again.

SO LOOK FORWARD TO MY NEXT "I'M FUCKING DONE WOOHOO 🎉💥" POST!!! I'M GOING TO CONCENTRATE FULLY ON THE PACKAGE AND NOT POST UNTIL THAT'S DONE!!! AND IT SHALL BE—hopefully WITHIN NEXT MONTH!!!!!! ALL CAPS MEANS IT'S REAL!!! 🏋️🏋️🏋️