A short update again as 2019 comes to an end, but a more optimistic one. I’m at around 4-6 hours of screen work a day at the moment, and the tingling in my head is remaining quite low. It has become apparent, also, that a lot of the remaining tingling is psychosomatic in nature, i.e. resulting from anxiety that had resulted from the concussion (!). In other words, doing screenwork has become associated in my head with tingling and anxiety, and thus causes that same tingling and anxiety, in a self-reinforcing cycle. However, I’m working with a really good specialist here in Sydney and I’m seeing good improvements at a reasonable speed; the last fortnight I have consistently hit that 4+ hours a day target without anything getting worse, and with a clear overall rate of decline in how much tingling I feel in my head. This is enough to maintain what I need to do for my job (alongside printing things off to read in hard copy, using text-to-speech, using speech-to-text, etc) but hasn’t afforded a lot of time, yet, for creative work or leisure screenwork. Nevertheless, as I write this I feel more optimistic than I have in months. I hope to post a 2019 year roundup in January instead of here at the end of December, and – of course – to get back to game dev as soon as possible. Hope you’ve all had a great holiday, or if the holidays are tough for you, I hope you’ve got through it as best as you can. See you all in 2020…
Glad to see an update, it’s heartening that your concussion recovery has progressed. It’s been a busy year, and I’m excited to see what you will achieve in 2020.
Thanks Emily, I appreciate the kind words! Things are definitely improving nicely now, almost back to a normal amount of screen work…
Hi Mark, sad to hear about your injury and glad to hear you’re improving! Take your time with the non-urgent stuff. I always enjoy reading your material and hearing your talks! Of course I’d like to see more of URR, but I’d rather see you getting into a steady and healthy work-life routine so that game design remains enjoyable instead of stressful. You’ve done amazing given all the obstacles in the past few months, and should be confident you can keep going!
Hey Aqua, thank you so much for this message! I really do appreciate you taking the time. I’m really glad you like the look of URR and I, too, hope I can start building that healthier balance. Once I have 0.8 out there’s quite a bit I want to write up about managing stress and ambitions and enjoyment and all these sorts of things, as it happens…