Life in Progress: January, 2025
My now page is growing too verbose. Instead, I’ll leave that page as a summary of what this/these page(s) will explore. I’ll start with a retrospective of 2024, up to now, the beginning of 2025. Maybe a bit of ambitions too.
2024 Retrospective
2024 was a significant year. The most notable change being that I was laid off in April. The remaining 8 months were quite nice. Before April, the year doesn’t feel much different or significant. From what I remember, I was stressed, unhappy, and overall dissatisfied with my situation. I was in the process of saving money to leave, when I was laid off and paid a generous (enough) severance. It’s nice when the universe solves problems.
Much of April and May was time spent decompressing. A bit too much drinking, from what I recall. I began receiving unemployment payments, and looking for jobs, though only half-heartedly. I was already decided I would start my own business. I also started my playthrough of Fallout 3.
At the end of May, I entered into a game jam, and made my first video game, L4-N-DER Training Simulator. One thing I do remember from the beginning of the year was speaking with some friends about trying to publish a video game on Itch. I made the game using Fennel and the LÖVE 2D game engine. It was incredibly rewarding, and a great learning experience. This game would be the first of 5 that I published on my Itch page this year.
Much of the summer was spent procrastinating starting my own business, and golfing. At the beginning of summer, in June, my grandmother passed away. She was about 2 weeks from her birthday, and so we round up and say she lived to 98. I spent some time helping to clean and clear up her house too. In the beginning of July I traveled to New York City to see Rezz. I also started properly exploring WordPress, and working to understand better the business I was still going to start. Around August, I began playing Morrowind for the first time.
In the fall is when I “got serious” about my business. I signed up for the New York State Self-Employment Assistance Program (SEAP), and through them signed up with SCORE to speak with a mentor and begin some small business training. I made my first WordPress site, for a relative (and for free). I also entered into 3 more game jams during this period, publishing TICSweeper (a Minesweeper clone mde with the TIC-80); RUNR (another TIC-80 game); and Escape The Crash. Escape was based on some work of mine over the summer to better understand and implement ray-casting in the TIC-80, which I then translated for use in Fennel and LÖVE. At the end of fall, my remaining grandmother severely injured herself, placing her in town through the end of the year. For the second year in a row, much of the holidays would be spent visiting a rehabilitation center (the same one as my first grandmother’s). Since the pandemic, I don’t think I’ve had a “normal” holiday season.
At the end of the year, I formally started my business, Niblock Technology Solutions, and began working on websites for two additional clients. Exploring this new world has been exciting, and there are a lot of new challenges. I love working with others to solve problems, and I’m looking forward to it. I’m also beginning work on a second business idea for a game shop. I want to build a community space for people to play games, enjoy company, and relax. Rounding the year out was my first playthrough of Deus Ex.
Now: January, 2025
Now. Plenty of plans and ambitions.
Easiest: I started a playthrough of Oblivion. Similar to Fallout 3 and Morrowind, my goal is to complete the main story and all DLC’s. This time around, I explored a new modding setup, using Lutris to install and manage the game (from GOG), and all the modding tools. For all three of these games I want to write up a brief retrospective about my experiences and any of the setup required for playing them on Linux. I already have two articles for Oblivion (Part 1, Part 2) detailing using Steam and Proton. I think the Lutris approach is a bit nicer.
Escape The Crash was fun to make, but it’s not done yet. I want to add in a floor, sound effects, a skybox, and objectives. And an actual ending condition.
Game-making in general I want to continue. I’ve started looking into the DragonRuby game engine. I also want to learn (more) Godot. I have no shortage of ideas, only my regular struggles with motivation and focus.
I’ve fallen into a few bad habits, and my health is worse for them. Its absurdly easy for me to put on weight, and equally as difficult to lose it again. At my heaviest I was over 320 pounds, and I’m now at a much better 240. I want to bring that number down to 200, but I also want to remove as much significance from that number as I can. It should be a metric, not a grade.
I’ve also set for myself several music goals. I want to get better at sight-reading, and so I have a goal to read a new piece of music each week. I also want to explore music production, and try making my own 45-60 minute mix.
There are the business goals. I need to have an income that supports my lifestyle, which means more clients and (hopefully) more businesses!
Finally, I want to write more. I think about writing, but rarely follow-through. As all my other ambitions develop, sharing them with the world will help me formally catalog my successes. Plus, if I have something useful and helpful to share, then I want to!