Dev Log 9: The Grind Continues

Just wanted to apologize for my disappearance as of late, believe it or not I had a few dev logs all typed up like the Chloe one all ready to send but I couldn’t bring myself to send it yet.

I’ve been in a bit of a writing rut (understatement) and I’ve endeavored to work on myself personally in my belief that those sort of ideas emerge from the self.

But interestingly enough, and in some forms a relief, I came to the conclusion that this rut and other general malaise was all, entirely, completely, unequivocally, due to my job.

It’s resulted in a lot of subtle effects too, where it ruins my skin condition and I end up scratching thinking about work, or that when I was hanging out with friends, I can’t help but talk about it and I could feel my pulse quicken and all of that.

There was also this feeling of detachment and lingering unease, where even as other good things happened to me, I never felt like I was there. I couldn’t connect to the moment or connect that moment to others. Sometimes things felt unreal.

Worse yet, all of my writing ideas took some variation of me complaining about work. While American Psycho was a good book, I hardly think it needs me to write a sequel. Yet any other idea I had, of the many on my sheet, I couldn’t connect to enough to create it.

Does this mean I hate my job? I don’t think so. Either I’ve become a master of self-convincing, or it isn’t entirely that. In fact as a misguided youth, (one of my story ideas was about some parts of my childhood,) I dreamed of what is more or less my current job. And I, nowadays, add to this story with a joke that I should have dreamed of being a ppp star instead. Either way, parts of the job I like, but it’s hard to say I don’t feel intense pressure.

I’m no stranger to pressure, and in the past I had some strategies for it, (mostly unhealthy and some enduring like a curse,) but one that comes to mind is to embrace the pressure, enjoy the challenge, and feed off of it. Sure it sounds fine, like a sportsman, but it’s a retooling of my entire train of thought. Hardly do I want to tie even more of how my mind and soul function to work. The weather is incredible, it’s sunny, and I want my mind to be there. It’s a beautiful day, about as close to heaven as I can imagine, and I want to feel it. I want to live in summer vacation, as I’m happy and have basically everything I could want except my job makes me feel this anxiety. Why would I want it to take even more, they don’t deserve that of me.

This, in combination of caffeine has disastrous effects for me. Somehow, it absorbs me. I live in the moment of work, and feel antsy. Recently, after a long work call, I ended up throwing things and kicking things in the office. I’m sure some would encourage my passion and go-getter attitude. In fact, I ended up working late into the night for no reason just to prove a point. My behavior because of work has at times frightened the people around me, but in a dark corner of my mind I enjoy it, as it proves that I was working and trying. Often I have intrusive thoughts of hurting myself and the others around me.

Some of it is due to a force of return to office. Working from home allowed me to insulate myself from stress. Hate someone? Just mute them and boot up a game. Having a bad work day? Sneak away and just stare at the trees and the sky. Listen to a song, write a visual novel. 

The time spent commuting especially just feels wasteful. Especially when I have to get up so early it ruined my weekly sleep schedule, and I waste the entire day even when I get back because I am tired.

Recently the push for it caused a great conflict where I was more or less threatened to go or be fired.

Honestly I detested most of my coworkers at one point, and detested the manipulative “friends at the office” culture (wish I had better words for it) where they encourage you to drink together and all. There is no authenticity there. How could you be real friends when it is all about profit and sales? How could it be real when it is encouraged (truthfully mandated) by suits (they refuse to wear suits actually, following the lead of Steve Jobs in personality and attire) (Seriously frightening how the few I talked to had the same personality, the same subtle disregard for individual people despite grand posturing about people in plural, or the tendency to excitedly spend long periods of time away from their family, while insisting it's better that way.)? How could it be real when you aren’t allowed to speak of real issues about work? I stuck to my own and for a year feared the consequences. That year itself was basically why I was unable to complete the game a year early, and only managed to finish it at my year end vacation, only to be thrown right back into my rut.

When I’m at the office I tuck myself into a corner if possible, and in fact I spend as much of it doing other things as possible. I managed to read through Animal Farm and Mrs. Dalloway, and am working through some other works, though I’ve been bouncing back and forth.

There’s some interesting parts to it, as I get to see the city, and in college, towards the end, I had one notable day where I strolled in the city, ordered myself an expensive ramen and had a shot of sake for lunch. In fact my face got red and I wore sunglasses late to hide my red face at a volunteer place. I’m sure they knew.

It was a beautiful day and I dreamed of the future, and dreamed of this independence in the city. However now, rather than independence, I feel trapped. They call it golden handcuffs. The powerlessness I felt, in spite of material success made me understand a little more about what I imagine Japanese culture to be like. All of the possibilities I had in mind (many of which I fulfilled) became dull. It is precisely work that prevents me from living these opportunities or enjoying them. Seeing my friends now as successful yuppies, I can’t help but talk, or complain about work, or reminisce, and it makes me feel old. When I was in college, I pretended to be who I was now, complaining about my jadedness as if it was something that showed my maturity, experience, and veteran nature.

Ha maybe I am talking myself into hating my own job.

And I could go on, and on, as I have behind closed doors, to friends, family, and unfortunate random bystanders. But I should stop.

At least I want to shift my focus to the harder problem in my mind, of how I intend to solve this. Outside of changing my job, I have always been convinced of the power of the self and the mind. How can I figure out how to make this affect me less? What is causing me to feel worse because of it? How can I fix that or fix my mind? In short, how can I care less?

Recently something I tried to pioneer after being introduced to the application was doing extensive note-taking in Obsidian. I was reading about all of these various note-taking styles, but what really appealed to me was that I seemed to have two modes, long form, or scratch notes. When it comes to writing, I either just spat out entire scenes in a sitting, or wrote random notes in places. With Obsidian (not necessarily shilling, it’s probably doable in any competent note-taking method), I was able to first start off with just writing down the scratch notes for whatever came in mind, but also to write slightly more detail to it when I felt like it, and could link or organize it together. 

The method people advertised was linking all of these small thoughts, and allowing the network to cause new ideas to emerge. It was similar to how I felt I naturally thought, or operated. Tying into the overall theme of this message, I actually tried applying this to work, an idea that came to me on one of my afternoon runs, and I have done so, to what I would say was considerable success. Managers applauded, salespeople appreciated the work, shareholders applauded. The caffeine fueled late night work sessions to implement the method brought me praise, but also was ultimately self destructive. Somehow, I feel totally different after it, and I hope that I can feel normal again…

So though trying to type up my thoughts on fighting games into many linked articles, and trying to port it to my workflow (a great excuse to be paid to tinker for 8 hrs a day) I had been preparing myself to use it for writing. Truthfully, I dislike such systematized ways of creating stories, such as working through stale frameworks, and structures we have seen dozens of times. Not that they aren’t almost tied to how people think in general, and very much used by the greatest authors, but at least I don’t write to a formula. And so I felt that tying my writing to this engine that I created would be formulaic, but at least I have discovered that this engine is flexible for me to create my own structures for writing instead of imposing one.

I saw some articles about organizing information and structure for writing within these notes. For instance, structured articles about characters, locations, ideas, etc. So I thought that I should port over what I had for Achlys, only to find out after that, that truthfully, the notes I had taken weren’t very good. I more or less had every detail memorized. And just as I had intended all those years ago, many of those ideas have returned to the mist. (If I had the heart for it, I guess I could try to write down all of those ideas into my new system.)

I’ve been disappointed in myself creatively. The rut has felt deep and personal, like the wellspring had gone dry and I had said all that I could. I have been reading lately, went through Mrs. Dalloway, which inspired an idea that hasn’t gone anywhere, and I wanted to read some Shakespeare. My hope was that through taking notes of various thoughts that come throughout a day, or things that I notice in works of literature, that I could build myself that library of ideas, and hopefully those independent pieces could create that would emerge. I have been a big believer in gestalt though I have not seen it work for me just yet.