TRIPLE VISION GAMES

So this getting up earlier lark has been a little more successful.

I think perhaps the Sun has been a big help, dragging me out of bed.

But, so far, I haven’t really put the extra time towards being more productive.

Sure, I’m one step closer to saving the galaxy in Mass Effect, but that’s hardly a worthwhile endeavour.

I’ve read up a lot on game design, but I feel I’m too impressionable at that time in the morning. I find myself agreeing with one view and then agreeing with the conflicting view and then struggling to reconcile what that actually means to me.

So, for now, I’m calling the experiment a success. At least in that I have more time available to me, even if I need to work out now how to make better use of that time.

More on that later.

Another downside to conditioning yourself for earlier starts is waking up at 5:30am on a Sunday and not being able to get back to sleep.

The upside of this is I have 2 new prototypes testing mechanics I wanted to try out!

At the end of my first week of getting up earlier, what have I learned?

Well, firstly I didn’t do a very good job of getting up earlier, but we’ll attend to that next week.

Secondly I learned that it is much harder to wake up in the morning when you’ve had a drink the night before. Even just a little.

While this isn’t exactly breaking new ground in the research of human sleeping patterns, it is something that I hadn’t really considered yet found it to be quite the obstacle to what I was hoping to achieve.

So week 1 was pretty much a failure. I didn’t get up much earlier and wasn’t really in an alert enough state to be particularly productive.

Next week, I will have 1 hour extra. I will be putting that hour to good use. More on that next week!

Well, make that 20 minutes. That’s right. Morning 1 of the experiment has already ended in failure. My dreams were just too accomodating, I just couldn’t quite make my excuses and leave.

So I was late for myself.

Even so, 20 minutes earlier meant I have time to make egg and mushroom for breakfast (and eat it slower than my normal indigestion inducing rate), catch up on twitter and write this tiny little blog post.

If I can do that in 20 minutes, in 30 I could take over the world!

On a side note: I do not feel tired. I feel productive!! Okay, time for work.

I’m worried.

I’m worried that I don’t have enough time. I don’t mean that I’m getting old and I’ve got a bucket list burning a hole in my back pocket, more just in that days just seem to pass me by.

It’s after 9pm and all I did today was wake up, go to work, less than an hour at the gym and then home to shower and eat tea. I’ve washed the dishes and now I’m tired.

I’m tired at 10 past 9 in the evening and I’m not even 30 yet. Is there something wrong with my genes? I got up at 6am, so I don’t even have the excuse that it’s been a long day.

There were so many things I wanted to do that I simply don’t feel that I have the energy to do right now: work on ‘By Candlelight’, fiddle about on Reason to finally compose that punk/ukulele/chiptune masterpiece I’ve been working on in my head for the past couple of years, play Mass Effect (I’ve heard it’s good and there’s 3 of them).

At least I’m writing this. I haven’t even written a proper post on here so it feels good to at least speak, even if it is just electronically and to nobody.

BUT WHAT REALLY ANNOYS ME ABOUT THIS is that I’m worried about not having enough time. Not having enough time to do what I want to do with my life seems like it’s something I can’t do anything about. If I can’t do anything about it, I don’t want to worry about it. So why am I?

The I got thinking about “why don’t I have enough time?”

And the answer is that I have the time, I get home from work at 6pm on most nights, but I’m usually so exhausted when I get back from work that I can’t seem to muster the energy to function. Sometimes even rational thought is a stretch (as can be witnessed from my moronic evening tweets).

So that bring the next question, “why am I so tired?”

Do I get enough sleep? Yep, pretty sure I do! Last night I fell asleep listening to a podcast at around 10pm and woke up around 6am with the plugs still in my ears, Andy Moore’s voice talking about Steambirds (those Infinite Ammo podcasts are LONG) and my iPhone battery as good as dead.

8 hours. Of good sleep. Good, uninterrupted, happy dreams about hidden rooms in my house (wasn’t my house, stupid dream get your facts right), sleep.

So, thinking about all of this, I’ve decided to try something out. A little half arsed experiment.

I think the reason I’m tired is because of my job. I would, not for 1 second, pretend that I had a difficult job. Soul destroying, maybe, but I’ve had worse in that sense too. But it’s a busy job and it is exhausting. It’s the mental fog of fatigue where you just can’t think at all. This happens most days. This is why I walk the 50 minute walk home through some pretty shitty areas just to try to clear my head.

So, what’s the experiment?

Well, I’m glad you asked (if you made it this far through this post I’m taking it you give a shit about why I’ve written the damn thing).

I’m going to test out the theory by getting up earlier every day. I’ll start at half an hour, see how that goes until the end of this week. Next week we’ll try an hour. Maybe 2. You know, really push the boat out.

Everything I want to do, I’m going to do before I even go to work. I’ll try and blog at least once a day in the morning or evening to let you know how it’s going. I want to see if this makes any noticable difference to how tired I am. I don’t plan on going to bed any earlier, so I’ll be adding an extra 2 hours to my day. Potentially more productive hours than what I’m used to too.

Right, well, back to the sleepy self pity and worry at least for this evening.

if you made it this far, thanks! Also, this is my first real attempt at any kind of post like this so genuinely thanks for reading and I’m sorry for any typos and also that I don’t really know what on earth I’m talking about.

The bee game now has music! I made bird sounds from a synth :D

Try my Ludum Dare game please! http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=12495

Good progress on my game for Ludum Dare entry. 12 hours 45 minutes to add GAMEPLAY!!! I know what I want the game to be I just don’t yet know how to do that. Flashpunk tutorials here we come!