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Clickbait Title: Top 10 Ways to Stay Productive During #CoronavirusSchoolBreak
In light of the current state of the world, I am going to do something a little different for this blog post. Ordinary, I am disdainful of blog posts of ordinary people doing ordinary things but in these "uncertain times" (every commercial's favorite way of saying "global pandemic"), some normalcy may be appreciated - like a soft blanket in the midst of a dark rainstorm. Besides, this is a post I have wanted to make for a while so now I am making it. I hope you find it insightful.
"I wish I could be more like you."
A few friends of mine have said such things recently, specifically about my time-management skills. A compliment, to be sure. I am often ahead on schoolwork -- a rarity in a school which prides itself on procrastinators and ensures the work-culture celebrates overworking oneself to death. The fact that I manage to be ahead on schoolwork is sometimes cited as a strength, but others see it as a weakness -- merely a relic of an anxious perfectionist. "Belle never plays games. Belle doesn't hang out with her friends. Belle is so uptight and naive and concerned with trivial matters. In X years, you'll care more about the friends you made and you won't care about your schoolwork at all." I often laugh it off or pout jokingly, call my friends "assholes", and move on with my life. And to those who aspire to be me, I assure them that they, too, could do what I do. But I think the truth is more complicated than either of these viewpoints contend.
There are some who say that all my opinions are nothing more than remixes and quotes of famous YouTubers. They're mostly right. They're all edgy memelords and Zoomers, so their opinions are similarly extensions of their experienced and remixed from somewhere. I haven't lived very much, they say, so I live through others.
Now, more than ever, anxiety and depression and fear is at all time high. People seem to say that a lot these days, but now there is an actual, global pandemic occurring and lawmakers are moving slowly and people are not listening -- meanwhile mass graves are being dug in Spain and New York has makeshift hospitals in Central Park. This combination of factors is enough to degrade the health of those even with resilient mental health into worry and constant fear. So, to be a game designer is both mundane and reassuring. Given that society does not collapse in its entirety, remote work will be feasible for me and I personally shall be safe, fed, and paid. But I am also not - doing anything particularly critical to preventing the virus. "Oh, but games and art bring hope to people!" It sure does. There is nonetheless a weird survivor's guilt associated with being a game designer and a student through this time. All I am expected to do is stay inside and keep working. I am doing that -- through my barely - functioning classes and personal projects. That, I can manage. I sleep when I want, I sit in a workspace separate from my bedroom, then I work all day and play all night. My life during this apocalyptic event is pleasant and privileged. Yet, I still feel the looming dread.
Those who claim to want to be more like me often suffer from worse mental health than me and see my perfectionism in themselves. They see me being on top of my schoolwork and come to the conclusion that I must be smarter, better organized, or simply a more efficient worker. I don't feel complimented when they say these things -- if you haven't noticed. I feel like I've just fooled them. Some might identify this as "impostor syndrome" but when I look for evidence to prove I have achieved anything... I have nothing. I was a straight - A student in high school and I give off the aura of having good grades (mostly because I value my education and learning over my grades) because I am satisfied with my less-than-perfect scores. Who wouldn't be when the grade cap is literally 95% and that's for outstanding work very few could feasibly hope to do within the scope of a class without throwing out all of one's other work? I am not "one of the few". Have I made particularly excellent games? No, I make weird games which barely function and certainly do not convey the grand ideas behind them. Does my writing pop off the page with electricity? No, it rarely even manages to communicate the emotions I feel. I am not an exceptionally kind person, nor am I exceptionally funny or pro-active or ambitious. I am not "the most" anything. That is not to say I am not proud of my accomplishments; My mental health has improved throughout college through constant hard work and experimentation. I have resisted my obsession with productivity much more so than in high school -- as I hang out with friends more than once - per - month (save for in this post - coronavirus world) and do things for fun. I write and draw regularly. I don't shy away from criticism as much as I once did. I have stayed in a happy long-distance relationship, I reconnected with high friends with whom I had arguments and made-up over them, and I have a good relationship with my parents. These are things I wanted for my life and ways I have succeeded. I am generally happy most days. But I do not think this are things worthy of others' admiration. I still feel the looming dread.
Sometimes, I wonder if all the things "they say" are just things that I fear...
Those who claim I am too much of a "goody-two-shoes" tell me to play more games and do more things for fun. I agree with them -- but only because I have learned, after a high school of perfectionism, that constant work lowers my productivity and not-playing games hampers my ability to make them. In the coldest terms possible, I take time to exercise, to cook and eat good food, to enjoy nights out with my friends, and, often barely, to play games. They all play more games than me -- from the extreme end of "literally constantly playing games and owning entire platforms-worth of physical games on shelves" to the more casual "beats most AAA titles released each month". Yet our school for game design and development does not seem to allow most people to play games -- either through overworking students or tricking students into overworking themselves with artificial grade difficulty and insane teachers who hand out favor coins to their best students. Every moment I take to write this blog post no one will ever read is a moment I could be "having fun". Every moment I take to write this blog post is a moment I could be taking to work on my big school project which is middlingly functional at best and horribly broken at worst. The looming dread creeps in...
"I wish I could be more like you."
These are the things I think as I spend every spare moment of my day listening to YouTube videos on game design, development, filmmaking, marketing, writing, and art. GDC talks, film theory, dev vlogs, authortube, and speed painting runs a 24/7 chatter through my mind as desperately try to figure out what they did to "make it" and to "be successful". I build parasocial relationships with these people and I feel more at ease. "I wish I could be more like you," I think to myself, as I work on an English assignment and someone explains how character much change from the beginning to the end of each scene -- and how the emotions should build to a revelation and catharsis. I think about how I can practice that, even as I write this blog post which is mostly-rant and has very little to do with being a game design student... Except, it has everything to do with being a game design student: The only thing we all know, old and young, honors - students and drop - outs, those who like games and those who strangely despise them, is the looming dread.
It is the dread you will "not make it". The dread that your game "won't be any good". The dread that "it will never sell". Even worse, what if it sells and it is garbage? You will have tricked them. You will be a fake. You will be unloved and unseen. The pandemic makes things no different.
But that is perhaps the beauty of all this: I am not feeling this alone. I am not the first to feel these things. I will not be the last. I am not feeling it the most or the least. And in this way, the looming dread becomes mundane. It is a fight everyone fights alone, but they're all fighting it.
At the end of the day, all I can do is march forward. If I fear I am "not good enough", then I work to shore up my weaknesses. If I gain a crippling nervousness about "wasting time", then I find the most soothing way to waste it. (In this case, I wrote a blog post.) I work on my games. I post to Instagram. I write my little stories and I film my doll movies. My nihilism tells me none of this matters, so I might as well enjoy it. My time-management tells me fear is a waste of time. And the mental fortitude I have developed in fighting off mental illness reminds me to be empathetic and kind to myself, to be patient, and to play more games. I fight off the looming dread.
Dear whomever everywhere who has said, "I wish I could be more like you." The "you" whom you admire has said this too. You are already like them. You are not alone in fighting the looming dread.
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