Motivation Boost
by Porter on Sep.02, 2009, under Flash Industry, Help
Regular Jobs Suck
As some of you may know, I got myself in trouble with the officers of the law exactly one year ago, yeah, those guys. To make a long story short, I was with someone who mixed tin foil and “The Works” toilet bowl cleaner. We went to my downtown area around 1 AM (bars were really active, lots of people around) and he mixed a few in a couple soda bottles and tossed them. These are for the most part completely harmless, but make a very loud explosion sound. In the end, we got caught by the cops and got ourselves in far more trouble than should have been possible for such a small stunt. I received a $300 fine and had to go to court. My charges for court were a felony charge for hoax explosives, and two misdemeanors. I ended up getting court diversion because I’ve never been in trouble with the law and seemed like an intelligent guy; this got me 1 year of probation, 40 hours of community service, and I had to meet with the community rep board to show how I was sorry and give back to the community. Where am I going with this you may ask, here’s where.
Being on probation sucks, but that’s not exactly relevant to the flash industry. Doing 40 hours of community service sucks too, that however, can be relevant. I used to be an MMO gamer back a few years ago, until one day while working at Pizza Hut in Idaho for $6/hr, I had an epiphany. I knew from that moment alone that I did not want to work at normal jobs for the rest of my life. Yeah I wanted to go to college, get a great job and have a life, but I didn’t know what for. This particular day it became very clear to me that I wanted to be a game designer, and that I was going to start working my ass off from that moment on to make that a reality. As you may know, this is exactly what I did, and I do in fact make games today for a living. I may not be the best at it right now, but I’m definitely learning the industry and well on my way to getting up there. As everyone knows, all motivation has it’s limits, it eventually wears off and things start to slow down. For me, this has been the last few months. However, because my probation was coming to an end in two weeks, I was forced to complete my community service hours or face some huge penalties.
During this 40 hours of community service I worked at my local Salvation Army, a thrift store that accepts donations and sells them back to the community for an incredibly low price. This may not sound so bad, but 40 hours of this just isn’t my cup of tea, at all. I go insane not using my mind, I start to get very angry and just have a hard time keeping myself in high spirits. This is the exact feeling I had working that day when my epiphany arrived in Idaho. Working this 40 hour week of mindless work around a bunch of people who clearly aren’t going in the direction I want to sucked, but it also brought back my motivation. Just like before, I was enraged and filled with a desire to escape the system that surrounds us all. I vowed to myself to get out of normal jobs and continue to support myself through my own business as soon as my community service was done. Saying such things may not sound to powerful in text, but if you have any idea how much negative emotion fills my body when I’m working a crappy job and doing 8 hour days, for a low wage, you would understand how much I mean what I say.
So that’s how things are going for me at the moment. I’m back in the mood to get work done like never before, and that’s exactly what I plan on doing. If you’re like a large majority of programmers or stay at home workers out there, you probably lack motivation yourself. It may sound crazy at first, but I highly suggest that if you are, you go out and work a crappy job at McDonald’s or Burger King, or toss yourself into 40 hours of community service and do 8 hour days. Put yourself through the reality that you’ll face if you don’t step up your game, maybe then you’ll have the same motivation I’ve found. That aside, I’m officially done probation and will be a free man with a clean record as you read this; now all that’s left to do is crank out some games with my newly found motivation.
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Being Your Own Boss | ArcadePortal
October 15th, 2009 on 10:56 am[...] If you think that this could be a possible issue for yourself, check out my other article titled Motivation Boost. In addition, I strongly advise you to change your desktop background to a little motivation, [...]
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Flash Indie Developer Part 3: Short list of risks | der hess
February 9th, 2010 on 3:54 pm[...] tasks… Porter wrote a nice blog post about being your own boss and the problems with the motivation. Please feel free to read [...]
September 3rd, 2009 on 5:49 am
Time for a celebratory game of Bomberman perhaps?
Just read this about ‘staying motivated’ in game design, you may also enjoy it:
http://bbrathwaite.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/how-do-you-stay-motivated/
September 3rd, 2009 on 7:48 am
Interesting read Porter. Thanks for sharing, and congrats on getting your community service done. I could use a bit of motivation myself for making games lately, although I’m not sure if I want to go out and do community service to get it. Maybe I’ll give playing some good games a go to get into the developing mood.
September 9th, 2009 on 6:37 pm
Congrats on finishing up your probation and the community service. I definitely feel like you do about the absolute hell that can be working a mindless, low paying job and I almost feel that strongly about working any job for a ‘boss’. I’ve been fortunate to be self employed now for over 5 years and hope I never have to go back to having a job working for someone else. Worse case, it better be a job with a game studio…
Anyway, enjoyed reading about your travails.
One other small note.. there is no way I can read your purple text it literal bugs out as I try to read it and gives me a headache within a minute or two. I’d like to keep reading your blog but I think I’m gonna have to paste your text into something friendlier…
Good luck with a new game too.. I loved Tower of Greed!
September 9th, 2009 on 7:15 pm
Many people have complained about the text, while other have said it’s perfectly fine. Clearly it needs to be changed, but I don’t know what to. I can change it in two seconds if anyone can suggest a good color that’s not white, I’ll do anything aside from white. Thanks for the input on the post, congrats on 5 years of self employment, that’s awesome.
September 10th, 2009 on 1:11 am
“This may not sound so bad, but 40 hours of this just isn’t my cup of tea, at all. I go insane not using my mind, I start to get very angry and just have a hard time keeping myself in high spirits.”
Happens to me too! I was moving from cybercafe to cybercafe and I keep wondering why I never feel occupied and can’t act nice to the visitors.
Color.. I love purple so it is fine but it might feels bright for others?
September 10th, 2009 on 10:33 am
So perhaps a darker purple that doesn’t jump out at the eyes so much?
September 16th, 2009 on 5:32 pm
Nice article, but I think everyone gets sick with their jobs and when you have nothing to think about apart from what you’re going to do when you get out of your shift this definately spurs on the need to make something good and give yourself a leg up out of the life you are living, but ultimately the one you don’t want.
December 10th, 2009 on 10:37 am
Did you delete my comment on this? Because if you’re going to be deleting things whenever you feel like it I won’t be contributing to your blog.
December 12th, 2009 on 9:23 am
I have no idea who you are seeing as you didn’t leave a name or email address, and no idea which post you think I deleted. I rarely (if at all), delete responses, so I don’t think so. I checked your IP against all other comments I have, and I can’t find any others. If you would actually leave me a way to respond, let me know what you said that is now gone, perhaps then I could help you. In general though, I don’t delete posts, so unless you swore up a storm (in which I generally just edit the text, not delete), you really shouldn’t have been deleted. Comment me again, with a proper email, or a proper description of what exactly you’re referring to.