It’s been nearly a month since I posted. I wouldn’t have realized that if my previous post wasn’t titled “Pocky Day”, which was on November 11th.
It’s rather unprecedented of me to not update in such a long time. The main reason for this is that I’ve been incredibly busy earning a living.
For the past few months, I’ve been working as Art Director on Sky Pirates of Neo Terra. It’s a 3d racer game based on the comic book, the artwork done by Camilla D’Errico. She’s a local artist and a world-famous one at that. It’s pretty awesome because I get to work with her, and chat with her almost every day. I’m sure it’s every Camilla-fan’s dream. ^_^
When I get home from a long day’s work, and in addition to doing some household chores, I have a few options for the meager 2 or 3 hours left in the day – I could work on my art, play some video games, surf the internet, work on other clients’ jobs, or update my blog.
Usually, since I’d been painting all day at work, doing art isn’t very high on my priority list. The fact that I’ve had ANY work done in the past few months is a surprise already.
I usually want to play some video games. But according to my tracking, I’ve only managed to put in about 10-15hrs worth of gaming per month. This is sad (or not), since I usually average about 35hrs per month of gaming.
Working on my blog hasn’t been a very high priority either, since I don’t really have much content to talk about. The majority of my day is just work, sleep, work, sleep. I don’t have time to read up on stuff, watch some anime, or find inspiration in my currently uninspiring life. (not entirely true, since working on an anime-based game is awesome). Not to mention I do daily facebook posts anyway. I had thought about doing another blog post compiling most of my facebook updates, but not today anyway.
So I’m left with either surfing the internet (which happens a lot no thanks to facebook) and working on my other clients’ projects. Sometimes, that is what happens. Kinda sad, but for right now, that’s what’s going on.
It feels to me like my lack of attention to my blog is going to directly reflect my site’s ranking, and the attention it gets from my readers and search engine results, but the numbers aren’t important, I guess. The biggest thing is just having that awareness around, and making sure my friends and readers know that I’m still alive, just busy as f*ck. 😐
Is there a lesson to be learned here?
Everyone loves lessons right? It adds value to everything that’s being written. The one most important lesson to take away from all this is that priorities matter. If I were to say “f*ck it, I’m just gonna blog.” what will happen? I’d have no money coming in. My games would be left unplayed. Of course, blogging is important too, but life is, also.
But that doesn’t mean the end. It never should. We are human, and therefore, we are capable of coming up creative solutions to the problem, because we are adaptable.
For example, I spend a little bit of time each day doing “mini-updates” on facebook with things that I find interesting. I help others learn how to draw via facebook now. I’ve never felt closer to my readers than right now because of the much more immediate and interactive ways to reach my readers and fans.
I have noticed less comments on my blog, but that means little compared to the number of impressions I get per day per post on facebook, and the number of comments and interactions from it.
Well, enough talk for now. Obviously, I don’t even have time to come up with a new splash screen or add any attention-retaining eye-candy. I’d better get going. I’ve still got a lot of gaming -er I mean, work to do.
I… missed you, dood! :<
I haven't had much time, with finals and all- it's a real pain!
Don't burn yourself out, bro!
Thanks buddy! 😀
I’ll try not to burn myself out. Gotta keep doing what’s most important and prioritize, and adapt.
Best of luck with your finals! Let me know how it goes! 😀
It’s great to see there’s an update on your blog buddy! I could tell you must’ve been extremely busy lately due to the slight inactivity. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a good thing so long as you’re keeping busy and being productive ;). Too much talk, too little action is a dangerous combination.
Only 2-3 hours to spare, eh? That sounds a bit like myself as of late. Although, I know for certain I’m not as busy as you are right now (honestly, and as terrible as it sounds, I wish I was though haha). You’re going up in the world, and that’s a great thing :).
I mean, hell, I brought with me a ton of stuff to do during my trip, but I’ve only touched an insignificant portion of it. I must say that I feel slightly ashamed, but I suppose the good thing is that I still say ‘I ‘WILL’ get these done in the near future’ rather than ‘I wish I could’. I’m sure you can relate with how such language can be catastrophic.
I suppose the greatest issue I’m dealing with now is the constant and unavoidable interruption that happens both in the digital and real realms. I begin to work on something that’ll take me several hours and once I get about 15-30 minutes in *BAM*! An interruption happens in one form of another. It’s not so bad except when you want to get back into it and the original inspiration dissipates from losing concentration.
I don’t know if you suffer from the same plague that I do, but I honestly hope not for your sake :). I mean, it can be as simple as someone breaking my concentration from talking to me even. Something like that happens and my productivity can go from top notch to bottom dweller in mere seconds >,<.
Anyways, I had best go to bed as it's quite late right now :). Keep it up buddy and take care! Also, as Altsune said, "Don't burn out!"
lol “slight inactivity” is an understatement.
Yes, be careful what you wish for, as there are upsides/downsides to EVERYTHING… even winning the lottery!
I think that everything is an opportunity cost. You may not have gotten a whole lot done in terms of art or whatever, but you have done other things, so don’t discount that! Do what is best at the time. You’re 2000 miles away from home, so do what you should be doing at 2000 miles away from home, rather than what you normally do at home!
I know what you mean with the loss of concentration part… did you know statistically, that it can take upwards to 2 hours to get back to your peak of concentration on a task? This is especially true with programmers! I suffer from the same problem too. I blame my spouse for that… and the internet.
Thanks for writing!
*Slight inactivity* isn’t so much an understatement in my opinion buddy ;). You’re still quite active on FB, G+, and twitter in my opinion.
And in all honesty, that’s enough for me :). Since you have such limited time if anyone was not appreciative about it I’d think they’d be a big jerk haha. I definitely appreciate you taking even a few seconds out of your day for us :).
I was actually talking more about the mentality rather than wishing ;). How simply saying ‘I wish’ and ‘would like to’ can give you ways out. Speaking with more concrete speech like ‘I am going to…’ or ‘I will do..’ I’ve noticed have helped me get things done. I guess it’s more about a mental sense of commitment?
Essentially, I was saying, “watch what you say” since our words literally have power to affect what happens :).
Ahh yeah I’ve heard about that statistic from another friend of mine from Sweden. I can definitely say there’s some truth in it for sure. Funny enough, he was also a programmer haha :D.
I’ll do my best with what I can do :). I just hope that it’s enough hehe. The end of this trip is neigh so it won’t be for much longer.
Thanks for writing back :D.
that’s such a familiar picture, seen that drawing before somewhere, left a great impression. Did you do that Radiant?
lol no, I don’t have time to draw something like that. 🙂
It’s a pic I grabbed from somewhere for another “I’m busy!” post a while back, which I had modified with a “overwhelmed” face.
Whoa, that game seems radical~
Hope you get some time to try it out. o 3o
I’m in the same boat as you man, except instead of art, it’s I write all day, but I write at home as well, just not for my blog. But yes, what happened to time for video games!? I’ve got so many games still in shrink wrap, or I just checked out for an hour or two and never got back to again. Hello, Skyrim, I barely know you. Never been all that social though, so kind of lost a lot of connection by not doing much with FB, Twitter, or Google+.
Anyway, just wanted to say, I feel your “ugg I’m neglected my blog” pain. And, keep on trucking!
I was about to call in the Canadian military and send out a search party just to make sure you were ok. 😀
I just check out the website and oh man i love the characters! Esp Wurl and Vanwyn, how many of those did you actually draw? And you should totally do some fan art on them hehe 😛
Take care man!
I understand what you are saying, I was just made realize I have a similar situation. I’m just doing too much nowadays, work, photography, blogs, games, etc. and something had to give. In my case it was games, compared to the ridiculous amount of games I managed to finish last year this year it’s not even half of that.
I find lately my problem is not time nor lack of interest but that my attention is split among too many different things and arbitrarily neglect some in favor of others.
I know we loves anime so much, but please don`t overdo it. Well, there is burnout that must be avoided. But it`s still nice to see that you`re still alive (especially at facebook)^^.
As your fans and stalkers, we (so do i) don`t want to hear that you sick again like last year (~kyaa).
Good luck with live! Yay~
Too bad I don’t frequent facebook often; I already have too much stuff to follow here and there unfortunately, or that I have to drop them in order to refocus on other aspects or places.
That feeling of how there are a lot of stuff that we want to do but have little time for it can be frustrating. With technology aiding us in many ways it also makes us more occupied in different ways at the same time. In a way some stuff has become simplified for us, but we also complicate (other) things at the same time.
Having to work with little time to do others for a long time can be tolling, but then finding a balance on doing what you need and what you want is often easier said than done. Reading from your previous posts this is not the first time you write about this ‘issue’ (and the related posts at the bottom of the page reflects on this too). Nevertheless I hope you’re still doing alright there.
I too find myself hard to keep up with everything – be it my hobby, real life, or other minor stuff. Sometimess there really is too much going on, and it’s understandable sometimes we just want to say to ourselves “stop” and want to give everyday life a break. Well, life has peaks and troughs I suppose. Hope we’ll get to see you more often some time in the future!
Everyone has the same problem. My blog has seen a decrease in the number of posts too since I’ve been helping out people with various things and I got back into gaming. When the weekend comes around, I try to get as many things done as I can.