letting myself wander pt. 2 - the wandering

Pt. 1 is here

So here I am, a bit lost, very frustrated, unable to really make any headway forward. I broke the problems down into pieces, and examined the simplest possible way to state the solutions.

1. I'm shit at development now -> I need to get better at development -> Practice.
2. I'm shit at art and design and aesthetics -> I need to get better at art and design and aesthetics -> Practice.
3. I don't know what I want to build -> ???
4. I'm not good at business -> I need to get better at business -> Practice by starting and sticking to something -> I don't know what to build, though

I thought to myself, okay, I have some direction here. I just need an answer to what I'm going to build, and then I can base my development practice and art/design practice off of that. Well, the thing I can build, I'll base that off making a business! I just need a domain that I can market and a twitter account and a...

NO. STOP.

I almost immediately fell into the same problems as before. So, I took the opposite approach.

The wandering protocol

For the next ~6 months, I am not going to build things for a business. I am going to build to explore. The moment I try to monetize any project, I set it down.

I am going to build things that look beautiful, and really focus on the aesthetics of it. I'm also working on pen and ink and digital art on the site, so this helps.

I'm also going to work on stuff that I've never worked on, namely game development. I've always said that I want to give game dev a shot and I just have never let myself do it.

I'm going to dive deep: no "inch-deep project to brag about working on something that sounds cool on paper." Actually deep diving into game development or malware development or AI research or whatever else.

I'm going to let myself wander. If I want to move to a different project, I'm going to let myself do it. Last week I did Godot dev for an AI project. Today, I am starting a game development project. If I get really into a project for a few weeks, I let myself do that.

I'm allowed to build things that are released to the public, but I'm not allowed to build things for the public. Releasing this game is fine. Building the game to make money on it is not. Releasing the research is fine, building the systems for the research is not. This isn't "build in public for the sake of gaining public notoriety."

I'm allowed to build with AI, but much more sparingly. Asking how to build something to get an example and then rebuilding it myself, that's fine. Saying "hey, here's my project, build it for me" is not.

The purpose here is to actually improve on my art, improve on my development and refocus on actually upskilling instead of just building for its own sake.