I’m trying something new with weightlifting. I’m trying to work in some strong lifts into my volt routine.

Today I set new pr with a 225 lb squat and 3 reps before hitting the climbing gym. Next time I’m going to see about working in some strong lift 5×5 or 3 x 5 lifts into my routine.

I’m curious to see if this strategy pays off. I could see myself not getting long term gains this way or just burning out. For now I will use both apps.

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten some good rock climbing in. Maybe a week or two. I’ve been focused on other things lately. Mostly lifting and pole dancing

I don’t think that’s why I haven’t gotten to the gym, though. The real issue has been my social anxiety from the pandemic.

I’m hopeful that next week I will be able to schedule some climbing sessions that I will have the confidence to attend. If I could go three times next month that would be great.

I met someone through a friend of a friend and they asked me what WNBR Portland was like so I wrote this story:

WNBR Portland was basically the most life-affirming experience I’ve ever had. I’m pretty sure it permanently changed my philosophy and outlook on life.

It was in June, so the weather in Portland was amazing and the day was super long. My friend Dan and I biked from our hotel to the park where the ride was supposed to start. We had intended to do some mountain biking that weekend too and we were both mountain bikers so we were both on our rather expensive mountain bikes.

When we got to the park at 8pm it was honestly a little bit surreal. It was a rather beautiful park in an affluent area of town. And there were just a handful of people in the park. Most of whom were completely naked.

My friend Dan had to use the restroom when we first got there, so I was basically alone in a park with a bunch of strangers. Who were naked.

It was taking Dan a while to get back so I was feeling kind of awkward fully clothed. I made a donation to one of the causes they were raising money for, WNBR being a nonprofit, and waited for him to get back.

Eventually, I started to feel awkward being the only one around wearing clothes, but I didn’t want to weird out my friend Dan by being naked when he got back. I decided that it didn’t really matter and took all my clothes off so I would feel more comfortable.

Dan came back. Since neither of us wanted to make things weird, we just acted like everything was normal and he took off all his clothes too.

More and more people started pouring in, the most interesting thing was that a lot of people had extravagant costumes. There were people dressed as robots, people dressed as videogame characters. ETC. Oh, and when I say dressed, I mean that they were naked but with props and hats and whatnot.

At one point someone approached me and handed me a flyer detailing all of the afterparties. Some of them were at bars. Some were clothing-optional, others were not. Most interestingly, at the bottom of the pamphlet was a sentence that said “To find the secret afterparty, follow the tiki head”. I didn’t think too much of it at the time.

At this point, the awkwardness set in. I was surrounded by strangers, completely naked, and wasn’t sure exactly how to act natural. Dan dashed off at this time because he was feeling the same way. Don’t worry about him though, he comes back into the story later.

It was then that I saw there was a tent where people were getting painted. You just had to make a donation and they would paint you. So I pitched in 100 dollars to their cause. I think it was another environmental thing.

I got an intricate paint job with a lot of spirals.

It was at this point that I wanted to meet up back up with dan but there were now 10,000 + people in the park. Finding one naked person in a crowd of naked people is not an easy task.

From there, things got a little blurry in my memory. I was stone-cold sober but intoxicated by the feeling of freedom that was overcoming me.

At some point, the ride started. It must have about 10 miles. We biked all throughout portland at night. Bikes glowed beautifully with all the lights they were decorated with. Crowds of people cheered loudly and encouragingly. You might even say they cheered with acceptance.

There were a few stops along the route where they had DJs and people were dancing to EDM music.

It was really a sight to behold. Everyone was really respectful of everyone else’s personal space and was just happy to be jamming to the music.

At one of the stops, there was a DJ atop a large flaming Tiki head. I literally mean that the head was shooting spouts of fire 10+ feet into the air. It was fueled by large propane tanks. I didn’t think much of it at first until it began to be pulled by another cyclist with a chariot type contraption.

Instinctively I knew what I had to do. I had to follow the tiki head. So I mounted my bike and proceeded. It must have been midnight by then.

There was, naked, covered in paint, in a foreign city, in a mob of cyclists. Chasing a tiki torch. 

First through the city. Then through railyards. Then into the woods.

When the tiki head finally stopped at its destination there was a party set up where I ran into my best friend dan again. We had a really fun time dancing until about 5 am. The energy among us was really positive and strong. I felt like I was somehow interconnected with a crowd of brave strangers.

All in all, this was an incredible experience and probably a formative one.

Looking back on my career as an indie dev this year, I feel it’s fair to call myself a moderately successful hobbyist.

This isn’t enough success for me. I always want more. More engagement, more comments and more downloads.

I’m not sure what I need to do to get that engagement, but the simple answer is to make better games. I make my best games when I can feed off the team energy of the people around me. That’s impossible to do during a global pandemic.

At any rate, I hope to get more downloads soon. Putting one of my games on steam may get me more attention. Maybe I will have some success dusting off my old projects. I don’t know if any of my Roblox games will be successful.

At any rate, I have some time to work ahead of me, and I don’t plan on squandering it. I’m hoping I can get something done on my new unity game this weekend. We will see how it goes, I haven’t seen potential in that title yet.

I’m back with my family in new jersey right now which is making it a lot easier to focus on work. My day job is going well. With less of a social life I’ve found myself with more time for rock-climbing and indie dev.

I’ve polished off some of my old projects and put some work into them, but still no one plays them. Which brings me to my next point.

I want to try to see if I can be more successful with Roblox games. I’ve heard it’s a lot easier to get exposure on Roblox than on itch.io or steam. One of my friends is raking in a livable wage making roblox games.

So I made my first game today. It’s garbage. I’m just learning the platform though. I hope I can be inspired soon to make something simple that people want to play. I’ll have to think about it though. It might help to try to look at what games are currently successful on the platform.

So after that post yesterday I was feeling out of sorts. I didn’t really seem satisfied with my failure. I hadn’t finished failing.

I imagined myself running a 5k. I was already aware that I was going to to come in last place but I hadn’t crossed the finish line yet. I was 4.5km through the race. And I was hunched over panting mentally giving up.

Sure I knew I was going to fail. But isn’t better to complete the race? At least I would know what my time was, maybe get a little more exercise in the process.

So I submitted my game to steam. Maybe someone will play it someday.

So this week I “completed” a game I had been working on and off on for about six years. I say “completed”, but I know that in a few weeks I will have to briefly dust off this project to add a few more levels. That’s not the point though.

I have decided that I am mentally done with a game that was very important to me and held sentimental value to me. It’s not going to get much better than it is currently and no one plays it now, so it’s done.

This has been hard for me to accept and I know that moving on from this will be a difficult challenge. I don’t know what I’m going to make next or who I’m going to do it with. This will be more challenging than breaking up with the girl I mentioned in my last blog entry, which by the way was painful because I liked her.

In the short term I’m just going to focus on my day job. I enjoy it, it’s consistent and it pays the bills.

I think when I’m feeling more sure of myself and less shaken up I might see what hobby teams are looking for programmers. One thing is for certain. I’m not going to lead a hobby project for free again. The ideal would be to work on another developers game that pays.

I’ve had a crush on this extremely beautiful woman for about 3 years now. I first noticed her because she looks exactly like my therapist. We went out to dinner and then walked around for a bit. She picked a really good restaurant and even offered to pay.

While walking around Seattle we ran into four of my best friends. She got along really well with all of them. Two of my female best friends threatened to steal her from me. That’s how I know she’s one that I want to try to keep.

She has everything going for her. She’s smart, she’s pretty, she’s a skilled dominatrix.

I have another date with her on Tuesday. I am really hoping it goes well.

Time has been passing in quarantine faster than I’m used to.

I’m hoping that journaling will help it seem like time is moving more manageably.

My friends are finally coming out of the woodwork to do 5 person CDC compliant parties. They’ve been a lot of fun and have been the highlight of the week. Last week the theme was corporate femdom. I dressed up as a tech intern. One of my best friends, we were call her C, she gave me complicated coffee orders as a joke. It was a lot of fun. Another one of my friends, we will call her M, she wore latex pants to the party. She tried to dance on the stripper pole in my apartment and wound up ripping them completely. It was honestly very entertaining.

I’ve been hanging out with less people but I’m still having fun. I’ve been focusing on myself and my health. Weightlifting has been key for me as has pole dancing. I really miss the big parties my friends and I used to have though.

My therapist has continually warned me about the dangers of working late at night. This has not stopped me. Allegedly this should be interrupting my sleep and making it harder for me to function the next day.

However, working through the night makes me feel better when I can’t sleep. If I wake up in the middle of the night odds are it was because I was thinking about work subconsciously. It’s my restless mind wanting to be creative.

I woke up about an hour ago, hammered out a quick fix for my game. And put it up for PR.

I wonder if I’ll go back to bed or just go back to work.