User:Thijshijsijsjss/Notes on Being, Here

In the neon sign scrolling up and down

I am born again

In an interstellar burst

I am back to save the universe

Next trimester's notes -->

My whole life was lived between February and June of last year. Let's see if I'm lucky to receive another life this trimester

Week 1

I wasn't there, emotionally.

Naar buiten met Marloes

Week 2

Week 3

Programming -- save / load, branching dialogue system

Writing -- Manually Annotated, About Interactive Fiction

Talking -- Studio vibes, peer review session

Week 4

Game Jamming Colloquium with Alessia and Senka

Programming -- narrative writing (humble attempts)

Writing -- About Signalling, Amorphous Annotations Amassed: About Manuals, About Functionality, About FOMO

Talking -- Peer programming sessions

Week 5

Sick for the whole week :(

Week 6

Writing: drafts for About Parsing, About Thijs, ...

Where is my mind?

Little Egg, Cat Sitting

There was a little cat
that needed to be sat

I can do it, I said
so to this new house I fled

To face a numb silent dread
and reflect some instead

No fun no confidence no fun dance

Doubts have started to grow regarding my grad project, Human Parser. I still believe in the project proposal, in a vacuum. But combined with me as creator, in the process of creating, my belief is tested. In part, this is because 'I'm not having fun': I haven't been able to allow myself the open ended process of creation, that I came to find very rich last year. I feel like I've put myself on a railroad. Combined with recent difficulties in navigating my inner world, this makes my work feel inauthentic and inpersonal. Which disappoints me, and makes me worry if I'm creating something I will be proud to present. I want to carve out some space for myself to breathe, and hopefully find excited freedom to explore within this project again.

Header to be decided on

I came to the studio this Tuesday (2025-02-18, the timelines are getting blurry), without plan. Not having a plan doesn't tend to be my strong suit, but I think not having a plan was the plan this time. I've been feeling very much stuck in my project for a while now. And stuck in my head, in general. I've felt out of touch with myself, feeling numbed and unable to reflect in ways that usually provide me with a sense of meaning. By extension, I've felt unable to put my heart into my project. I've been working aimlessly, forcing myself just to meet the expected hours in my time tracker. Without a plan is what the last two months have been.

So, the studio. I haven't been to the studio much. This makes me sad, mostly because it's convincing my subconscious that I'm already fading out of a life I've barely even faded into yet. There's just too much to say. So, the studio. I was there on Tuesday. I talked with Lorenzo, and then asked Michael for a meeting. We talked until 19:30. It was very valuable. As always, I feel very appreciative that such meetings are possible here, and I always feel these unbounded conversations with Michael are able to reset me, in a way.

Some takeaways:

I thought I had decided to restrict myself to a more traditional text-adventure experience, thinking this would be an easier workload to manage, and better suited to exist 'beyond xpub'. But yesterday I found that, on a deep, unmonitored level maybe I've not been able to let go of the potential humanness. In the conversation, I found myself enamored again with asymmetric games.