Summer Reflections

The date is the 25th of July, around halfway through the summer holidays before University begins again, and I’ve been thinking on the purpose of such a period. What it used to mean, what I’ve interpreted it as currently, and how I might’ve been wrong.

Back during primary and secondary school, I think almost everyone at that age tends to interpret it as freedom from school and the need to do anything associated with it. Whatever you couldn’t do during school, you’d do at summer. For me, a child who was fortunate enough to have a PC at 7, it was games. Minecraft, Bin weevils, Roblox, Moshi Monsters, TF2 and Game Dev Tycoon. When I was 10, it was Borderlands 2, Batman: Arkham City and Warframe. There was Beyblade, Bakugan, Lego and DS games like Pokemon too.

Game Dev Tycoon and Roblox seemed to be the first manifestations of my interest in game development. I probably won’t earn as much as 1.7B with any company I found.

I got pretty tired of playing alone though, and eventually stumbled into online friends, who were expectantly 3 years older than me, since not many my age played on PC. Through them, it became Garry’s Mod and modded Minecraft Servers. My summers became absorbed by games reflecting my present-day taste. Path of Exile, Dark souls 2 and Terraria (thanks Ivo). I still played Lego games on console and developed outside interests like reading comics, but I shifted away from my previous infatuation with Beyblade and such.

That is to say, at age 10, summers began to mean creating and overcoming challenges, and making progress on stuff. I barely ever felt challenged in Primary school, I was restless and desperate for something to occupy my brain. I learnt some Year 5 maths from my older sister at Year 2, and tried to teach my (very limited) understanding of E = mc^2 to my Year 4 classroom, but none of that really meant anything. I was still stuck.

Building in Minecraft and Roblox, beating difficult bosses and crafting meticulous character builds filled that void, and were immensely satisfying as creative and mental challenges. I’d like to think I grew from it, both creatively and in my ability to persevere, even if such things were ultimately useless in their result. What matters is that I felt that summer was the time to achieve stuff that I found meaningful, and to improve. I was too restless to relax.

A few symptoms of ADHD. Amidst associated sleep issues and some very specific traits, I should probably get it checked out. I’ll do a full post about this at some point.

Fast forward to University, where my time spent there is useful and challenging, pretty much everything I could want! It has been awesome, however, I have struggled to meet my expectations in the 2nd year. I have met the expectations of the University, with a 1st in every module in the 1st year and a majority of 1sts in the 2nd year, but I have not achieved the standard of work I wanted to in either of the game modules so far. And I don’t mean the games themselves, I’m very proud of them. I mean my own work ethic, and ability to create.

Looking ahead to the 3rd year, there is a final game project that takes place over the entire year, with greater flexibility in choosing your team and fostering ideas. With that in mind, I wanted a challenge that I could rise to. By attempting to achieve something difficult and persevering to do so, you improve immensely. So I decided that I wanted to use every opportunity to develop something more than just a ‘University Project’, a game that would be theoretically market-viable and could potentially turn into something more.

And that brings me to now, where there is a put-together team of 9 others who are REALLY COOL!!! Everyone is on-board with making this thing, and I am very excited. Equally, as the person presenting the original Vision, and as someone hugely interested in Production, teamworking culture and helping the team work effectively together, I also feel pressure. I don’t want to fail the team, and I want to be good enough to push the game forwards. My actions can affect how everyone feels about development, and I don’t want to pull that back.

Hanging out with friends in Norwich was a very good start to the summer.

So that brings me to this summer. After a visit to see friends, I wanted to spend it learning, practicing and improving to be the Robert I want to be for 3rd year. I also wanted to see if I could do game development whilst working a part-time job, and it just so happened that I would benefit from having more money for my interests. So it narrowed down to just three things. Work on a Game Project to improve general development skills, read to learn production, and work a job. That is what I wanted to achieve and improve at this summer.

And so far I have utterly failed due to the abstract concept of ‘losing track of myself’. Undisciplined shifting of priorities, unmanaged focus and the complete lack of proper motivation or an effective mindset, driven by wacky and unresolved emotions. Suffice to say, its a mess. I am now working the job, but it took weeks longer to secure than intended. I have done minimal work on the game project, and I’ve barely read anything. By the standards of even 10-year-old me, the summer has been a personal failure so far.

But I know that I’m restless, and that I’m always doing something, even if its not the right thing. From what I can tell, my time has been absorbed by thought, self-reflection and self-exploration. Instead of achieving my goals, I’ve been coming to emotional and personal realisations and decisions that, frankly, I can’t imagine going forwards to 3rd year without. I’ve still been improving. I’m just not where I was expecting myself to be.

So I wonder to myself, is that okay?

When 3rd year starts, I will be relied on by the team. It’s the same for every member, but it feels a bit different for someone overseeing the project. Even now, there are people that are relying on me that I’ve failed, which is not something I find easy to accept. From that perspective, I still have to be better and catch up to my expectations.

But I also recognise that I’ve still achieved something, if even its just the reflections of this blog post. And that failure, and learning from failure, is part of the process of improvement. It’s frustrating when that failure reflects on others, but if those others are accepting of it, then maybe those opportunities to improve should be embraced.

Regardless, there’s still two months of summer left before University begins, which is more than any school holiday. Even if I haven’t lived up to the accomplishment I associate with summer, there’s still a bunch of time to try. So I’ll work, read and do at least a little game development, and maybe fit in some more adventuring as well (I gotta go kayaking!!!)

One such adventure, when we accidentally stumbled onto a nudist beach (seen ahead in the photo). It wasn’t a very good beach, and not because of nudism.

It’s my last summer relative to education, where it means something more than the differences of the weather and sky, and I’d still like to look back on it fondly. Hindsight is a bitch, and I can’t truly know the consequences of misused time until they show signs in the future. It might be that attempting to pre-emptively imagine this hindsight just doesn’t work for me, and my confidently reckless and impulsive instincts have done me good so far.

So I’ll put a little more trust in those instincts. Hopefully it goes well :D

If you’ve read all the way to here, I’d like to know, what are your thoughts on summer? Or maybe just your experiences over this summer? Feel free to comment, if you so please.