Everything is Fine….

There's a profound anxiety pulsing among us: anxiety about the planet's climate, the economy, the election, our jobs, our future. Perhaps it's a result of the 24-hour news cycle and the chronically online nature of modern adults and adolescents, including myself. Or maybe that anxiety was there all along, past generations included; it's just that now we have a better understanding of it and are more likely to self-diagnose.

At times, I've found myself in an emotional reenactment of a popular meme of a room on fire while a personified dog sits, emotionless, saying, “this is fine.” Usually, this happens after spending too much time reading the news.

And don’t get me wrong. I have some very sincere concerns. Yet, today the sunset is beautiful. I'm sitting outside at a park, enjoying the fresh air with my dog, trying to calm him down because I won't let him chase the squirrels. The playground is full of children screaming and playing without a care in the world. It's 60 degrees.

If I look back on human history, I'm reminded of the frequent ebbs and flows of good and bad news. I'm pretty sure that the people of the Middle Ages had anxiety while they were dealing with the bubonic plague. And I'm pretty sure the Revolutionaries had anxiety about their future. And the millions of people directly impacted by the Great Depression or WWII also felt anxiety and anxiousness about the future.

Since anxiety seems to be a universal human experience, there are really only two options on how to deal with it: run away and try to escape it, or accept that it's a natural part of life and face it head-on while doing the best we can (this can include seeking professional help). Today I'm trying to do the latter. And though I feel anxious about my future and success in the game dev community, I also feel positive about the industry and trajectory of it as a whole. It’s a strange dichotomy that I'm trying to balance with equal parts preparation and bravery.

This past week I finished my C# course and over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to start building a portfolio of projects in a variety of platforms. I've dabbled in Unreal Engine and Game Maker Studio but never dove into their coding side or tried to build a game. I'd like to explore Unity and Godot, a couple of game engines that are popular for the types of games I'm interested in building. And next week, I hope to have a couple of screenshots of a game I'm working on. I'll let you know when it's available on Steam.

So yes. Everything is fine. And not. And that's okay. Maybe it won't be tomorrow, and worrying about it today won't change anything. But for today, everything is.