Torpidity

I've been back in Austin for a few weeks now. I quickly and unwillingly got back into my usual routine of doing nothing all day long. Again, the problem is that I have no goals or anything to pursue in my life right now, and so I become more and more apathetic about everything. Allacrost was making excellent progress and we were hoping to get another demo ready to release near the end of March, but in the last week we've stagnated and things aren't getting done. Part of it is a small number of critical bugs that are affecting a lot of areas of the code right now. Another part of it (at least for me) is that I am getting tired of feeling lonely on the coding side of things. I mean, there are still people working on the code and making significant progress in some places, but I have just been all over the code base lately fixing everything from improving engine deficiencies to mode implementation to documentation, and part of the reason I've been all over the place is that several people aren't putting in the effort and doing their part (some for valid reasons, others for unknown reasons). We'll get the demo out eventually (we're pretty close to being there in several aspects), and the sooner the better because I want to get this release behind us and take a short break from coding.


I haven't really been looking for jobs lately either. I decided a few weeks back that I wasn't going to take a job until after this demo is released. I did recently post my resume on dice.com (and got a call this afternoon from a recruiter, in fact), and a couple days ago I also applied to another job at Applied Research Labs as a Research Scientist. I'm not sure if its a position I'd like, but I figure it wouldn't hurt to apply. Oh, and I got a $900 medical bill for all of my "am I insane?" doctor visits last year (my problem turned out to be a severe anxiety disorder, if you may recall). My insurance, Blue Cross Blue Shield, decided not to be very much help. They falsely claimed that two office visits occurred when my insurance had already expired, and one study interpretation they didn't cover anything at all for no apparent reason. Screw them. I hate insurance companies. So now I get to go yell at them on the phone for a few hours, which I'm sure both they and I will love...


Hmmm, what else. Oh, I'm currently writing an article covering the basics of intellectual property law. I decided to write it because on gamedev.net (a popular game development website) there are numerous people/projects that blatantly infringe on a company's IP, either through their own ignorance or misunderstanding of the law. I got sick of it, so I decided to write this article and refer others to it when I discover possible infringement (after all, its easier to fix the problem sooner instead of later). I've also been running off and on for the last few weeks. I need to suck it up and start getting serious about getting in shape, because I have no excuse not to be right now.


In the last week though, a very different problem presented itself. My dreaming has gone absolutely out of control. I don't know what on Earth triggered it, but each night I have multiple incredible dreams, where I'm playing on a football team, fighting in a war, protesting for civil rights, you name it. I've been meeting and talking with a lot of people that I know in real-life in my dreams too, both from the present and the past. Now don't get me wrong, the dreams are awesome. They are so much more exciting and fulfilling than my real life is currently. But they are literally eating away at me with regards to sleep. I end up entranced by my dream and will sleep for 10-13 hours and setting my alarm isn't helping to solve the problem. I continue waking up in the mid-afternoon instead of the early morning. And because I'm a lucid dreamer and I experience so much in my dreams, when I wake up I'm already mentally exhausted from everything that I worked/fought for in my dream, which leaves me torpid throughout the day.


I only hope that this deep dreaming problem of mine subsides soon, before I'm drawn even further into the world of my own subconscious. Although that world is infinitely better than the world I live in now, its not real, and its not healthy to be attached to something like that.