I made a game

You can play it here (opens in a new tab) Funny enough, the blog you’re reading this on was originally spun up to be a place to document my web development journey. I like to write - it helps me work through my problems (I finally slow down and actually think instead of just reacting, a crazy concept), gives me space far enough away from the issues right in front of me, and, it’s something I can say I honestly enjoy.

I’ve - for a while - been very bored at work, and have felt very very stuck in my career.

A quick side note (951 words worth, at least)

Here’s some Ryan lore - I graduated in 2016 with a BS in Advertising. At the time, I think I wanted to work on the creative side of advertising. I remember really enjoying throwing together print material in Photoshop and InDesign, and wanted to further nurture that ‘creative spark’ into a future job. Looking back, it might have been better to do something with Graphic Design, but I haven’t really been a confident enough artist to feel like I would be good enough at that craft to pursue it full-time.

I still feel this way - my Therapist and I have a hell of a time unpacking why exactly this is something I struggle with. I’m confident it’s at least partially due to being bullied for my appearance at a young age. I’m getting more and more comfortable with this as time goes on, but it’s a much harder lesson to learn with 30 years of life on your belt.

Landing an advertising degree was 85% circumstance, 5% actually listening to myself, and 10% life coming at me faster than I could react. No fault to my parents (if either of you are reading this, I love you!) for instilling a mindset of ((landing a career is the pathway to feeling successful)), because who wouldn’t want that for their kid? My issue is that I think I take things too literally - my success was measured in acquiring stability, and for a time, it was good.

I had a job RIGHT out of college working Customer Support - I didn’t give myself the space to think if this is really something I wanted to do with my life. It was a paycheck, and 8 years later, it still is.

Truthfully, I used to harbor disdain for my younger self for NOT asking the tough questions that would help me figure out my life. I would get angry at myself for seemingly wasting my time at the end of High School and through my college years for not taking this all seriously.

That thinking is self-defeating, and I’ve learned that it’ll only set me further back. I’ve done the work to forgive myself.

Since I started in Customer Support, I knew that I’ve wanted to pursue something different. I’ve bounced a few different ideas off my brain over the last 5 years:

• For a while, I thought I would make a great Community Manager, until I realized that you need an incredible level of patience to deal with a ‘community.’ To this day, I still struggle with this part of Customer Support
• I know I enjoy looking under the hood of how websites are built, and I do genuinely enjoy coding. Graduating from Support Engineer (my current role, which is sort of a hybrid Customer Support/Web Developer position) to a fully fledged engineer was the plan for at least the last 3 years. I’ve come to realize that I really don’t have any interest in the web - the problems you solve when building websites and CRUD apps aren’t interesting enough.
• Physicist - funny enough, any time I’m on a college campus, I get nostalgic and want to go back. Physics is so fuckin’ cool, man. There’s a unknown world out there, and the thought of uncovering something makes me excited.
• Bike Mechanic - I know I like working with my hands, and something about this speaks to me. You really become the expert of the machine when working with bikes, and anytime I swing by my local shop and see someone taking apart a bike, I tell myself ‘you should really do that, it seems fun’
• Chef - Again, working with my hands sounds like it could be fun, and I get to eat what I make? Funny enough, I very recently listed to Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, and decided this wasn’t the life for me.
• There are two parts to shifting careers, in my opinion: having the guts to actually do it, and deciding what to do. I’ve struggled with both (obviously, you’re reading this on a ‘web development’ blog), and thought for a long time that I was just going to unhappily ping-pong back-and-forth between a billion different things until I became senile or dead.

It’s been a journey sorting out these feelings (go to therapy, I promise it’s wroth it), and while I feel like I still have work to do I can say without a doubt that I’m making progress.

All of this - my writing - my game (go play it over lunch, it’s very short! (opens in a new tab) ) - is personal growth. It’s putting my personal feelings on show for everyone to digest, it’s giving you a peek inside what makes me feel human. It gives me the ‘deer in headlights’ fight or flight feeling, which I’m learning is actually good for you. Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is the cornerstone of this house I’m building.

I’ll be the first to say I’m very privileged to be in my position - my parents have done a very excellent job of supporting me through College, and as I’ve grown into a homeowner. I’m learning to appreciate these things more, because even being in a position where I have the space to ask questions like “Hey is this job really for me?” is a place of privilege.

If my shit was not in order, I wouldn’t be writing this post. I’m also blessed to have a soon-to-be-wife who’s very patient with me, and I’m thankful for her every day I get to wake up slightly sore from sharing a king-sized bed with her and our two dogs.

Why Games?

It’s been one of the few consistent things in my life. Sorry for the TMI incoming, but games were used to help me learn how to poop - they have that much power. Games are my Roman Empire. I’ve been fascinated by them, how they’re made from a technical standpoint, how they’re designed, how they look, how they feel, for as long as I can remember. I will talk your ear off about this shit if you let me.

To me, it’s always been an obvious choice, but I haven’t found the correct path to make a potential switch over to doing this full time work for my brain. I’m skittish - the unknown scares me. I hate having having eyeballs on me. There’s a million different reasons that I could come up with as to why I shouldn't do it.

To me, this first little project is a practice in telling the dissenting voices to kick rocks. Is it something you’ll kick back to for hours after work? Definitely not. Is it something you’ll tell your friends about? Maybe! Is it something I’m personally proud of? For sure, it’s rare for me to finish anything, so this must be something special.

Mr Knight and the 100 coins is a single level, filled with a few secrets that I think are pretty neat. It’s something to be enjoyed during your lunch break, or when you need 10 minutes to get your mind off of that email you’re dreading to send. It’s 10 minutes you can spend as an excuse to get off Instagram, and see what your ol’ pal Ryan has been up to.

The game is free - I don’t feel comfortable asking for money, but if you feel like pitching a buck in so I can eat a sandwich, I’ve set up a ko.fi (opens in a new tab). Each dollar is fuel in my heart to keep going, and know that I’m very grateful for any type of support.

If you’ve made it this far down the post - thanks for reading. I feel like I want to close with ‘look for more in the future, I really hope to bring more special projects to the table’, but the air of uncertainty in saying “I hope” is something Ryan of the past would say as a noncommittal way of saying that there could be more in the future.

Instead, I’ll say this - there is nothing I hate seeing more than a dead dream. I’ve found myself in nooks and crannies of the internet where people put something very special out into the world, only to never been seen from again. Maybe life got hard - maybe they just weren’t feeling it after that initial release. All of this, is okay, but I would hate to be another tally on the universe’s ‘never seen from never heard from again’ scorecard.