Have A Kitkat

When I was in my 20s, I thought I was invincible. I didn’t know I thought that, but I did. I used to have 8-to-12 hour coding sessions, the kind that leaves you mentally wiped, and I’d go back and do it again the next day. Being young and stupid, I thought I could handle it, which is exactly the kind of thinking that caused a years-long depression that I still have to keep an eye on.

Now, I’m older and wiser (or at least, less stupid), I’m taking active steps to improve my mental and physical wellbeing. It’s an ongoing process - in fact, I’ve started a new technique only today: time limits.

A few nights ago, I was coding from my bed (over SSH - yeah, I’m that weird), and I realized that the code in front of me simply wasn’t going to work. So, I turned off my computer, and went to sleep. Good thing too, as it was past midnight by this point. I spent the next day untangling the mess of changes I had made, trying to understand what the hell it was supposed to be doing. Turns out, I was trying to use a bit-hack in some places that was totally incorrect - I had written (x+3) ^ 3, when the correct solution was (x+3) & ~3. In my sleeplessly frazzled state, I never would’ve been capable of realizing this, or any of the other issues that I’d added.

So, today I set an alarm for 6pm, with a message telling me to stop coding. From this point forward, whenever that alarm goes off, I’m going to drop my tools and leave it for tomorrow - there’s no point in coding when I know my skills clock off at 6.

This isn’t the only technique I’ve developed, either. In my younger years, I spent 3 years on a game with nothing to show for it. When I began working on Egg Trainer, I didn’t want a repeat of that, or the mental health issues that followed. So, I adopted the strategy of working in “sprints” (not the agile kind) - I would work for as long as I felt I could, be it a week or a month, or until I got distracted by something shiny, then I’d let my mind rest for a while. I knew sooner or later, I’d be capable of working on Egg Trainer again, it was just a question of when.

I had some troubles in the last six months of Egg Trainer’s development, as I was packaging it up for sale - because I had some kind of goal/deadline, all of a sudden taking breaks was putting more and more stress on me. What should’ve taken a month took half a year. This was, obviously, not a good thing, and I am forever grateful to FoohonPie for his patience while I worked through the technical and mental roadblocks.

My work on Toy seems to be following a similar trajectory - I’m currently trying to get it to a workable state before the beginning of Advent of Code, but I’m also well aware that it’s not a requirement. If I want to take a day off, or fiddle with some small insignificant feature, than that’s perfectly fine. The advent of code will always be there, and it doesn’t need to be the language’s first big test, it would simply be a cool experience.

On that note, this is the fourth week in a row that I’ve managed to publish on my site. I know I don’t have to think up something new and interesting every week, but I’ll try for as long as I can. I can have a break whenever I feel like it.