A Space, Room or Device of Your Own
I try to answer the question: Do you have A Room Of Your Own?
Hallå pals!
Jonas here with another issue of Indie Notebook to get some ideas out of my noggin, and to inspire you to do the same.
I just wrapped up a game project I’ve been working on for the past 6 months. I’ll save my words about that game until later. But what I can say is it has freed up some time for me to enjoy getting (back) into other game projects.
I’m taking it chill and having fun working on Ploppy Weather. At the moment I’m mostly coming up with silly ideas and trying to visualize the world of it. I’ve been sketching and thinking of what the main character might look like and some NPC’s.
And soon I’m gonna get into a collab with a friend. We don’t know what game we will make. We have a strategy. I’m really looking forward to try to come up with something with him!
Do you have A Room Of Your Own?
In the previous post I talked about reclaiming my own attention, by changing my relationship to SM (social media/slot machine). You left some very thoughtful comments on there. I’m gonna share some of them with you here today.
“About boredom, I notice only when I let my kids be bored for a few minutes (screens off) do they start to engage in imaginative play, almost as if creativity can't happen without boredom. I wonder for myself if the reason why I feel uninspired or unmotivated to create sometimes is due to the fact that I don't often let myself get bored.” - Nicki Newell
And then long time reader Ash said this…
A computer with internet does not feel [like] a room of my own. Casey Muratori's work computers don't even have internet. If he needs documentation, he'll download it when he's not working. That is his room of his own.
Do you have a room of your own? Or a *work device* of your own?
I don’t know who Casey is, but sounds like a smart guy.
I heard a similar story about a group of programmers working for the military. They had no internet access or even documentation on their work computers. If they needed to look something up they had to walk to the other side of the facility where there was access. Then they would memorize what they had just read, walk back across the facility while trying to keep it in their mind, and then put it into use immediately when they got back to their workstation. This made them famously efficient as programmers because they basically had the whole documentation in their heads.
I don’t remember where I heard that and I’m too lazy to look it up, but I think it’s a cool story. In their case it’s almost as if they were forced to have A Room Of Their Own.
As for me, I guess I do have a room of my own, but I’m not sure what the quality of it is?
Growing up I definitely did. I distinctly remember sitting at the desk in my childhood bedroom, running my hand on the wooden surface of that desk and really loving it, feeling very at peace there.
Oh and summer break was the best! Late Swedish summer evenings where the sun never completely set, and nobody else was awake. That was the best time and place I’ve ever found for creativity. It’s impractical and hard to recreate as an adult. But in theory I could, so maybe I will try it this summer?
The way I try to make my workspace A Room Of My Own now is quite different compared to then. This comes back to social media once again, I think I’ve been so influenced by it that my picture of what is nice now is almost impossible to recreate. Or at least quite expensive. Or it would require me to do some handy-work that I’m not quite ready to tackle. But these are very surface level things that might not be as important as I make them out to be in my head.
A Room Of My Own should be more about how I get myself into a mindset where I am where I want to be mentally. Ofc aesthetics plays a part in that. But it also has to be about something else, like choosing my relationship to the internet and how I block out my time.
But in my case I don’t feel like internet access is the problem. I had that back then too. For me adulthood is the problem. I’m much more serious when I do creative work now compared to then, because I have this pressure of making money. Part of this is my mindset with my own projects, which is what it is and I feel like I’m getting to a place where this won’t be a problem anymore (I hope). Freelance work feels more invasive into my room in this regard.
Austin Kleon answered a question about serious vs fun for the creative mind recently. It spoke to me so much I’ve had this picture as a backdrop on my phone since then.
Finding this balance between getting serious and having fun is something I hope to think more about going forward.
This wasn’t what I meant for this week’s post to be about, but your comments inspired me and I like where Ash’s question led me.
Thank you everyone for your messages!
❓ Question time
I’ve been wanting to read more devlogs recently. One I like and try to keep up with is Stuffed Wombat’s, because it feels very personal and he’s a very interesting designer.
Do you know any similar devlogs? Or just devlogs in general that you like?
Panel of the week
(from Space Deer)
Thank you for reading Indie Notebook! I’d love to hear what today’s issue made you think about.
Take care and have a creative week.
I really dig the idea. I believe it was always a bit like this for me.
When I look back at the moments in my life when I was inefficient and procrastinated the most, it's usually due to a lack of "separate spaces". The phone — and all social media apps — were always accessible, every hour *could* be used for working... or not.
On the other hand, whenever I had a structure of separate times/devices/spaces for work, leisure, etc., everything just seemed more efficient.
When I write poetry, I usually do it in a notebook, and I turn everything else off. I'll even usually make sure to have some degree of nature in view as I'm writing -- trees, clouds, etc. It all helps to free up the part inside myself that I really should be listening to.
With that said, it's probably hard to code in a notebook. :P
Cool to read about your plans and your finished game! Looking forward to more news.