Where are we now.

Codename Fear, my latest Unreal Engine 5 game where you play as an amateur paranormal investigator has been in full development. Until December of 2024 it was my only project on my list, consuming all my free time. That was until I hit a bit of a writers block scenario. Mainly around some of the way I was handling the internal subsystems around story and quest management. The only problem I had was I store al my quest data in structured JSON, loaded into a UE DataTable, then accessed via my QuestManager system. This JSON data was manually edited. When I needed to add a new quest, sub quest, trigger, post quest trigger, rearrange quests, etc it became a massive hassle. Sure there are node based tools out there, but nothing that could turn my visual graph into game engine ready data.

So I have been building LoomGraph.

LoomGraph is a visual systems builder, where you can design anything backed by data. Narrative structure, quests, dialog, workflows. Visual editor meets easy JSON exports.

The Core of LoomGraph is the canvas. An interactive slate where you can drag, drop, rearrange, attribute and connect nodes. Easily visualizing data flows. Below is a screenshot of my actual workflow for my Main Quests. These are stored in a single graph, which is then exported into a single JSON file, with clean nested structure that mimics my current quest json file.

The graph allows the developer to visually build narratives. Which in my case is then exported via the application into something similar to:

[
  {
    "CompletedLogText": "You made your way into the old ghost town.",
    "LogDescription": "I continued hiking through the woods.  The old mining town should be just over this hill",
    "NextQuestId": "q1",
    "PrerequisiteQuests": "[]",
    "QuestId": "q0",
    "QuestName": "The Ghost Town",
    "QuestType": "EQT_Main",
    "TrackerDescription": "Travel along the old cart path.",
    "description": "",
    "node": "primary",
    "tasks": {
      "q0_t0": {
        "LogDescription": "Reach the town entrance.",
        "NextTaskId": "",
        "Ordinal": "0",
        "Quantity": "1",
        "TaskId": "q0_t0",
        "TaskName": "- Travel along the old cart path.",
        "TaskType": "EQSTT_Location",
        "TrackerHeader": "An Investigation Begins.",
        "bIsOptional": "false",
        "description": "",
        "node": "sub",
        "tasks": {
          "40b01c32-e11b-456d-b9c0-05c30ee4df7d": {
            "description": "",
            "node": "trigger",
            "title": "q0_t0_posttask"
          },
          "e78079f7-68ef-4fe5-b5b3-e0ba0209362c": {
            "description": "",
            "name": "TimeOfDay++",
            "node": "trigger",
            "title": "q0_t0_pretask"
          }
        },
        "title": "q0_t0"
      }
    },
    "title": "q0"
  },
...
]

I will have more in-depth how-to videos in the coming weeks. I am still working towards release, which should be in a few weeks. Finalizing some corporation items along with a few more features and a whole lot of testing. If you are interested in beta testing, you can hit me up @ corey@loomgraph.com. All data during beta will carry over, the data is in a very solid place in the backend.

As always, keep building.

• Corey

LoomGraph

May 2023. That was the last publication of this substack of mine. A substack that was a focus of my life in tech, my game dev journey and just all things that bring me joy. A week turned into a month, turned into six months turned into a year and a half. There really is no explanation for why I couldn’t sit down and type, but maybe it was just exhaustion, burnout, lack of interest.

This won’t be a full fledged post as I need time to get back into the swing of things. I have a lot that has been going on. My latest game, tentatively titled “Where the whispers meet the winds” has been in development for about 10 months. This is a first person narrative game where you play as a paranormal investigator exploring an old mining ghost town long forgotten. Its been a creative force that has kept me out of the dark and I am excited to show more progress on it.

I may not keep the name of this publication but the spirit of it will live on in whatever it becomes.

You can follow me over on Bluesky here @coreyjs.dev.

Until next time my friends.

Go Bills.

I have too many names of the endeavors I have. I really wanted to try and consolidate everything under one name. The Weekly Page started as something different than it has become. Its more focused on my game development journey and my unfiltered thoughts of the week. This is a deviation from a collection of interesting things that I initially set out to write about. This coincided with my YouTube channel beginning that follows my development journey and the ups and downs that come with it.

Notes is a new space on Substack for us to share links, short posts, quotes, photos, and more. I plan to use it for things that don’t fit in the newsletter, like work-in-progress or quick questions.

Go to Notes

How to join

Head to substack.com/notes or find the “Notes” tab in the Substack app. As a subscriber to The Weekly Page, you’ll automatically see my notes. Feel free to like, reply, or share them around!

You can also share notes of your own. I hope this becomes a space where every reader of The Weekly Page can share thoughts, ideas, and interesting quotes from the things we're reading on Substack and beyond.

Why Substack Notes

Fellow writers and readers are spending time in Notes for a variety of reasons.

Ted Gioia sees Notes as a forum for dialogue.

The idea behind Notes is simple. Millions of people now participate in Substack as writers and readers—but much of this is built on long articles and essays. We now have a forum for dialoguing and sharing shorter posts.

Chris Ryan is drawn to Substack as an alternative for legacy social media.

One of my main reasons for joining Substack was to wean myself off exploitative social media platforms. I’m hoping this is going to help move us along on that journey!

Sherman Alexie wants to create a kind and creative new space in Notes.

I’m going to focus on being positive, with my own thoughts and photos and by linking to songs, stories, poems from around the web and from other Substacks.

If you encounter any issues, you can always refer to the Notes FAQ for assistance. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Go to Notes

I am back. After a brief sabbatical (not official) I have returned to pour out the ideas and rumblings that occur in my head for the week. Despite not writing anything it was a very productive month and a half. Also despite not reading *anything* it was a very productive month and a half. Maybe its the changing of the seasons, the cataclysm of a winter we had here in Buffalo is finally trending towards warmer weather, that's allowing me to think more clearly.

As long time readers have known I have been working on a project I dubbed "Project Pluto". A PT like space story game based on an android living along on a distance space station. After about 1.5 years of building out mechanics and struggling to write a story I had to shelve it for the time being. I needed something new to work on. Something to ignite the creative fire once more. I realize I can't pivot to new things forever, that is if I ever wish to finish anything, but something different helps to juxtapose the struggles on the other project. This is being developed in Unreal Engine 5.1, which is still my go to engine to work in.

Along side the development of the new game I have also been trying to keep my software engineering skills sharp. I started working through this course on Coursera called "Foundations of Sports Analytics: Data, Representation and Models in Sports". Combining two things I really enjoy is the best way for me to study and apply something. I think I found an avenue which I can move forward with growing more confident analytical mindset as opposed to a pure engineering mindset.

Something Interesting

While brainstorming with my AI companion it mentioned this poem by John Keats. It's called "Ode to a Nightingale", and below is a small snippet of that.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44479/ode-to-a-nightingale

"Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

In ancient days by emperor and clown"

This passage speaks to the idea of rebirth and immortality, suggesting that even though winter may bring death and darkness, spring will always bring new life and regeneration. Although I am no poetry expert I found it an interesting read, and there are some neat analysis videos on YouTube that go beyond anything you could imagine.

Game Update: Project Gato

Update # 1

The new one. For this I have been itching to do something stylized, less realistic than most of my other prototypes. I have numerous asset packs and content that I have been pouring over and conforming to the environment I have built. I spent a lot of time on landscape generation outside of the engine. Specifically using Gaea. Below is a shot of my WIP building a type of stylized, swirled and twisted mountain surrounded by small islands.

Gaea is a node based landscape generation tool, where you can fully customize and create any kind of landscape. Giant mountains, massive fault lines, rolling hills, deep canyons, you name it.

Here I have imported the landscape into Unreal Engine. There is a bit of math needed to get the X/Y and Z scales down.

But with that imported a simple example can be setup quick using a good auto-landscape material and procedural foliage generation.

The next steps are to work on the layouts of the islands, now that I have the landscape I wanted generated. I also spent a lot of time learning landscape materials but ultimately settled for using Brushify.io and custom stylized landscape textures. I have also been back in Blender trying to relearn everything since I haven’t touched it in a couple years. I plan on creating my main character on my own, and utilizing as many purchased assets as I can for the environment. This allows me to focus on design and coding.

I recommend this course on Udemy for getting familiar with Blender: Gamedev.tv Blender.

Below are some current shots of my in development world:

Useful Links

• UE5 Auto Material Tutorial by CG Dealers

• Gaea to UE5 Import Tutorial by CG Dealers

• Creating Fog Planes in Unreal Engine 5 by Andrei Ghenoiu

Until Next Week

Normally I post about what I am reading, but I don’t think I touched a book in a month (slowly making my way through “On The Road” by Jack Kerouac). Just been so focused on game dev and engineering stuff. Oh and also I play way to much Destiny 2, I think thats probably the reason. The worst part of the year was the last 2 months. Winter still lingering, sun never shining, cats being sick, motivation at a low. But alas we have survived to see another day, another week.

As always, you can find my on Twitter (or whats left of it) @corey_s_.

So here we sit in the heart of winter. Sunless skies for weeks prior and weeks to come. I tend to think of this as the last leg of the race, a put your head down and just push through it time. Winter will break soon, weather will turn and the frozen hellscape will melt away for a few months. I do find it harder to work in the winter for whatever reason, despite being trapped indoors for most of the time. Maybe its the perpetual bleakness of it all, the heaviness of the pale white wonderland outside. Or its the lack of vitamin D.

Pomodoro Technique for Working

I have always had trouble focusing, studying and being able to recall more than one thing from something I read. I ran into a few very interesting videos talking about this very thing and offering some tools and habits to help address this.

This first thing that I do now each time I sit down to do anything like game dev, software, reading, writing or studying is following something called “The Pomodoro Technique”. Which is simply 1. Finding a task, 2. Setting a timer (25-50 minutes), 3. Taking a break and repeating. I put on videos by “The Sherry Forumla” which provides relaxing music, nice visuals and timers to go along with everything. I remarkably found this to be an amazing focusing technique as opposed to just listening to music and working for a non de script time.

Techniques to Remember

The second thing I have been doing along with the stuff listed above, is to take more of a methodical approach to reading and remembering things. I set out to read a lot this year and so far have been making good progress, but I often find myself reading to finish a book and not reading to understand the book. To address this I am following a technique outlined here. Essentially a system for remembering everything by building out a categorized handwritten database of notes. It is broken down into:

1. As you read, highlight, take notes and mark pages.

   1. For this I use a simple highlighter and pencil to quickly mark or notate something I liked.

   2. 

2. Transfer what you liked to note cards.

   1. 

3. Sort note cards by theme or category.

   1. Little by little you create a database of knowledge. Written by your own hand and categorized to fit your way of thinking.

   2. 

Game Dev Update

I have actually found myself to be back in the groove. Fought through some winter blues an started redesigning a few of the interiors of the game (using some great kit bash assets that allow me to focus on design and not modeling). First is the “Observation Deck”. Which is the area that overlooks the solar system.

Second is the starting “Room”. The “Room” is the focal point and starting point for each time loop iteration.

I posted a brief walk through to twitter, which you can find here:

Reading List

Updated as of a few days ago. Behind but only because I haven’t been listening to audible much.

The End

Everyone is a critic. Its lonely traveling the road less traveled. Push forward through all the noise. Go Sabres.

Put yourself and your work out there every day, and you start meeting some amazing people

• Bobby Solomon

I am back from a brief hiatus. The holidays, epic storms, winter blues and illness made the end of the year/beginning a bit of a cluster. But alas here we are. Two weeks into the year 2023 and making slow but steady progress on the goals ahead. Small incremental progress is much more important than large bursts of productivity with weeks of downtime.

I finished my first book of the year, “Control Freak” (more about that below) and started finished my second “The Metaverse”. My reading list for 2023 can be found here:

where I will be updating it as I go along. Suggestions are welcome.

Game progress has been a bit slow I just cant seem to find the motivation to work on the visual projects but have been working on an joined project for the game which is an API written in Go. The plan is to create a simple API to ingest player data, movement, locations, interactions and time spent. Later I will use these to perform various analysis and have some ideas for machine learning spinoffs.

Quick and Brief

I am in the middle of this weeks post where there is a bit more structure. I found a very helpful technique for remembering what I read, taking notes and finding study time. I will go over all that hopefully this week.

Recently I came across a video by Lex Fridman (YouTube) in which he goes over his recently post about his 2023 Reading list, and the unfortune controversy that came with it. Inspired by this, and already accumulating a lengthy pile, I decided to detail out my projected 2023 reading list. I am only going to fill this up about halfway, to leave some leeway for other books that pop up, or if I get stuck in the loop of not reading / doing anything for a few weeks as the winter doldrums hit. I will break this out on a month by month basis. Some of these titles I will be listening to on Audible, so there’s is a bit of overlap. I cant really ever read one book at a time. There is a mixture of fantasy, non-fiction and fiction.

Technical / Learning

Some of these I cant categorize into months as they are technical books that I want to read and work through their problems. Those are the following:

• “Designing Machine Learning Systems: An Iterative Process for Production Ready Applications” - Chip Huyen

• “The Game Narrative Toolbox” - Tobias Heussner, Toiya Kristen Finley, Jennifer Brandes Helper, Ann Lemay

• “The StatQuest Illustrated Guide to Machine Learning” - Joshua Starmer

• “The Kaggle Book” - Konrad Banachewicz, Luca Massaron

• “The Game Engine Black Book” - Fabien Sanglard (Both DOOM and Wolfenstein)

January

• “Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games” - Cliff Bleszinski (DONE)

• “Show Your Work” - Austin Kleon (DONE)

• “The Metaverse: How it Will Revolutionize Everything” - Matthew Ball (DONE)

• “Shadows of Self: Book 5 of Mistborn” - Brandon Sanderson (audible) (DONE)

February

• “On the Road” - Jack Kerouac

• “Radical Acceptance” - Tara Brach (audible)

• “Steal Like an Artist” - Austin Kleon

• “Building a Second Brain” - Tiago Forte

March

• “Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime” - Sean Carroll

• “How to Talk to Anyone” - Leil Lowndes

• “Thinking, Fast and Slow” - Daniel Kahneman

• “Meditations” - Marcus Aurelius

April

• “The Brothers Karamazov” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

• “Origins of the Wheel of Time: The Legends and Mythologies that inspired Robert Jordan” - Michael Livingston

• “The Broken Eye” - Brent Weeks (audible)

May

• “Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life” - Bill Burnett, Dave Evans

• “Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought A.I. to Google, Facebook, and the World” - Cade Metz

Eventually

• “Staff Engineer” - Will Larson

• “Fire & Blood” - George R. R. Martin (audible)

That’s as far into the future as I feel comfortable doing.

I am leaving the rest open as of right now. Suggestions are welcomed. Now that I look at this I am gonna have to fit the remainder of Mistborn Era 2 into the beginning of the year some how and I do want to start my reread of The Wheel of Time. Also I am already behind, so we are off to a great start. Go Bills.

I leave you with these words from ChatGPT:

Of books to read, a list was made In the year 2023, a journey laid With ink on paper, a promise kept Through pages turned, the stories wept

From fiction to non, to poetry too A varied taste, in reading true With dedication and will so strong The list is finished, where it belongs

No more books to add, no more to cross A feeling of accomplishment, at no loss For in the pages, worlds were explored And knowledge gained, forever stored

So let us raise a glass, and make a toast To finishing the list, at any cost For a reader's journey, never truly ends But always begins, with new tales and friends

Lets talk a little bit about being stuck in life. The mundane existence of the ever revolving door of nothingness. The impression of change, the round and round we go provides the mental comfort we need, but in the end its the bleakness of nothingness. Being stuck in the same place year after year, succumbing to the complacency of mediocrity that we were destined to avoid. How do we find ourselves in such positions of hopelessness after once seeing what hope we had in our future. Are you where you thought you would be ten years ago, when you looked ahead at all you will accomplish? You cant really start over. You can probably pivot, adapt, succumb and maybe learn from the decisions, or lack of decisions, that were made. The emptiness of professional life needs to end, something needs to change. Where can goals take us? Aspirations? Endeavors?

Project Pluto - UE5 Update

Despite the craziness of this winter/holiday I was able to make some progress on the actual game. I did end up, yet again, scraping the API I have been building. I just cant find a framework I like. FastAPI is way to much boilerplate code, I spent days getting things in place only to throw my hands up (coming from a flask background I figured this the new hotness). Previously I was working in Go using Gin framework.

I did get the project updated to UE 5.1, which was sorta painless once the engine plugins were updated. I continued rebuilding the observation deck, which is one of the first areas the player enters.

Currently moving at a snails pace, holiday is busy and we got blasted with a winter storm that was quite devastating. Sure being trapped in my house I could have worked more, instead I just shoveled, drank and played Destiny 2.

The End of the 2022

Professionally speaking, what a shit year. Tried some things, made some leaps, but all roads seem to lead back to the beginning. I have some ideas for 2023, some ideas to break out of this prison.

In the past 7-8 years I often find myself is a perpetual state of bleakness, which is to say compounding lack of motivation, constant failures and just straight burned out from the ambitions of my youth. With all these things I want to achieve, want to build and want to accomplish, what if that just isn’t who I am. I wont accomplish the things I set out to in this life, maybe just accept where I am at and be happy with the present. I like to think somewhere in a parallel world I can overcome the shattered mind and actually find myself in a place of happiness. Maybe in a future life, some where across time, I can overcome the bleakness that surrounds me. But for now I try to move forward. Trudging through quick sand, swimming against the current, wandering in emptiness toward goals that seem to ever far away. Fighting myself, fighting failures, succumbing to bleakness.

Random Thoughts

The grass is always greener. Grass here is subjective. Grass represents the choice you made, the decision you had to execute on. Living with the consequences of those choices far out weigh the thought of not knowing at all. Living with the idea of “what if”, until the next decision presents itself.

It may not be the right choice, but the choice itself is correct. The act of choosing something different is in itself greener.

An Update on Project Pluto

Its been a quiet few weeks. I decided to build a new PC to replace my ~5 year old one and that led to not getting a lot of work done. The old pc was just showing its age especially in Unreal Engine 5, and on top of that I couldn’t quite take advantage of the ray tracing additions found on the newer Nvidia cards. I ended up going for a 3080 to replace my 1080Ti and for the first time went AMD for the CPU over Intel. Below is a pic of the build. This is the first time I built a new PC since 2007 when I built my first exclusively for World of Warcraft. This new rig is more for game dev, machine learning and very little gaming. I prefer consoles to PC for the most part, except for MMO’s. Dev work will pick back up this week, I am redesigning the observation deck. A large area with giant glass walls to give a full view of the emptiness of space.

Observation desk redesign is moving along. As someone with not the best artistic abilities I found some great assets that fit what I am trying to build. So I am learning the best way to build out this particular section as well as working on lighting.

My goal is to have this space laid out by next week. So this bleak area should look much cleaner, brighter and comforting.

Off We Ride

Until next time, maybe I wont be so tired.

I find myself in an interesting place. I have spent so much time and energy the past few years interviewing, studying, building and preparing that I have had little time for my true passions. I really have struggled to find time for game dev and my pursuits in machine learning. I am moving to a new company doing more python API dev, but I can already feel my mind and brain clearing up and focusing more. Maybe this is what I needed. I do plan on making the next 12 months the most productive of my life. I haven’t shipped a game in 8 years, I have siloed myself away only to have produced nothing. I am going to finish something (below) and somehow Ill figure out how I can build AI along side it. Maybe a stable diffusion based image generator of player progress that are minted to NFT’s? Just kidding.

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Game Dev Update - Project Pluto

(Previous updates on the greenhouse redesign)

I have been away from this newsletter for a couple weeks as I have been in between jobs and just generally find myself struggling to get back to my creative self.

This weeks update on Project Pluto (still working on names) I have decided to redo the Observation Deck. The OD, as I call it, is the first main room you enter when you exit your starting area. I want this to be the first wow moment, the first core experience of the game that tells the player a little bit about where they are. My favorite games use this type of setup: Oblivion when you leave the sewers to find the vast Cyrodiil in front of you, Fallout when you first leave the vault unsure of what the outside world looks like, Elden Ring when you leave the starting area to go outside for the first time. These setup moments I truly love, and if don’t right can provide a simple yet effective mood setup for the player. I want the curiosity meter to be off the charts.

There isn’t much to show now, but below are some in progress shots. I wanted to have a big open area, large glass windows so the player can understand the vastness of space. So they can understand the isolation of space, that they are alone.

An a side note, the move from Unreal 5.0.3 to 5.1 didn’t go smoothly, so I will give that a few weeks before I tackle that.

What I am Reading

Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games - By Cliff Bleszinski

Amazon

I have been stuck in a lull lately when it comes to reading, but with the recent release of “Control Freak” I have been pulled out of my slump. Written by someone who I really admire in the games industry, Cliffy B, provides a truly deep look into his life and his career and all the ups and downs that comes with that. I really found myself attached to this memoir as there are many parallels and things I could relate to from growing up and causing chaos as a child to falling in love with games and the comfort that those bring in hard times. I am about halfway and there are truly personal and powerful moments that Cliff delves into that I truly appreciate. Its been a great read and I would recommend this to any creative type or anyone just curious about the life of someone who had such influence on the games industry as we know it.

Control Freak is a hilarious, thoughtful, and inspiring memoir. Even if you don’t play games, you’ll walk away from this book recognizing them as a true art form and appreciating the genius of their creators. - Amazon Blurb

What I am Playing

So, I am finally playing something different that Destiny 2.

New World

I played this at launch for many hours but never reached endgame. They have had so many quality of life updates this past year and with new fresh start servers it was great to start over and experience the world again. There seems to actually be a main story quest now, and the combat was always fun and exciting. The game still suffers from the low cap servers, which means you can rarely find a group for anything, and if you do it takes hours sometimes. PvP is still hard to do. For a game I play only for the PvP aspect, I have yet to PvP at all. The modes that require a queue take forever because of the population, world PvP you are usually out matched and the “wars” are usually the cool kids table at lunch, you are not invited. Other than that rant, I enjoy the world, crafting, exploring and leveling. Leveling seems to be going much faster this time around, as I only do story quests and I hit 32 in maybe 5 hours.

Modern Warfare 2

Yep, CoD. I haven’t played a Call of Duty since the WWII one in 2017. After the debacle that was Battlefield 2042 I am finding MW2 to be a fun, refreshing experience. I love the new modes that focus on larger battles and populations. The campaign is fun and gorgeous on the PS5. I only dipped my toes into Warzone once yesterday when it launched, but I also had a blast there.

So Long

Winter is here, or at the time of writing this we are 5 hours away from Snowpocolyps in Buffalo, NY. Or at least that’s what I am told. I got food, beer, a shovel and lots of games.

When you look out the window what do you see? For some reason this has been bouncing around my head for a bit now. I don’t see the familiar, I don’t see trees/cars/squirrels/dogs. I see the unknown, the unfamiliar, the curiosity of the infinite expanse that lies beyond. There are so many experiences that just pass by unbeknownst to us, so much solace and experiences that exist just beyond our field of view. So I think what I am saying is that when I look out this window, day dreaming instead of writing this, I see a world unexplored. Where the paths of curiosity collide with the paths of ignorance of everyday life.

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Game Dev Update

Currently known as “Project Pluto”.

One mechanic that I have been building and tinkering with is the idea of time loops, the idea that you can play the same level over and over but each time loop iteration there is variance. If you are familiar with P.T. back on the PS4 it was a game that was a constant loop. You moved through the level then it would seamlessly loop back on itself. I really liked this mechanic and tried to implement this in a more robust fashion.

In Pluto I have “portals” which are objects that render a texture from the portal destination camera (which can be anywhere) and when the player enters the trigger they are seamlessly (almost) moved to that new location. I can define many portals and many destinations so I can, over the course of the game, direct the player to any room/area I want at any time. A simple level that consists of lets say room A → B → C → D can be shuffled around like a jigsaw puzzle. I can have the player start at A, then instead of exiting into B, what they see is C. I can essentially shuffle the floor plan around with each time loop.

These “time loops” I refer to internally as Phase Epochs. There are a finite amount of epochs that you must design for. The idea was to have a clear START and END of this game. The phasing must follow the following rules:

Here is a quick flow of how the portal + phasing works. Parts of this is in blueprint and the other is C++ called via blueprints.

So in the actual engine its looks a bit like the following. This is the starting room that will begin each time loop (phase epoch).

Next we have the view into the “portal” from a different area of the space station. You can see its rendering the view of the “destination” from inside the starting room with respect to the players current angle/rotation etc. This is to give it a seamless feel.

And below is what it looks like when the portal is disabled/hidden. The next room hallway becomes explorable. So instead of looking into what appears to be the first room you started in, a whole new area is open for exploration. This allows me to craft each “phase” as its own unique experience. There are only 5/6 phases, so with the help of these portals I am able to open/close areas each time.

And lastly, the portal is just a simple mesh that uses a render texture to make it seem like its an actual “portal”.

Now saying that all out loud as I type this out seems a bit disjoint. I would love to clarify/show more in depth how I did different things if anyone is interested. What I am working on in the near future is using these portal structures to take you from one level to the next. So instead of just warping the player around the level that contains the space station, I can also take you do a giant sweeping landscape with hills and trees, or snowy mountains, or barren desert.

In Conclusion

I really haven’t been reading as much as I would like to. I think its just life being busy. The stack of books next to me is only getting larger. I think next on the list would be to start reading “The Kaggle Book” to keep practicing my data and ML skills. As much as I have been trying to augment my skillset (being a backend engineer by trade) its been tough to fully understand real world concepts. When to use what and why. Maybe it will click soon.

Enjoy Halloween everyone. And as always, Go Bills (and Sabres).

Note: This seems to be a big post, so your mail client will most likely truncate it. You can view it here https://www.theweeklypage.com/p/the-crossroads:

Sometimes the words come easy, other times the blank canvas refuses to give way. Normally I would reflect on something I read or something I watched but its been a quiet few weeks. I say weeks because I didn’t get anything published last week. I think we should talk about the idea of compounding. What is this you ask? Like a snowball rolling down a hill, it builds upon itself each rotation until it is no longer a small sphere but a giant unstoppable force. I had written about this years ago (on dev.to) but I think its important to revisit this idea.

The idea of compounding is simple. Every day build on the previous day's results. This can be stringing together workouts, working on side projects or just maintaining a schedule. Eventually as we build up our routines they will become habit. I found it easiest to progress by breaking everything up into smaller pieces. As I achieve even the simplest of items this gives me visual affirmation that I am moving towards my goal.

There is no bounds to how lofty or crazy your goals and dreams should be. Nothing in this world is realistic when it comes to your aspirations so mine as well achieve the wildest goals your heart aspires to. Now, what is realistic is understand that the end goal is not a one step process to achieving it. Its the sequence of many small achievements that are the foundation for success in your life. This is where compounding is important. Little by little these things add up. If you struggle to work on your passion project, and you can only muster 45 mins a day to work on it, well you are infinitely better off than someone who couldn’t find any time to put towards it. Look back at your week, while in the moment those small chunks of work seemed meaningless in the larger picture those are monumental foundational successes. Not only did you fight the dragon of motivation, you overcame the negative mindset that is afraid to even begin. We are not guaranteed “next week”, but we are guaranteed a better “next week” if we overcome the hurdles of today.

Game Dev Update

With my current project (for now lets call it Project Pluto, that’s my codename for it) that I have talked about in previous TWPs I have been on and off working on it for about 1.5 years. It’s difficult when the interest wains and life gets in the way to keep consistent progress on anything, especially something as complex as a game. I have shook off most of the rust and have been fully engaged again. With this weeks post I will focus a bit on the Greenhouse.

For this area I really wanted something bright and green, something to give a bit of juxtaposition against the backdrop of being alone in space. Space stations are a bit of an enclosed, never varying type a beast. Long hallway, cookie cutter rooms, the same look and feel for most of the areas. I wanted each room to be unique, each area to give a bit of excitement and wonderment when entering it. When I was laying out the greenhouse area I knew it would be a larger, rectangular type room. There would be some tables, containment units of various vegetations, some bright lights for growing certain species. As I got around to level design I kinda had to ask myself the question of “What would this area look like if there was no outside intervention. What would it look like if the plants just thrived on their own and took over.” With that idea, the idea of an overgrown greenhouse but at the same time still a clean/pristine scientific environment I started piecing together what is below:

What I am Playing

Honestly not much this week. Mostly just Destiny when I find some time. Suggestions are welcome.

In Conclusion

These posts vary week to week. Sometimes I have a lot to say about things I read, or played. Other times its more focused on my game projects or AI interests. This will continue to find its footing as the format evolves over time and I iterate on what I think is best.

All art here was generated using Midjourney.

Often when I sit down to do anything, whether it be writing this, writing code, studying AI or even just relaxing its often a battle just to begin. My mind doesn’t quite seem to work the way it use to. Not in a degrading type of change, but a more abstract evolution of my past self. Years of compounding experiences and challenges in the realm of the entrepreneur has changed the way I think and perceive things. I tend to think of things at a high level and how it fits into my life, and try to understand every outcome of every timeline those ideas create, instead of living in the peaceful bliss of just creating.

There is an understanding to the totality of everything you try to accomplish, that you cant just live in the moment without the future bearing down on you. Where there use to be a youthful joy of building things in ignorance, now there is the thought of the future constraints. Do I really want to spend 3 years building a game? Another company? Another app? Just to fail, and fail again. In a decade from now all that’s left in your wake is a string of failed attempts at creative fulfillment. That’s the worse part of this, I wish the thought of time mattered as little now as it did a decade ago. On the flip side of that, isn’t it worse to have looked back and lamented at all the things you never tried for fear of wasting what time you have left? Are failures really failures? Maybe its how we define success and how we define failures.

I think this can be classified as a slump/rut/writers block situation. We have all been there. Where we want to accomplish something but the thought of starting back at the starting line weighs too much to even begin. The darkness becomes heavier and heavier, and then slowly consumes. I do find moments of brief clarity in this darkness, moments when I think I finally escaped, when I found the reason I was meant to be where I am. I try to grasp those only to let go for some reason. Every moment of every day is a battle in the bleakness of this creative void.

Game Dev Projects

As I posted a few weeks ago showcasing some of the year+ work I have done on “Gods, Puppets and Dreams” I am now at a crossroads. The slump is real. Do I create a new project and start something fresh that will reignite the fire? Or push through and continue on with the current one. Leaning towards the later. I did run across an excellent UE5 lighting tutorial on 3D Brushwork's YouTube Channel. Lighting is always something I struggled with, or more struggled to understand.

I do want to create a series of dev videos showing my process for level design. Did a ton of work on greyboxing, layouts, and blender → Unreal workflow. So maybe that will happen this week.

I have started to rework some of the initial areas I laid out using some kitbash elements. I dont want to spend a ton of time on set dressing at this point in time, but sometimes you just need to do something different. I would like each area of the station to feel unique (room, observation deck, android room, hangar, farm/plant room, etc). As you progress with each time loop iteration, things will slowly change into a more darker, bizarre type atmosphere. Every item in the game can be positioned based on the current time loop (phase epoch as I call it in the code), with each loop/phase being unique in its own right.

What I Am Playing

Its now spooky season, so if you have any ideas on what I should get into drop a comment. I’m thinking the latest Resident Evil or maybe Dead Space 2 (never finished that).

Leave a comment

Chivalry 2

PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, PC

This just came to game pass recently after being a full release for a while, and its been a long time since I played a game and just smiled the entire time. Chivalry is just a clash of swinging giant swords, rushing outposts and hacking your opponents to pieces in medieval warfare with 60ish other people. Its just raw fun. Everyone on the battlefield is basically canon fodder anyways, so its such a hilarious time to charge the enemy strongholds with your band of merry men. If you need a laugh or something fun and simple so you can switch your brain off, I highly suggest this.

Chivalry 2 is a multiplayer first person slasher inspired by epic medieval movie battles. Players are thrust into the action of every iconic moment of the era - from clashing swords, to storms of flaming arrows, to sprawling castle sieges and more.

Random

AI Generated Video

As I have a keen interest in everything AI, Meta announced their “Make-a-Video”, here, which can seemingly can create video via the text-to-video translation process similar to text-to-image that has risen in popularity the past months. I am still just in awe of these technologies.

With that I bid farewell.

Memento mori, or, remember that you [have to] die, one day. It is a reminder of the inevitability of death. Me, you, family, friends, famous people, pets. Our time is limited and our time is precious. Life often moves fast, days turn into weeks turn into months turn into years. There is often little time spent on reminding ourselves that our time here is limited. What does that exactly mean though? How is that translated into practical purposes?

I often think about the balancing act of living for the future and enjoying the present. Too often its the former. Blinded by the ambition of progress, the ever moving locomotive barreling forward into the new dawn. But to know where we should go we should understand where we came from, how we got to where we are. Understanding what’s really important in life, finding peace in the present and using that to plot the course that will take us to the inevitable end of the line. “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart”. I hope I can understand this sooner rather than later.

We walk among the stars, and to the stars we will return. How bright we shine is up to us.

“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

Steve Jobs

What I am Reading

The Fellowship of the Ring

Believe it or not, I haven’t actually read much of any of Tolkien’s work. So I figured it was about time given that the new Amazon show is currently out. There really isn’t much else to say about this foundational piece of epic fantasy.

On Amazon

Some More Things

Seamless Texture Generator using Stable Diffusion

Dream Textures (github.com/carson-katri/dream-textures) is a Blender addon to create textures, concept art and background assets using Stable Diffusion. It can also create seamless textures that can tile. If you lack the artistic skills like myself, then this new world of diffusion models are game changing.

Undiscovered Worlds

I found this tool, Undiscovered Worlds (github.com/JonathanCRH/Undiscovered_Worlds), recently via a Reddit post. This open source application is a procedural map creator. I love just creating landscapes, worlds, mountains and terrains in various game engines. I’m looking forward to messing around with this in the near future.

How DALL-E 2 Actually Works

This blog post from AssemblyAI.com offers some great insight into the technology behind text-to-image models. DALL-E 2, given a short text prompt, can generate complexly new images that combine distinct and unrelated objects in semantically plausible ways.

What I am Playing

Honestly, not much. I could use some recommendations. PC, PS5, Series X, Switch. You name it.

I did run 2nd and third ever raid in Destiny 2 the past week. First was Vow of the Disciple introduced in the Witch Queen expansion, then the reprised Kings Fall raid that came out during this season, season of plunder. Both were a great time. VotD was challenging because I was still dealing with post-covid brain fog, and man memorizing those symbols and all the other stuff just was killing me. Luckily, during the Caretaker encounter, I only forgot the symbols twice.

Now Kings Falls, that was a ton of fun. Just the right amount of difficulty, set pieces and overall timing. I never played this back in the D1 days (my fireteam all stopped) but it was a blast. I look forward to many more runs to maybe get that new raid weapon, Touch of Malice.

In Conclusion

Enjoy the week, the weekend and the days before winter. Winter is coming. You are all appreciated. Be unique, stay positive and fuck what other people say. Go Bills.

The Weekly Page # 7

Not often am I stuck without thoughts, but this week is proving to be that. But lets carry on through the veil.

Fall, the Elite Season

So yes, my weekly cadence already seems to be in jeopardy, but I will fight through the post covid brain fog that is plaguing me for this edition. Normally I would write what’s on my mind, usually about something I read or learned, but at this point in time all I can really think about is how underwhelming a villain Thanos was, how the purge movies are stupid and football. So as I attempt to break out of this slump, lets talk about the elite season. The one that stands on its own in greatness, the one that the others look to in awe.

That is fall.

Fall in the northeast is what we describe as elite season. The humid days of summer have led us to cool days and even cooler nights. The leaves start changing, the breeze breezes just a little bit cooler, you grab an extra blanket for the night and throw on a hoodie during the day. Fall ushers in a new season of football and hockey. It rings the bells of Ocktoberfest, Pumking and stout season. It is the calm before the storm that is winter. The lawn is marked with holes as the squirrels bury their nuts, the fireplaces getting tuned up fill the air with that rich, welcoming smoke. What’s not to love about this season. Throw on your best hoodie and get crunching in some fallen fall leaves. I just hope I can break out of this void and enjoy it before hell breaks loose and we get buried in snow.

What I am Playing

So, outside of Destiny, I did grab a couple games on the Switch that were on sale and caught my eye and there are some new additions to game pass this week that I am looking forward to.

DEATHLOOP

PS5, Xbox Series

I originally passed on this as I didn’t have a PS5 at the time, but now Deathloop is on GamePass so I am excited to start this (which, yes, technically I am not “Playing” this currently).

DEATHLOOP transports you to the mysterious island of Blackreef, where an eternal struggle between two extraordinary assassins will determine the island’s future. As Colt, you must find a way to put an end to the timeloop trapping the island in an endless cycle, all while being hunted by the island’s inhabitants. Using your powerful weapons and abilities, you’ll need to take out 8 key targets across the stunning, yet chaotic, island before the day resets in order break the loop once and for all. But lurking in the shadows is rival assassin Julianna whose sole mission is to take Colt out and keep the loop going. Learn from each cycle, try new paths and approaches, and break the loop.

Hourglass

Switch

I came across this on the Nintendo e-Shop and just loved the art style of this as well as the puzzle system that utilizes a cool time traversal rewind mechanic. I am a sucker for these stylized games.

In Hourglass you can create a time-clone of yourself to solve challenging puzzles. You will play as Aywa, a young adventurer who is traveling to Egypt to find her missing father - an archeologist, who never returned from his latest expedition.

Cozy Grove

Switch

Another impromptu Switch e-Shop purchase, this one is a life-sim game about camping on a haunted island. As a spirit scout you will wonder the island’s forest each day finding new secrets and helping the other ghosts. To me it feels like the perfect Switch game. Something you can play here and there, on a flight, during work, etc.

From the store listing:

Welcome to Cozy Grove, a life-sim game about camping on a haunted, ever-changing island. As a Spirit Scout, you'll wander the island's forest each day, finding new hidden secrets and helping soothe the local ghosts. With a little time and a lot of crafting, you'll bring color and joy back to Cozy Grove!

Cozy Grove is synced to real world time, and provides 30-60 minutes of new quest content each day. After that, you can fish, craft and decorate to your heart's content!

Features:
• Beautiful, dynamic, hand-drawn landscapes that come alive when you help a spirit in need.
• Dozens of memorable characters and spirits for you to find and befriend. Each spirit has a unique, extensive story for you to unravel over time.
• Collect spirit animals, craft decorations, go fishing and more!
• 40+ hour campaign filled with side quests, designed to span months of playtime.

What I am Working On

This is a new portion of the newsletter with the purpose of showing my work and keeping myself honest and motivated.

Tentatively titled “Of Gods, Puppets and Dreams” and is being built in Unreal Engine 5 (previously started on Unreal Engine 4). In this game you play as a being alone in large space station. It is a first person story and exploration game where you try to discover why you are where you are, and what your purpose is. All while being in a temporal loop, day after day looping back on itself. Its about exploring the ideas of emptiness, loneliness, excitement and confusion among others. The ideas stem from some of my favorite games such as “Gone Home”, “Firewatch” and the non-game-game “P.T.”. Here are some in progress screen shots.

The End

Until next week, go bills. Don’t forget to subscribe.

Photo by Fiona Smallwood on Unsplash

The Week That Was, What I am Pondering

For anyone trying to discern what to do with their life: PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO. That’s pretty much all the info you need”

— Amy Krouse Rosenthal

This is a quoted excerpt that I am been thinking about for the past week, from “Keep Going” by Austin Kleon. In this short but fantastic book the author lays out 10 ways to stay creative in good times and bad. I wont go into all of them as I highly encourage you to read it yourself and keep it close at hand for times you seem to falter and give up on yourself. There are lessons here to help you when you feel lost, feel unable to make progress or just feel like you are stuck with nowhere to go.

For my struggles its almost like being torn in half. One side wants to focus on career and making more money and getting a better job, which takes all your free time. Interviewing, coding/technical study, design study, behavioral, etc. These all take every ounce of free time to prepare properly, especially in the tech world. The other half wants to focus on creative endeavors. Building things on my own without the need for a corporate world. Building things for myself and not to make someone else rich. Building games, which is what I wanted to do since I first wrote that on a chalkboard in 3rd grade and people laughed. I have stalled on both endeavors. Career is not advancing because that industry is a soul sucking, passionless pit of rehashed work and ideas. So its hard to go “all in” on something that is slowly killing you. Meanwhile looking back at the things you failed to achieve creatively, because you were split too much, is as crushing as failing an interview.

I think, for myself at least, the lessons I gleamed from reading “Keep Going” is what I quoted at the top. Focus on what you pay attention to. I think I am done living someone else’s life. The startup tech world burned me out. There is no healing that. I am going to build worlds, build experiences, explore AI, write, read and find fulfillment outside of trying to make more money in tech. Time to bet on myself.

What I am Reading

Show Your Work!

By: Austin Kleon. On Amazon

Keeping up with the theme after reading his other offering, Keep Going (mentioned above), I had to jump into this. “Keep Going” offered invaluable ways to combat the slog and remain creative. Show Your Work! is about why generosity trumps genius. It’s about getting findable, about using the network instead of wasting time “networking.” It’s not self-promotion, it’s self-discovery―let others into your process, then let them steal from you. Filled with illustrations, quotes, stories, and examples, Show Your Work! offers ten transformative rules for being open, generous, brave, productive.

What I am Playing

Inscryption (PC/PS5)

Now this is an interesting one. I heard such good things about it, but it wasn’t until recently that it came to the PS5 that I decided to give it a go. I’m not one for card/deck builders but this is so unique that it blends a few genres.

Inscryption is an inky black card-based odyssey that blends the deckbuilding roguelike, escape-room style puzzles, and psychological horror into a blood-laced smoothie. Darker still are the secrets inscrybed upon the cards...

Yes I am also playing lots of Destiny 2, but I can only mention that so many times. Also someone sherpa me into Kings Fall.

Share The Weekly Page

Until Next Week

Go bills.

Twitter: @Corey_s_

What I am Thinking About

This blurb is about a TED Talk that I have watched a few times over the years. Titled “Why some of us don’t have one true calling” by Emillie Wapnick (Youtube). Its a brilliant conversation about the idea have having that one thing you were meant to do on this earth vs those of us that have many creative pursuits. That enjoy doing many things, building many things, learning many things. It can be isolating at times, feeling like you are stretching yourself too thin, failing over and over and over.

The notion of the narrowly focused life is highly romanticized in our culture. It’s the idea of destiny, or the one true calling, the idea that we each have one great thing we are meant to do during our time on this earth, and you need to figure out what that thing is and devote your life to it.

The idea at play here is “what if you’re someone who isn’t wired this way?” or “what if there are a lot of different subjects you’re curious about and many different things you want to do. This is really the first time I heard this explained by someone in a similar position. Often lost in the sea of the creative endeavors around us it can feel like we are drowning on a daily basis. Never making progress, never seeing any light at any end of the many tunnels we have built for ourselves. It really helped me understand that this isn’t a defect of my mind but instead its the flip side of the belief of our true single calling. Neither is superior to the other.

What is interesting about the idea of multipotentiality as a super power is the idea of rapid learning. When that one thing hits, when you find the spark, you go all in on that idea and ride that wave for as long as it goes. We are used to being beginners because we’ve been beginners so many times in the past. This is important because we’re less afraid of trying new things and stepping out of our comfort zone, which is the key to growth. The things we learn pursing one pursuit we can bring with us to another, and those to another. Compounding learning, skills and knowledge with each endeavor we tackle. “We are rarely starting from scratch”.

We have a lot of complex, multidimensional problems facing the world right now, and we need creative, out-of-the-box thinkers to tackle them.

These ideas are worth pondering for anyone who feels like they don’t fit into this world. Here it is again for viewing purposes: Youtube

What I am Reading

(Or listening to)

1. Staff Engineer (Amazon)

   Kind of goes with the theme of this weeks page. This is a great resource for senior level engineers who are unsure about what the future looks like as far as their career path and goals.

   At most technology companies, you'll reach Senior software engineer, the career level for software engineers, in five to eight years. At the career level, your company's career ladder won't require that you work towards the next promotion; being promoted further is an exception rather than expected. This is also when many engineers are first given an opportunity to move into engineering management. 

   Over the past few years, we've seen a flurry of books unlocking the engineering management career path, like Camille Fournier's The Manager's Path, Julie Zhuo's The Making of a Manager, Lara Hogan's Resilient Management, and even my own An Elegant Puzzle. The engineering management career isn't an easy one, but there are maps available to help navigate it. What if you want to advance your career without becoming an engineering manager? The technical leadership path remains relatively undocumented, hard to navigate, and inconsistent across companies. Staff Engineer is your guide to building your career towards a staff engineering role, receiving the title, and succeeding within the role.

That is it folks. Short this week and I missed last week. I think the theme though doesn’t need many words for it to resonate.

I spent the past week lurching around my house due to a reaggravation of a back injury. Serves me right for trying to get into shape by doing squats and lunges. In between bouts of feeling sorry for myself and depressive mental shutdowns I found a bit of clarity to understanding the path forward in my life. There is a quote I read from “Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad“ which sub quotes “Twenty-Four Hours a Day” that reads:

Any man can fight the battles of just one day, it is only when you and I add the burden of those two awful eternities, yesterday and tomorrow, that we breakdown. It is not the experience of today that drives men mad. It is the remorse or bitterness for something that which happened yesterday or the dread of what tomorrow may bring. Let us therefor do our best to live but one day at a time.

I read this and then thought about it for quite a bit of time. The challenges of today are conquerable. We can and will succeed with what we face, its the heaviness of the thoughts of what came yesterday and what will come tomorrow that is seemingly unbeatable. It’s the the invisible assassin, that although we can see ‘em coming because we know where to look, we still succumb to backstab and get crippled, frozen, unable to bear the burden of the day. I need to think about this some more, but I think there is power in knowledge. Power is only focusing on the things you can control that are in front of you, learning from the past and building a foundation for the future.

Some Apps I Love

• Portal (iOS)

  

  • Portal is what I use mostly instead of music on a daily basis. It’s an escape from reality to the sounds of nature all over the world. It plays off the notion that your surroundings have a great impact on your sleep, productivity, stress levels and overall mental wellbeing.

  • Available on iOS: Link

What I Am Reading

• Meditations

  

  • Written in Greek by an intellectual Roman emperor without any intention of publication, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius  offer a wide range of fascinating spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the leader struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. Spanning from doubt and despair to conviction and exaltation, they cover such diverse topics as the question of virtue, human rationality, the nature of the gods and the values of leadership. But while the Meditations were composed to provide personal consolation, in developing his beliefs Marcus also created one of the greatest of all works of philosophy: a series of wise and practical aphorisms that have been consulted and admired by statesmen, thinkers and ordinary readers for almost two thousand years.

  • On Amazon

What I Am Playing

1. Cyberpunk 2077

   

   So we all know what happened at launch, but given time since then this game as worked out a lot of the kinks and problems that plagued it. I am enjoying the world, the exploration, the story and the combat. Night City and its surrounding areas is an exciting romp in a distant, broken society. I played a little of it at launch, then some more when they released the Series X upgrades, but now I find myself looking for something and this is scratching that itch. I’m also a sucker for lootin, shootin and and semblance of RPG character development. You can probably find this for cheap, I highly recommend.

   • On Amazon

2. Stray

   

   You know that game you keep seeing in Twitter with the cat? Yea that one. I am not too far into it yet but its a great little indie game where you play as a cat in a cyberpunk type city.

   Lost, alone and separated from family, a stray cat must untangle an ancient mystery to escape a long-forgotten cybercity and find their way home.

   If you have a PS5 with the new upgraded ps plus then you already have access to this one.

Random Things

1. Analog Task List

   

   I have a terrible history of staying on topic. Keeping lists, todo apps, sticky notes I have shit everywhere and I still cant keep focus. I recently found this beautiful task list (here) that so far as been a blessing keeping me focused. It’s easy to crutch technology for maintaining a daily list of things that need to get done, but as someone who lives a digital life I needed a separation from it. Keep it simple is the key for me. How will this hold up over weeks, months? We will see. If this is the last article I write then it has failed me miserably.

Here I sit with the entire day to think. Having survived another round of layoffs we were gifted a refresh day. So here I sit, thinking, pondering and wondering if this is really where I want to be. Is this the life I want to live, constantly living by the whim of other peoples decisions. Do we even have a choice of our place in the world, or is the mental fortitude too much to break out of the cycle. Its easy for people to scream about happiness on YouTube and Instagram and pretend to be guru’s of life, but really these are not bound in reality. They are monotonous talking heads that really just love the sound of their own voices, to give them vindication, to feed their emptiness. I think the only way out of this is compounding progress, little by little, day by day. But that in itself is difficult as we are indoctrinated to go for the quick reward instead of looking at where we want to be in the future.

The wheel just keeps spinning, the longer it spins the more complacent I find myself becoming. How do we break this cycle? Or are we meant to die without ever having known.