New Year, New Direction

Hi everyone and Happy New Year!

Change is in the air and this website isn't immune. I've had this website on the backburner for a few months now. The truth is I struggled with what direction I wanted to take this website and I was never really happy with the direction it was going.

I love playing indie games and working on projects. But over the last few months I've just been so busy that I never had enough downtime to play through a whole game– let alone write a blog post about it. There's going to be some changes here, but let me let me update you with whats been going on since I last posted.

So what was going on?

To answer that question we have to take a trip back to May of 2024.

Meet Mochi! We rehomed her in May and she's been keeping us busy ever since. Mochi is a Goldendoodle, her looks lean towards the poodle-side, but she definitely has the energy of a golden retriever.

Just after we got her we took a trip out to Toronto to see the F1 Exhibition. If you ever get the chance to see it, I would highly recommend it! The highlight for me was seeing pieces of Roman Grosjean's wreck in-person and the explanations for how the safety systems saved his life.

Just a warning – if you like simulator games but never tried a direct-drive system, the racing simulator is highly influential! After my short 5 minute session on their sim rig, I promised myself I would build my own by the end of the year.

We also moved to a new place in October! The move took up my free time for the entire month, but it was worth it. You never really know how much stuff you have until it comes time to move it!

Our new place has a way more storage than our old apartment and it also has a backyard that Mochi loves to run around in. Selfishly it also has more space for my gadgets and simulator setup. More on that sim setup in a later blog post.

"Work has been busy"

That's a phrase I've uttered way too much throughout the year. The reality is, working for a small start-up, you tend to wear a bunch of hats and projects can change in the blink of an eye.

While I appreciated the privilege that I always had something new to work on, I found that not having a "stable area of focus" was causing a form of burnout. A contributing factor to that burnout was that the hats I had been wearing for the past few months weren't focused on development tasks.

To start off the year with a bang, I'll be starting a new job in a couple of days! The position is at another local startup but the work is more focused on the backend (my area of interest)! It also gives me the opportunity to learn Go – a language I've heard about for awhile but never had the chance to use.

I learned so much and I'm so grateful for my position at memoryKPR, along with the people I've worked with over the past 4 years. I'll still be working part-time with memoryKPR for the time being to assist with the direction and mobile / infrastructure development. With that said, I'm looking forward with excitement and am ready for a new challenge.

2025 Goals

My theme for the year is discipline.

I will use this blog to keep myself accountable for my goals throughout the year.

Release a Mobile App

A couple months ago I paid for an Apple Developer licence in order to provide external motivation. Publishing my own app to the mobile app stores has always been a goal of mine, but I usually get stuck at the idea stage.

Although I've used Flutter in the past for memoryKPR, Renz has influenced me to give Expo / React Native another shot. He's using Expo / React Native to build his productivity app, Doaily, and the performance and maturity of the framework both appeal to me.

Be consistent with blog posting

I really enjoy having a personal website and I want to grow my community here. As such, I've removed the paid tier because having a paid membership while not providing enough valuable content didn't sit right with me. I still have ads but I reduce it to blog posts only to reduce the distraction. I also have a tip button I'll be adding in the footer and on blog posts to allow generous readers to support my content.

But my primary goal for this website is to build a community.

Be more engaged in the network

One thing I've learned over the past year is the importance of having a professional network.

Having a group of like-minded individuals—especially those who have been through similar experiences—allows you to communicate, collaborate, and work through problems together.

Going into this new year, I want to expand my network. This means being more active on social media, maybe giving YouTube a shot, and generally building a community of people with similar goals. Part of this initiative involves being more engaged both on social platforms and here on this website.

Stay tuned for more posts! (for real this time)