When I started yesterday, I intended to do a bunch of work I’m behind on. I checked Twitter, wound up in a foul mood (a natural progression), and decided the healthiest thing would be to commit to a year-long blogging spree to deal with it all.
I’m not wrong, and I’m still committed to a post every day, but what the hell is wrong with me? Most people deal with their bad mood by going for a walk or listening to some music. I do those things, too, but not yesterday.
It’s New Year’s, so resolving to do something for the entire year is pretty common, too. Maybe I’m not a psycho.
The rest of the day I spent playing Valheim and avoiding real-life entirely. I didn’t get the programming done that I needed to do, and now I have a day to finish something that will probably take me 2 or 3 days. Maybe I’ll have a really good day today and get it done. We’ll see.
Most of the day, I got to play Valheim with a friend. We’re working on a base together, so most of the time was spent building, which is fantastic. In spite Valheim being my distraction of choice, it still fulfilled me in certain ways.
However, most of my builds in Valheim are solo projects. Working with someone challenges me in interesting ways.
Having lived with myself for nearly 50 years, I understand and can predict a few of my tendencies. If I don’t watch myself, I will take over a project and try to do it all myself. I’m particular and opinionated and passionate, and also demanding and bossy. Sometimes these qualities are not palatable to the people I should be working with.
Knowing this about myself, I try really hard to not step on other people’s toes. In the Valheim base project, we were working on a mead hall. I made myself avoid working on the mead hall whenever I was the only one online, and instead worked on other parts of the base, such as the kitchen and the storage area and the crafting zone. Basically, all of the rest of the base.
When my friend gets on and sees the stuff that’s done and not done, he offers opinions and I take them to heart. He made suggestions about places where walls or doors could be, about pathing, about fixing the roofing so it lines up better… lots of suggestions which in the moment made me grumble internally, but in the fullness of time were the right choices.
Yesterday, his suggestions lead to the destruction and reconstruction of a significant portion of the base, and I got grumpy. It felt like I needed to destroy something I created and liked. Furthermore, I wasn’t sure I was going to like the next incarnation of those features. And it was my hand clicking the button to dismantle all this stuff that I spent hours trying to get right in the first place.
I think I did okay. I told my friend how I felt tense about it, but I kept going with the build. At the end of the day, I like what we built, and I think he likes it, too. We had a good time.
What’s my point?
I don’t know that I have one, necessarily. I’m capable of working with other people in creative endeavors, and even though it’s hard and doesn’t feel good at times, I’ve learned enough about myself and how to communicate my feelings that it doesn’t destroy my relationship with the person I’m working with. That seems positive, right?
It’s still challenging for me to work with people on projects. But I can do it. I’m not sure Brian from 10 or 20 years ago would be quite so capable.
I still have a ton of programming to do today, and I’m not looking forward to it. Hopefully it’s a lot easier than I think it’ll be and I’ll be done sooner than I think. If not, it’s going to be a tough day, and I will need to keep myself from falling into another day filled with distractions instead of progress.