Mental health - Part 1


Intro

I can’t overstate how I'm feeling making this game. 
It has been truly awesome, I have seen so many positive comments! That makes us really motivated and inspired.
Every evening, I'm focused on creative tasks. Seeing everything that comes to life has been amazing. 


Anxiety

Unfortunately, it seems to have affected my health dramatically.
I spend a lot of time thinking about Everhood, which has caused a lot of anxiety.
I exercise at least once a week, which is not great, but it's better than nothing.

I felt physical chest pain, I know I just have to slow down or take more breaks and not worry so much. We will not stop production or anything like it.
I feel I connected the dots, knowing that my anxiety has actually caused physical pain has already helped me manage it.

I also sought professional advice on this subject and obtained similar conclusions.

I also work at the same time on Minecraft Dungeons, which I manage well. Working on Dungeons helps me focus on my strongest qualities, which is almost a reminder of trust, something I really need because working with Everhood is different on many levels. It’s more broad organizing, core design work, all the visuals, sounds, music, implementation and everything else, I'm sure I could not do it alone. Having Jordi taking the code work with his technical abilities have been such a relief and made the development so much faster and easier.

In my career as a video game artist, I was very lucky not to have to work overtime (aka Crunch). I am truly grateful to my current and past superiors who have been able to avoid such behavior.

This is not the first time I work a few hours on my own projects, but Everhood is of another magnitude. We aim to finish a real product. Having an overview of my previous projects on what can be reduced and what deserves special attention has certainly helped me in this development and made it possible to go through the milestones.

But we are certainly not out of the woods, we still have a lot to do.


Conclusion

My point is that if you are creative and start feeling bad, do not push it. Just pause and come back when you feel good, the tasks usually get easier with rest anyway.

It should be noted that this pain can sometimes be used to create amazing works of art, I would not advise. 
Remember that when it comes to video games, it's more of a marathon than a sprint, so less pain is better.

As I write this devlog, I have not worked for the whole week, I concentrate instead on rest, I feel much better.
I hope to get back on the saddle once I feel no anxiety, so I know that I can work for ambitious/cool ideas rather than skin them because of bad feelings.


// Chris


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