Last year, I tried to live more intentionally in various aspects of my life, from time management to how I actually structured my work. Looking back, I think I was able to partially achieve this, but with one very significant issue - social media. I’d like to reflect on how this past year went, and explore my goals for next year and how I’m planning to incorporate deinfluencing into my life.
General Reflection
Compared to 2024, this past year had relatively little traveling. I did a lot more small trips with friends, and one bigger Toronto trip in the summer for the Blackpink concert. My parents came to visit for the winter, so there weren’t any big Christmas travel plans either. Regardless, I’m happy with all the things I did this year, and the quality time I was able to spend with friends and family.
Perhaps the biggest event that happened to me was getting laid off in Septebmer, it fundamentally changed the trajectory for my plans in the near future! I’m lucky enough to have been saving over the years, and with the support of my family I’m still in a decent place financially - which has really given me the freedom to take a step back and evaluate my next steps!
Before getting into specifics, one thing I wanted to focus on which is also the theme of this year is that I spent a little too much time on social media. Flicking open instagram and scrolling through reels has become the de dacto action I take when I feel any sense of boredom, and it definitely affected a significant portion of my life this past year. Even after setting time limits on my phone, it’s still hard to shake off the psychology that has built up in my brain already, so that’s something I’d like to focus on improving.
Pre-Layoff
At the start of the year, work was going pretty decently for me - I had been working on my own game as a “learning” project and I came up with a 3rd person action adventure game where you play as an elemental mage assassin. The game features an element system where each enemy has specific elements that the player has to interact with to solve specific environmental and combat problems. I spent a ton of time on this project, and did all the art and 3d modeling myself as well; I’m really proud of how far I was able to get with just one month of time!
Outside of work, I mostly worked on my TFT-inspired platforming roguelike, but most of that time was really just spent developing systems and the editor. In the end, I was able to squeeze out a smamll build with barebones content for a rough 15 minute demo - which recieved decent feedback when I showed it to my friends. Still, I think this one will have to stay in the oven a bit more to cook..
Beyond that, I was enjoying a lot of small things in life - I climbed my first V5 this year at the bouldering gym, ate a lot of yummy strawberries from my garden, met a lot of new people, and just spent a lot of time with my friends and family in general! Overall, life outside of work had been good!
Post-Layoff
At some point I had to switch teams at work, and going from gameplay programming to SDK upgrades was really not an ideal switch for me.. Around September, I got laid off from my studio. I decided to take this time to look for a job that I really wanted, and also start publishing some of my own games while in the middle of my search. After a bit of work and a lot of waiting, I had finally published my first game in December!
Releasing my own game has really been a dream come true - even without amazing sales, it’s been a very satisfying experience just seeing people play and enjoy a game that I made. I’ve learned a ton in the process of releasing this first game, both about making the game itself and more general marketing and promotional lessons as well. I’m hoping to release more games in the future; Hopefully I can learn from my previous mistakes and release with better success in my successive projects!
One thing I’ve discovered post layoff is that time management can be really tricky, especially in the age of social media. I’d like to think that I’m decent at controlling my doomscrolling, but at the end of the day it’s still a lot of wasted time even if I keep it to less than an hour. I had already been trying to cut down my habits towards the end of the year, but I hope that by the end of next year I’ll be able to stop doomscrolling completely.
Goal Review
Looking at last years goals, I’m actually surprised that I actually ticked a few off the list! One notable one is making a game demo - which I had already somewhat accomplished before I got laid off and had time to release my own games! Considering that I fully released a game by the end of the year, I’d say that this goal was completely blown out of the water!
I’m also somewhat consistently clearing 4 hexes now, though it is around just 1 problem per session (week). I’m honestly a bit surprised I hit this goal, considering that I wasn’t specifically aiming to achieve this when I climb - but I guess the weekly consistency eventually pays off over time! Another goal I was able to kind of complete was working on a technical project - I had a fluid simulation that I was attempting to create; I ran into a ton of roadblocks and paused the project, but it did get to a point where I could showcase it to people so that’s good enough for me!
Some of the other goals are iffy, like learning conversational Korean; And some goals were straight up not even close, like running a sub 4 hour marathon. Going forward, I’d need something to remind me what my core goals are so I can remember what I wanted to work towards throughout the year. This year, I may try taping up a list on my wall again to give myself an extra boost every day!
Future Exploration
Looking into the year 2026, a lot of things are up in the air - I’m not sure where this journey with making my own games will take me, and I’m not sure what my girlfriends employment status will be either since she is on rolling contracts now. As such, it’s really hard to predict how the year will play out, as we might change jobs or even end up moving to a different city!
Keeping that in mind, I’ll keep some of my goals rough and malleable - with the core one being the most important act of deinfluencing. I’ll likely update some of these items as the year changes - but as a start, I’ll focus on these goals:
- Completely stop doomscrolling when bored
- Release 2 more games this year
- Climb a V6
- Run a sub 4 hour marathon
- Read 2 books
- Start a large worldbuilding project
With more time on my hands, I’m expecting myself to actually keep up with these goals throughout the year! I feel a lot of mystery and intrigue for this upcoming year, and I’m very excited to see what 2026 has in store for me. Happy new year, hope everyone has a safe and exciting 2026!