I spent much of my childhood working on a tabletop RPG with my brother. Then decades later working on and off on various gamedev projects.
I used to beat myself up for never finishing anything. Only with therapy over the past couple of years did it finally click for me that many times these projects were escapes. The point was not to finish them so that the were a safe place I could retreat to when my life felt uncontrolled and chaotic.
I was absolutely using it unknowingly to self-medicate. I still do so—I literally just took a break from hacking on my fantasy console project to check HN—but I'm a lot more mindful of my motivations now. It's OK to want some escapism now and then. Certainly with the pandemic, it's entirely reasonably to want a space where one feels they have some control because we sure as shit don't have control over COVID.
But I try to make sure I'm not using it as an unhealthy way to avoid chaos that I should be tackling.
I spent much of my childhood working on a tabletop RPG with my brother. Then decades later working on and off on various gamedev projects.
I used to beat myself up for never finishing anything. Only with therapy over the past couple of years did it finally click for me that many times these projects were escapes. The point was not to finish them so that the were a safe place I could retreat to when my life felt uncontrolled and chaotic.
I was absolutely using it unknowingly to self-medicate. I still do so—I literally just took a break from hacking on my fantasy console project to check HN—but I'm a lot more mindful of my motivations now. It's OK to want some escapism now and then. Certainly with the pandemic, it's entirely reasonably to want a space where one feels they have some control because we sure as shit don't have control over COVID.
But I try to make sure I'm not using it as an unhealthy way to avoid chaos that I should be tackling.