Demersus Devlog #5 - Stress, Anxiety, Burnout

Why am I Writing This?

I wasn’t sure if I should write this, but in the end decided it could be a good exercise and getting it off my chest could also be therapeutic in some kind of way.

Why am I Feeling Like This?

The last few days (now over a week) have not been great to me mentally speaking (and somewhat physically as well). I’d say I’m experiencing quite a lot of what some might call burnout, others would call it writers / artist block. The idea of the big, ambitious project that is Demersus and the contest inching closer each and every passing day (which funnily enough - the passage of time lately has felt both unforgivingly quick and painfully slow at the same time) closing in on me - making me feel claustrophobic, anxious and stressed (even to the point where the stress has been invading my time of rest - my dreams causing me to feel pretty tired on a day to day basis lately).

If you think about it, the stress of the situation invading my dreams when a core idea of the game is it’s action taking place in a dream scape is quite ironic.

But nonetheless, I have to admit that I am struggling. It’s most likely cause by a combination of how tired I am after the crunch period of Radiorum (my last game dev project), how much I put on myself - daily, the incredibly high ambition, standards and expectations that I require of myself, and just having a deep yearning to prove (yet again) that I am capable, that I can do it, that I will succeed… after all:

“Illusions of grandeur aren’t illusions if they’re actually grounded in reality.”

But I should also be kind to myself in times like these. I have to recognize that not having a fleshed out, overarching story / direction for the game is what’s most likely causing me the most stress, not having a path to follow, no proper ‘TODO’ list to check things off of and so on. So that’s most likely what I should focus now after the nearest progress review with our professor this Saturday and maybe I should also take a day or two off to relax for a little bit.

It’s Okay

I should also recognize that starting any project, especially an ambitious one, one that you deeply care about, in an extremely small team, with no real budget is also a tall ask and especially in the early stages, things like this are normal and to be expected. Demersus just needs a little bit more time in the oven. It’s going to be alright (as it always is)…