Journal Entry

Okay, obviously the waking up at 5:00 to jog thing was a bad idea. I'm sure everyone could see that coming, but I let optimism win out over reason.

The problem with hitting the snooze button once is that it makes it so much easier to hit it the second time, know what I mean?

I only woke up once during the night last night, but when the alarm went off at five I set it for six, and when it went off at six I set it for seven, and I didn't really get up at seven. When I did finally get out of bed, I rushed through getting ready and got to work, instead of taking the morning off and going for a jog (like I did on Tuesday).

I don't know what the solution is. I guess I'm going to get back to working on getting up right at six and getting to work on time, and find time later in the day for my jogging. That's a little worrying, because I know I'll have trouble being consistent at it, but I've done a good enough job going to the gym that maybe I can manage. If nothing else, I'll just go back to aiming for five days a week at the gym (something I was planning to do a week ago).

Yesterday after work we went to Jason's Deli for dinner. I'd been wanting to go for a while, but there's not one terribly close to home or work, so it always made sense to put it off until we could get together with K-- and N-- at the one by their place. It was a little tricky working out the timing (and leaving enough time to get to church afterward), but we managed.

Afterward, I called B-- and E-- to see if I could come hang out, but B-- is working evenings all week and E-- was planning on going to bed early. Alas and sadface. I settled for doing the dishes and then working on my game while T-- and I watched Lost. We're into season two now.

I got a lot accomplished. Strongholds are now growing and changing over time, much like the character does. I'd guess I'm at about 70% of gameplay functionality, but when you factor in that I had to build the entire UI to get to this point, I'm probably closer to 90% done with the project.

Writing a game is remarkably like writing a book. The hard part is not coming up with an idea, or putting in the many hours to see your vision take shape. The hard past is putting in those last few hours to actually finish it. This particular game isn't particularly good. I wrote it entirely on my own, in less than a month, using some pretty crappy tools. I don't necessarily think anyone will ever spend an afternoon playing it and having a good time. Still, I want to see it finished, because I've worked on lots of programming projects before, and lots of those were games, and I've never actually gotten one done.

Anyway. Things are things. Maybe today will turn out good.