cw dieting/weight loss 

it's been challenging for me to balance teaching a class with making progress on this game. dont get me wrong, i love that i get the chance to teach something to sixteen people this fall! i love how teaching forces me to shift the focus off myself and onto the people around me. 

last year, immediately after graduating, i struggled a lot with hopelessness and isolation. going back to school when you arent a student anymore felt very weird. i felt like i didnt really have a good reason to be working on my game at school and i spent a lot of time last year insecure about my work and anxious about my future. 

these were the sort of questions i asked myself: AM I GOING TO BE FORGOTTEN? AM I OLD NEWS YET ? DID I ALREADY PEAK? I BET EVERYONE IS SICK OF SEEING ME POST ABOUT THE SAME DAMN GAME!! NOBODY CARES ABOUT ME ANYMORE!! 

nothing you could say to me could *really* make me feel better because it never felt like enough.

well i'm glad that i'm able to manage those feelings better now lol AND i'd like to believe that teaching has something to do with it... maybe getting the chance to directly help people with concrete stuff like animating a proper walk cycle makes me spend less time concerned with my own helplessness 

so yea, that is a little bit of an update on my life! i dont really spend much time sharing too many details of what is happening to me right now, but i'd like to be more open with you... it's just sometimes i dont know how go about talking about it 

anyway teaching is good for me and i'm very thankful for getting to do it but sometimes i find it difficult to context shift--like from helping students with their animation homework to deciding what to work on next in the game.

well yesterday i finally got the chance to start making some different levels for the food stack mini-game! i made 9 levels total. most of them are probably way too hard. one of the levels (THE BANANA LEVEL) took me 20 minutes (or more??) to beat.... 

the celery level was the first one i made because it was super easy to put together (and i also thought it was funny)

maybe i will leave it in there because i think it says something

there are some levels that i'm pretty sure are unbeatable. when i got on the train last night, i didnt realize that my SO was also on the same exact train, in the the exact same car i stepped into 

well anyway i was so absorbed with trying to beat the unbeatable level that according to him i stepped onto the train, stared directly at him, then turned around and sat diagonally across from him... he told me he called out my name (i didnt hear it bc i had headphones in) 

it took me like 3 stops to realize that he was there... so maybe the level is good if i got that absorbed in it

here is proof (he took a photo of me) lol