Consistency in 2026

Welcome back everyone - it is great to see you as always! Let’s get some day-to-day plans on paper for 2026, and talk about how all of this might go down and whatever else is happening.

It feels like 2026 really starts tomorrow. You see, it’s not enough for the earth to have completely traveled around the sun in order to turn over a new leaf. It should also be the arbitrarily designated day of “Monday”. Yes, yes. That should do it.

This morning I was watching a YouTube guy I started following last year. The actual channel isn’t really important, but if you’re insistent to know, the handle is BEARDOESHARD. In my head I said this as “Bear Doe Shard” for a while before realizing it’s “Bear Does Hard”. He has 20 videos uploaded, all within the past six months. The videos range from having 400 views to 5k views, with two outliers. The first outlier had 11k views, and the most watched video in his library has 80k views. His 80k video was the second video he uploaded, so the second of 20.

He uploaded a video two days ago. It was his first video since November 2, so a gap of two months. Naturally, this reminds me of the hiatus I’ve had from this blog and from making any meaningful progress on my goals over pretty much this exact same time span. Uh oh.

The title of the newest video is “I HAD to Quit…”. It’s an explanation of why he disappeared, and why he hasn’t been hitting his fitness goals (his channel is primarily about weight loss, though it certainly covers other topics, including grief, ADHD, and mental wellness). Yes, this still sounds pretty familiar. It ends with an assurance that he will be back, and a goal for 2026 that he will compete in a specific body building contest that he has picked out in late 2026. He is 40. For those that have lost track, I am 37. Still feeling familiar.

The origin of his handle is the popular self-improvement program “75 hard”. You can look up exactly what it is but it’s basically trying to work out a lot and eat healthy and read books and do other beneficial things for 75 days. As you might have guessed, his attempt at 75 hard last year failed. Only one person in my life has attempted “75 hard”; one of my Twitch buddies publicly declared that she was going to do “75 hard”. She also quit shortly into it.

Would I bet on this guy Bear to succeed in his goal to be on stage at a bodybuilding competition in 2026? Well, I don’t gamble, so I don’t bet on anything. I definitely hope he does. That would be rad. I’d probably leave a comment like, “wow amazing job. you are an inspiration.” And, I would really mean it. But, at the risk of sounding like a dick, I don’t predict that he will do it. After all, I’ve seen concrete evidence of him falling off the wagon with his long-term goals, and I haven’t seen that same amount of concrete progress.

The troubling thing is, I am this guy, and he is me, and I am you. Time is money, money is power, power is pizza, and pizza is knowledge. Maybe he read the news yesterday and was like, ‘well, if we’re kidnapping foreign presidents now, what does it matter if I eat a few oreos. Who can body-build in this economy!” The thing that makes fighting this logic difficult is that, it kind of makes sense. If we live in a world where pedophiles engineer the kidnapping of foreign presidents for oil, what does your alcohol consumption or cigarette smoking or video game development or bodybuilding really matter? Isn’t life already hard enough just existing - let alone, pushing yourself? I dedicated last post to venting about the things in the world stressing me out right now, and just a few days later the post is already dated. The world can very quickly come up with new stressors that weren’t even on your radar.

So, when I watched Bear’s video, and said to myself, “I hope he can do this, but I’m skeptical”, really I’m skeptical of myself. I know how humans work because I have experience as a human. Given that experience, I predict that a person in Bear’s circumstances would probably be a lot more likely to quit than to succeed, because that’s what I envision I would do. Bear also has a lot more going on than I do. He has three kids. He has a job. He recently had to clean out his entire childhood home to sell because his dad died. I have no job, and the only kids I have to take care of have fur, and I find even this easy life extremely taxing. Here’s Podo trying to get me to throw this ball while I’m sitting here typing this out. Obviously he is much, much too cute to ignore, so now I have to type one sentence, throw the ball, and then type another sentence, and then throw the ball again. Getting stuff done is difficult at the best of times.

Would you bet on me to release a playable video game in the next five years? Maybe some newcomers would, but the old heads who have been hearing me talk about making video games for the past six years might not. Would I bet on myself to do it? On the trajectory I’m currently on, I honestly don’t think I would. Not to be a dick, but there’s not a lot of evidence to support that.

Just like Bear though, I am ready to suit up and try it all over again this year. This is life. I can become better at working on making video games this year. And Bear, if you’re reading this, I am rooting hard for you too buddy.

To start this year, I am going to check in on the blog daily, and I am going to try to hold myself to a higher standard than in 2025. Let’s try this out and see how it goes.

Goals for tomorrow, January 5:

Two hours of game development work done first thing in the morning (Update: did this)
Two hours of speedrunning work done anytime after game development (Update: didn’t do this)
No eating any processed food (Update: success)
Post to this blog before bed and describe how these goals went (Update: success)

Truthfully, I’m not feeling confident, but maybe confidence will come later. Right now I am focused on tomorrow. Whatever new year changes you’re trying to implement - I believe in you. I am you and you are me. It’s just the nature of things. Even as I type this, my belief in Bear participating in that body building competition is rising. Time is money, money is power, power is pizza, and pizza is knowledge. Let’s do this.

Monday Night Update

Almost. I did the two hours of game development, but not the speedrunning. Tomorrow I’ll be shooting to do both.

The game dev went great. I probably had barely enough energy left to do the two hours of speedrunning, but I got sucked into playing fetch while watching YouTube videos.

I will delete your soul if you don’t throw this ball.

Just kidding I’m adorable.

GOALS FOR TOMORROW JANUARY 6th:

Two hours of game dev (current streak is 1)
Two hours of speedrunning (current streak is 0)
Do not eat processed food (current streak is 1)
Post an update here before bed (current streak is 1)

Have a great night everyone.

Tuesday Night Update

Today looks a lot like yesterday. I did game dev and I avoided processed food, but still no speedrunning. I’m getting closer though. I’m okay with this - we’re building up to the ideal day. Two hours of game dev is a really good chunk, and even after two days I can feel the momentum building and the ideas flowing. I’m feeling optimistic.

I need to start game dev a little bit earlier than I have been. My wake-up goof off period is dragging too far into the afternoon. I eventually force myself to start working in time to get through the game dev, but by the time that’s over, I’m eating dinner and losing steam.

GOALS FOR TOMORROW JANUARY 7th:

Two hours of game dev (current streak is 2)
Two hours of speedrunning (current streak is 0)
Do not eat processed food (current streak is 2)
Post an update here before bed (current streak is 2)

Wednesday Morning Update:

Had this on loop this AM. The ideal version of this song IMO would be the song as it is now, except the last 30 seconds would repeat for like 3 minutes instead of 30 seconds. It frustrates me when songs don’t use their best assets enough, and here, looping the entire track isn’t proportionally what I want. Maybe that’s why I love trance and house music though.

Worth mentioning - I don’t remember how this track plays in the game itself. The track as-is isn’t a natural loop, so maybe the way it loops in-game is better than the way the isolated track presented here does. Still a banger.

Each of the last two days I started work at 1pm. Today we’re taking a baby step and shooting to start at Noon.

Wednesday Night Update:

Wow the news is newsing. I did the day’s game dev before the news popped off thankfully. Still no speedrunning. I know tomorrow isn’t going to include speedrunning because I have a lot of other stuff I need to do tomorrow. I’ll still do game dev.

The day after that Erika is coming back home. I think instead of adding speedrunning as the next thing for my day-to-day, I’m going to tweak my food, and shoot to restart speedrunning on Sunday. I tend to make changes in three-day swings. I think that practice has its roots in this thing cigarette smokers and quitters used to say, which was that ‘after the first three days it’s easy’. Quitting smoking cigarettes was a big thing that took a lot of effort in my youth.

Even to this day I tend to make changes in that way. I’ll let a new baseline establish for three days, and then I’ll make another change. Today marked the third straight day of delivering on my new game dev schedule. That’s great. I’m very happy that I’m back in the game dev swing. Tomorrow, let’s add in a mandate to actually track what I eat, and come in under 1900 calories. I’ve been avoiding processed food, but I also still want to lose weight. Then, if I can keep game dev going and get this new more-restrictive whole food diet in place for three days, we’ll try and add in speedrunning…at which point it’ll be Sunday.

The other plus with restarting game dev on Sunday is it’ll give a new medication I need some time to work. I have horrible eczema on my hands right now, which really makes me want to avoid playing video games. I am starting a new steroid treatment for it on Friday, so hopefully by Sunday, my hands will be in less pain. I’ve used steroid treatments in the past, and while they don’t permanently fix the problem, they do typically help A LOT.

GOALS FOR THURSDAY JANUARY 7th:

Two hours of game dev (streak is 3. CELEBRATE THE 3 ROBBIE. Keep this going. You always feel happier after doing game dev)
Track all food consumed, eat only whole foods, eat under 1900 calories (newly added, and replacing previous goal to eat only whole food - streak is 0)
Maybe try to avoid the news if possible…
Post to this blog at night and recap what went down (streak is 3)