March 23 Updates
Hello all! We’re back for another week here on planet earth. Nice.
Lately I’ve been taking Mondays off, but I’ve been in the mood to have real weekends lately. I think between the Pittsburgh Hounds group, weekend bachata, and the Saturday movie night, my weekends actually do feel like weekends right now. As a result, I am planning on a full day of game dev work today (Monday). Of course, Monday is also the day I type up the new blog post. Also of course, I woke up at 1pm. Also also, I’m trying a new homemade tomato sauce recipe using only fresh tomatoes today, so cooking won’t be as autopilot as it is many days. Also also also, I have therapy on Mondays. Today is going to be busy!
Restructuring Work Time
One of the goals of last week was to reboot my game dev work. I’ve done this many times in the past. Eventually, good habits start to fade, discipline wanes, and the whole operation needs a bit of a shot in the arm. That’s where I felt like we were at the start of last week.
This then led to my re-introduction to my other, more-primal self, Dopamine Now Rob. DN Rob for short. DN Rob is the part of me that doesn’t want to do work, wants to eat ice cream all day, and sleep until eventual death.
Here’s the thing though - DN Rob also loves getting work done. Doing hard work usually results in some sort of dopamine, whether by external praise or an internal feeling of progress and satisfaction. BUT, DN Rob is also crafty enough to see the paths of least resistance. If we’ve been doing zero game dev work, then even doing 5 minutes of work will result in some dopamine, because we improved. Improvement is a DN Rob favorite. If all improvement creates dopamine, then DN Rob sees opportunity in improving as slowly as possible. This maximizes dopamine while minimizing actual work - the bane of DN Rob’s existence.
This is the tightrope I must walk. We need to back DN Rob into a corner, effectively. I am very against boiling live frogs, but it’s that approach. Once he (DN Rob is a he) is acclimated to the higher levels of satisfaction that come with extended hard work, we’ll be able to keep him on that trajectory.
Because, here’s the thing, DN Rob is part of me. He’s actually not a bad guy. If anything, he wants to make sure that I’m having enough fun with my life. He has a lot of the same traits that regular Robbie has, including that he tries to be an overall honest person. If he convinces us to shirk work for leisure, it’s not through deception; it’s through an argument that life is short and we’re nowhere near finishing this video game project anyway, so is it really that big a deal to not work? He’s not an idiot. He usually does have pretty sound arguments. Why, he argues, would we start a better practice today? There’s so many possible days. Starting today seems random AF.
Of course, I think we all know that the downfall of this thinking is that starting to do something better has to be insignificant at first. But, it’s only the smart part of you, Robbie, that knows this. DN Robbie is too caught up in the here and now to look down the line and see that this same thinking, when applied to every individual day, will lead to never getting anywhere.
As such, an often-tenuous agreement has to be reached, and unlike in the USA, all the votes have to be counted. Trying to switch into an ‘all business no fun’ type of mode will foment DN Rob’s rebellion. He has a seat at the table, whether you want to pretend he doesn’t or not.
This led to the first real Personal Diplomacy meeting in a while. Robbie wants to get back into doing more work on both game dev and speedrunning. She first laid out a plan where:
We wake up at 8:30am
Then we do two hours of game dev
Then we do as many of our chores for the day in one big chunk as possible
Then we do two hours of speedrunning
Then we do things for fun
Everyday is like this except for Monday, which is both an off day from the regular schedule, and the day we write the new blog post
DN Rob countered this proposal with:
We wake up whenever the fuck we want
We will do SOME amount of game dev and speedrunning per day, but to start, the only promise I can commit to is doing more work than the day prior, since we need to build up our ability to do work. You can’t expect us to go from doing no work to doing tons of work in the snap of a finger.
I agree to do the big chore chunk at some point, though it can be done prior to game dev if I feel like it. I will agree to keep the part of your proposal’s ordering of events that says that game dev must come before speedrunning
We take Saturday and Sunday off instead of just Monday
We order a new medical marijuana card. With this new push to do more work, we will need new decompression techniques, and we haven’t smoked pot since Christmas Day.
Robbie agreed to this terms, with the following caveats:
Since ramping up work from zero is such a slow and deliberate build up, we need to agree to some terms that help prevent us from zero-ing out entirely.
I also love pot, so the pot card thing is a GREAT idea. But, we need to only smoke pot on the weekends. Remember when we smoked pot last December? By Christmas day even you didn’t want to keep smoking, and you’re always down to smoke.
DN Rob added:
Measures to avoid zero-ing out entirely sounds like a reasonable idea, but to do that we need to schedule longer periods of time off than just the weekend from time to time. Part of what causes a zero-out is the need to take a longer chunk of time off
Good point about the pot. Pot is more fun the less frequent you do it. I am a well established addict though so we’ll see. We might just need to throw the card out again eventually or maybe give it to Jason to hold onto to actually take days off. TBD.
Robbie countered:
What if once every eight weeks, we take a week entirely off of work to reset, but when we return, we don’t restart all the way back at zero, but instead somewhere in the middle of the climb up the discipline mountain
DN Rob countered:
Let’s say once every six weeks. So you work six weeks, then you have a week off. And, you’re allowed to have unlimited pot and ice cream during the week off.
Robbie countered:
We can try the unlimited pot during the week off, but not the ice cream. We’ll undo months of losing weight in one week if we actually allow unlimited ice cream
DN Rob added:
True, true.
Robbie circled back:
Back to the topic of the measures to keep us from Zero-ing out, here’s what I propose:
Every three weeks (half of the six week larger cycle of work we’re committing to), you can take one “personal day” in which you don’t work during one of the regularly scheduled work days. This can be taken whenever you want, and is meant to help prevent flaming out.
DN Rob clarified:
Okay, but also there needs to be provisions to allow missing work due to real circumstances. Like what about when we had to take Pancake to the ER? There really are days where we can’t meet the four hours a day work goal (which as a reminder, we’re still building up to gradually).
Robbie responded:
True, but those sorts of days will have to be handled on a case-by-case basis. Part of the goodwill in the agreement with the week off and the personal day is that since we’re encouraging more time off, I need you to actually push really hard to work all those other days.
So, post negotiation, the total set of terms looks something like this:
Pursuant to being in accordance with the agreed upon incumbants, henceforth the following are in effect, indubitably, doth:
Wake up whenever you want
Build towards working four hours per day - two hours on game dev, and two hours on speedrunning. During the build up period, you must either match or exceed the previous day’s total amount of work
Saturday and Sundays off
On Mondays, you also have to write the weekly blog post, so expect Mondays to be really busy
Once every week, you can work a half day (1 hour of each discipline).
It cannot be Monday
Once every three weeks, you can take one workday entirely off (personal day)
After working six consescutive weeks, you can take one week entirely off (vacation)
You can take all of December off of work (sabbatical)
Any exceptions to the above (i.e., not meeting work goals) are to be due to emergency situations only, and will be evaluated on a case by case basis with a full diplomacy hearing to review each one
We will order a replacement pot card and try to only consume pot on weekends, personal days, vacation days, and sabbatical time periods. Failing to comply with these restrictions will result in a full diplomacy hearing
Results so far (note - last week we still had Mondays off since the new agreement came into effect on Tuesday):
Movie Night: KPop Demon Hunters
Movie night was Erika’s pick this week, and she went with KPop Demon Hunters, which three of the four of us had not seen (Tereasa had seen it).
I thought the themes of the movie and the plot were really cool. It’s a lot about identity and shame and trauma and acceptance. I enjoyed it.
One thing that probably won’t be surprising if you look at the video games I speedrun and the video game I’m making - I don’t love 3d animation. Or maybe a better thing to say is that I LOVE 2d animation, and given the choice, I gravitate towards 2d, hand drawn styles. I think, speaking objectively, the animation of KPop Demon Hunters is really well done, but it’s just not my favorite look. I’m old school like that.
With that said, I woulds till give KPop Demon Hunters an 8/10 on the unofficial McLepke Media Ratings Scale. It had some bangers and the trio of female heroins is right up my alley.
Project Weight Loss
This is week eight of project weight loss, and we have narrowly kept out streak of eight consecutive weeks of posting a weight loss according to seven-day-average alive! Here’s the latest:
During last week’s post our seven-day-average was 225.3, so we posted a shade under a half pound lost this week. It’s not much, but I’ll take it. We’re still averaging over a pound lost per week due to some higher-impact weeks earlier on.
One observation after eight weeks of project weight loss: holy shit this takes a long time. If you’re currently in the process of eating the way I was last year that put me in this position, I’d recommend not procrastinating and stopping now. Easier said than done, I know. But, it’s a long, slow trek back down the mountain.
With that said, let’s celebrate what we’ve been able to accomplish so far. A pound a week for eight weeks is great consistent progress. Let’s keep it up!
Smoking Some Pot
I mentioned above that as part of the Personal Diplomacy meetings that have taken place recently, I wound up ordering a replacement medical marijuana card. Let’s discuss this for a moment.
To recap recent history, in January 2025 I went from smoking pot all day every day to not smoking pot at all. After almost a year off, I smoked pot for one month from November 2025 - Christmas Day 2025. I have not had pot since then.
That means we’re coming up on three months of being back off pot. Similar to my November 2025 return, this is not a permanent return to weed. I don’t ever want to be smoking every day ever again. It wasn’t fun, and I still have acute memories of it not being fun. But, I do remember my November 2025 return to pot being really fun for a while…until it wasn’t.
I think this is just the next step of the journey for me. I’m going to try and moderate as best I can, and once I reach the point where I can no longer moderate at all, I’ll just throw my card out again and settle in for another stretch off pot. I’m a seasoned addict, so I know that this upcoming pot era will have some good and some bad. It reminds me of my weekly ‘cheat meal’ where I eat a quart of ice cream. Can I moderate ice cream intake? Well, it depends how you look at it. On the one hand, no - I can’t have ice cream in the house and not eat it. On the other hand, sort of - I manage to only eat it once a week. Pot might be like that, but in a larger cycle where once every few months I have some pot. Or maybe with enough time off I really will be able to consume it once a week, similar to ice cream. We’re still figuring this all out.
I ordered my replacement card, but my next week’s post might very well be up before it actually arrives in the mail, so stay tuned for updates on this.
More Dancing
Erika is not available to sign up for more dance classes in either April or May due to work travel. As a result, while bachata 1 ends this month, I can’t really sign up for bachata 2 without my trusted dance partner. I’m hopeful we can both resume some bachata learning in June.
BUT, my experience with the dance studio has been so positive, I actually signed up for a non-partner based dance class for April which I will be doing on my own. The theme is Bollywood. What I know of Bollywood style dancing is that there’s very bright outfits and fast movements, so I’m thinking it’s going to be more of a workout than bachata was. We’ll see. Class starts two weeks from today, so we’ve got some time before we jump into action. Robbie dances now.
That’s it for now. As usual I’ll be back during the week to update this post with the latest and greatest during the week. Talk soon.
Have a great week! I believe in you!
Monday update - I had to hustle today. I made a homemade pasta sauce with only fresh tomatoes for the first time today. I also still got my two hours of game dev in. Our enemy projectile from where we left off is working (mostly) now - check it out:
Tuesday Update
Okay, I’m awake and I’ve done the first dog walk of the day. Let’s think about what we need to do today.
It’s trash day. The way Erika’s meeting schedule lines up today, dinner needs to be ready at 6pm. Today is tofu (in gochujang and mayo) + rice + cucumbers (in rice vinegar), which is the lowest prep time meal I make, so that’s nice. It’s currently the only day of the week I don’t make a huge batch of caramelized onions.
According to the whole setup where we’re slowly bumping up the amount of work we’re doing day by day, today is the first day we’re going to dip our toes back into speedrunning. We worked the full 2 hours of game dev yesterday, so today we’re looking for 2 hours of game dev, plus some amount of speedrunning. Honestly, today will probably just be me thinking about speedrunning, where I’m at with Mega Man 4, and what needs to happen next. I doubt the controller will be in my hand.
The next day it’s warm out I want to take Podo to the salon to get his nails done, but I don’t think today is the day. The high is in the 40s. Let’s wait on that. My food goal today is to have a little cream in my coffee, and other than that to only eat our tofu dinner. We’re keeping it tight people.
I’m happy with how game dev went yesterday. I’m happy with how the homemade tomato sauce turned out yesterday during the new dinner I was experimenting with. I’m happy that I demonstrated to myself that I can work late at night if the situation calls for it, since I tend to have a bit of a mental block there.
Last night Erika and I were discussing the fact that we need to find something new to do at night together. We’re running low on activities. I think we’re going to start a thousand piece puzzle tonight.
That sounds like a full day to me. Good luck and happy Tuesday all.
Late Tuesday
Here’s the latest. Our enemy got a slight redesign. In addition, you’ll notice that we can’t see the projectile appearing and moving from left to right anymore - that was cleaned up. The projectile itself also looks different.
In addition, the states of the enemy have clearer delineations. Now the enemy is either wandering, during which times he moves towards you, or attacking, during which times he is producing his projectile. While attacking he also now has little bits of pink energy coming off of him to telegraph the attack a little. If during his attack phase we walk far enough away from him, he will stop attacking and resume wandering towards us.
See you tomorrow.
Wednesday
I woke up around 12:15pm. I’ve already taken Podo for a long walk, which included a stop-in at the doggie salon.
Podo HATES getting his nails cut. Erika and I working together cannot manage to do it at home. Even if one person holds him down and the other tries to cut the nails, his wriggle is too fierce. We have to take him to a salon.
At the salon, typically they fasten him into several holders, and even then I still will manually restrict his wiggling so that the salon employee can brute force their way through his nail clippings. Today was a different kind of day though; the owner was at the salon, and wound up being the person who cut Podo’s nails.
The owner was terrific. Podo still thrashed and screamed a TON, but the difference with the owner is he clearly had an eye toward longer term solutions, rather than an interest in brute forcing our way through this one nail encounter. For one, right away he asked me to back away from the whole procedure so it was just him and Podo at the actual table where this was going down. I could still observe, but I wasn’t part of the fray anymore.
Then, the nail trimming took probably twice as long as it normally does. The owner would go in to cut a nail, Podo would thrash wildly, the owner would calm him down, and they’d try again. This went on and on and on. Really, Podo thrashed much more than he does during a typical visit to the salon, but I can see a path forward with this guy. He was very nice and gentle and I think if we see him on our next several visits, I could see Podo’s outlook toward nail trimming improving. I’ll have to call ahead to see if the owner is available before my next trip in. Thankfully I only take him once every 7 weeks…
In other news, yesterday was another good day. I did all my work, did all my chores, and I ate only whole foods. We’re on a good pace to post a weight loss again this week. Usually, I need to make the big weight loss strides during the week, and then my seven day average needs to ‘survive’ the weekend. We’re off to a good start to the week.
Today’s cheeseburger night, so I need to get the caramelized onions on the stove soon. They are already cut up. I’m also shooting for around 150 minutes of total work today, so there’s plenty to do.
Hopefully everyone has a great day - talk soon.
Wednesday Night - here’s today’s progress. We’ve got a gate that will only open if you’ve defeated all the enemies on screen. One day at a time people.
Thursday Update
Okay it’s been a productive week so far. I’ve had my ‘weekday’ mindset going. The weekend is coming up, so let’s do our part and work during the week.
I’m relieved of my dinner making duties today since Maggie is coming over to hang out tonight and we’re going to be ordering food. So that’s cool. I already did Podo’s long walk a bit after waking up. I woke up at 1230pm.
It would be good to get the controller in my hand today for some speedrunning de-rusting of Mega Man 4. Game dev has been back in the swing of things, so now we need to sprinkle in some speedrunning where possible to get its momentum going too.
Have a great day everyone.