Well, new year, first ever blog.

I quietly scoff at the fact that I usually end up making some resolutions when they rarely make it past January anyway. I know It would make more sense to just change things as needed throughout the year, but I figure making changes because of a new year is better than nothing at all.

Having recently gone through a very difficult time with my family, we’re finally feeling like we’re getting some breathing room, and it has me determined to make sure that I’m taking meaningful steps to do things that I really want to do. So to start that off I’m writing a blog as a jumping-off point to help me learn game development.

I’m definitely not a writer – it’s something I’m excited to improve at – but the focus here is to help me process what I’m learning. To organize my thoughts, set goals, and discover things I maybe otherwise wouldn’t. Maybe over the course of these posts there will be a noticeable improvement on the quality of my writing 🤞. But for now these will likely read as brain dumps and I’m sorry about that (not really).

My goal in designing this website was to come up with something simple and quick so that I could shift my focus to learning game development and start writing as soon as possible. I think I’ve landed on something I’m relatively happy with, but I’m sure the look will change as time goes on (or maybe it’s better that it doesn’t?).

I decided to build it from scratch rather than using a platform like Squarespace or Wix as I tend to enjoy the process of creating over having the end product. It's been a while since I've done any web development so I had to brush up on HTML/CSS (I have a lot more to learn, it feels like it's being held together by tape). Building the platform that I’m writing my blog on somehow gives me inspiration and motivation to write, and hopefully drives me to continue learning game development.

Doing all of this work in an effort to better learn game development seems counter intuitive, we’re already at *looks at watch* the 15th of January and I’ve hardly decided what game engine I want to work with. BUT I am quite proud that I’ve been able to build this website and publish this blog in this time. I’m confident these are steps that will help when I do start. Instead of jumping into it head first I want to take the time to put systems into place so that I have a better chance of sticking with it.

More on the why of the desire to learn game development in the next post.