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Spenser
Developer, fiddler, and fruit snack connoisseur.

2016

A list of things I want to accomplish to keep me accountable.

Edited on 01/02/2017 to review my progress.

  • Make at least one game 😿

I started making many games and conceptualized a lot of game goodies, but found a constant stream of distraction from work, other media, and just general life things. I give myself no credit on this task, but it did help me solidify how important games are as a creative outlet for me.

I attempted to record music exactly once this year, and gave up shortly after. This is a resounding failure I hope to remedy soon. I have, however, probably increased the frequency I play piano and guitar over the year — so maybe in some way I’ve come to terms that sharing the sounds aren’t as important to me as the act itself.

In fact, I may have rebuilt spensercoke.com a few times this year. I got the domain spenser.xyz (which I’m unreasonably proud of) and am at a place with it I’m ok with. I’d like to add more living content to it in the future, but I give myself credit for this one.

  • Create something that generates revenue 😿

Despite launching pokedate as an elaborate practical joke and having hundreds of people sign up in the first few days, I had no actual plan to make money with it. I’ve had dozens of ideas, and am nearly finished with a project I’ve been working on for ages, but if 2016 has taught me anything, it’s that money isn’t a great motivator for creation (at least at this point in my life).

I’ve started a new gig recently which has forced me into a stack I wasn’t familiar with, but what this was really about is learning things on my own — which I did quite a bit of. I’ve gotten a chance to dig further into Firebase, got a chance to use Vue.js on a non-trivial application, and also played with Unity and Phaser for gamey things.

With multiple moves and what seems like a hectic year, I didn’t make as much headway as I’d like to on this one. I’ve crunched numbers a lot and made some big financial decisions lately, so we can hope that I can get this in line for 2017.

  • Buy a suit 😺

I bought a suit. I don’t have a picture.

I did find more time to illustrated and animate this year — often as an outlet to visualize ideas for games or ideas. Regardless, I hope I can do more next year.

If this list taught me anything, it’s that this year went by in the blink of an eye. I referenced this list over and over again throughout the year, constantly thinking, ‘no stress, you have plenty of time’ just to find myself here in 2017 pasting the sad face cat emoji over and over again. Despite that, I have no big regrets — instead, I’ve learned that time must be spend intentionally and that it’s just really hard to predict your priorities a year in advance when your life is moving so quickly.

On to 2017.