[Edit: Tommy of Team Meat said this all a whole lot better, in greater detail]
[Edit again: Neil Gaiman also says it better in a speech]
[Edit 3: While I'm making edits, I may as well add this one. I always go back to this one every half a year or so. Here's Gary Vaynerchuk. It's less in line with the other edits, and the message below, but I still find it very motivational]
I just went on a bit of a mini motivational rant on Twitter. There should be 6 links in that previous sentence there.
So the context of the rant? Basically if you want to do something, just do it. Don’t worry about the right way to do it. There is no right way. There is only your way.
I speak from the vantage point of a programmer/software developer, so I’m referring to source code when I say there is no right way to do something. Don’t let your inexperience stop you from trying. You’ll write sloppy code. You’ll paint sloppy pictures. You’ll write sloppy stories. Whatever it is you aspire to do, do it, and expect to do it poorly to start.
My biggest mental block when it came to game development was that I didn’t want to really do it until I knew how to do it the right way. And that cost me years. I got all hung up that it wasn’t worth doing unless I could do it right. Don’t worry about the right way. Just do it your way. You’ll get better, you’ll stop wasting time studying and reading and theorizing.
Practice makes perfect.
Just my rambling 2 cents. I hope that after you read this you’re motivated or inspired because it’s really not worth sitting around waiting for the right moment where you’ll suddenly and magically be good enough to do things the right way.
[Edit 4: An excellent in-line response to a HackerNews item]
I’ve been reading Anna Anthropy‘s Rise of the Videogame Zinesters
and I just came across what (to me) may be the most important message in the entire book.
Perfection isn't a useful goal; if anything, it keeps amateurs
from getting their feet wet and authors from finishing their works.
- Anna Anthropy. Rise of the Video Game Zinesters. Page 125. 2012 ed.
I cannot agree more. When I met my wife and she was getting to know me, I told her “I make games”. That wasn’t entirely true. What I should have said was “I try to make games” because my struggle for perfection constantly got in the way.
I thought there was one right way to make games, and because I didn’t know the way that I should not even try. I abandoned every game I tried to make.
It wasn’t until the last few years that I finally understood that there is no one right way to make games. That the best way to make games is just do it. Give up on perfection. Expect to make mistakes. Use bubblegum and duct tape to piece your game together and cover it up in attractive gift wrap.
People don’t see your engine (the source of my anxiety, the fear that my coding abilities would be criticised). They only see your game. Don’t try to be perfect, just make something to the best of your ability. You’ll surprise yourself.
So I broke my New Year’s resolution. But that’s what they’re there for, right? I made it 10 months which I’m incredibly proud of.
The game that broke the resolution? The Binding of Isaac as part of the latest Humble (Voxatron) Bundle.
The toughest part of the resolution? Having to turn down $1.50 Rainslick Precipice games during Steam sales. Those Steam sales… so tempting all year long. Speaking of which, Steam should be doing a Black Friday week-long sale here soon. Just a guess.
Did I learn anything? Heck yes, I did. Right now the Magicka series is on sale at Steam for less than $7 and it seems like a heckuva deal. Last year I would have jumped all over that. Not now, no way. I learned to appreciate my current library of unplayed games. I look at Magicka (and also Oblivion currently on sale) and think to myself, “When will I play this game? Is it likely to go on sale again, perhaps even cheaper, before I actually have time to play this game?” and the answer is a most definite, “Yes, it’ll be cheaper and no I’m in the middle of 10 other games right now so I don’t need to add this one regardless of how affordable it seems to be.”
Speaking of Oblivion, I already own the game on DVDs. $6.49 for Steam cloud support (saved games stored online, accessible from any computer) sure is tempting, but what are the odds that I’ll play the game again in the near future? I’m playing the game right now using the physical media I own just so I can finish the expansion pack and the quests I had not yet finished. After that, it’s not likely I’ll want to continue by using the saved games I already have. Plus, I can just back up the saved games to a portable hard-drive.
So, yes I learned stuff. I appreciate my games. I’m not likely to add any new games to my library unless they’re games that don’t require a large time investment. In the foreseeable future I expect I’ll be “living” on a diet of quality indie titles while shunning the expensive triple-A titles that suck up too much time. I’ve got enough of those unplayed in my library already.
Just over a week ago I announced that my wife and I were about to become parents.
Of course, it all worked out well in the end. Reid James Newton was born at 9:33pm last Friday. He suffered a little from bilateral pneumothorax, a condition where a pocket of air forms between the body wall and lungs. He was monitored over night, and again periodically throughout his stay at the hospital. We were home 3 nights later.
I’ve taken some time off work to get used to having a baby in the house. I’m trying to not worry about my work and I’ve managed to not check my work email since my wife and child came home from the hospital. That’s stressful in itself 
I don’t want anyone to break anything while I’m gone but at the same time I hate to think I’m holding anyone up.
Thinking that two weeks off work would be a sort of vacation was a mistake! Up to last week I had managed to read 5% of a book every day (the Kindle app shows percentages). I’m reading The Return of the King in preparation for the BluRay release at the end of June. It’s the 9th today (I think) so I should be at 45% completion. Nope, I’m 8% in. Reid is taking up a lot of time. When he’s awake, and he seems to be awake in the middle of the night, then I’m awake. When he’s sleeping I’m sleeping.
We’re learning. And I’m sure eventually things will be relatively back to normal.
Woke up relatively early for an appointment at the local hospital this morning. My wife and I are expecting our first child. The due date is June 5th, less than a week away, but due to some potential complications we were scheduled to induce labour this morning.
It was a long day today. And uneventful so far. We’re back home for the evening, waiting on “true labour” to set in.
After the baby monitoring this morning, and then the induced labour (contact hormones), followed by 30 minutes of walking up and down the maternity hallway, we were allowed to go home. Our doctor, the one we got to know over the last 3/4 of a year, said she’d meet us back at the hospital at 8pm (approximately 12 hours from being induced) if full-on labour hadn’t started yet. If it had, she’d of course meet us at the hospital sooner.
We arrived at the hospital a little sooner than 8 expecting to meet our doctor. Nope. Nurses monitored the baby again, did their diagnostic stuff on Crystal. Her Mom and sister arrived soon after as we all expected our doctor to move on to the next step. She sent us home. Over the phone. So we’re bummed about that.
I’m a big planner. When I have a plan, I stick to it. She said she’d meet us at 8pm and she didn’t. So 7am tomorrow she’s no longer the doctor on call and we’re going to be stuck with some strange doctor.
Life gives you lemons, right? So we’ll see what tomorrow brings. I’m just looking forward to being able to give that birth announcement and we really thought our baby’s birthday would be June 1st.
June 2nd isn’t so bad 
