A Reflection on the Nature of Motivation

Motivation, in my eyes, is less of a positive thing and more of just the core principle of physics manifested within the human mind: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The direction of motivation, however, is in no means simply linear or even planar.

Examples in the more healthy direction - someone is lacking in skill for a particular field and much stronger in another. Instead of seeking to master multiple fields, the subject focuses the effort that would be used for the less skilled field on their stronger skill, in which they are motivated to specialize.

Now a little more human - a subject experiences immense grief and decides to use poetry as an outlet. The feel-good release associated with expressing themselves through the medium becomes a motivating focus. It's immediately less about getting over things, and more about the feel-good...as if it were a reward. Ultimately the hope is that the subject comes to terms with the grief and moves on, but this (I feel) is less of a 'goal' and more of a side effect of satisfying the feel-good craving.

And now less healthy - a subject experiences relatively high levels of rejection and isolation over a long period of time, in varying degrees of intensity across the entire social spectrum. The mind, being human as it is, begins to create an addiction to counteract said feelings - an addiction to attention. This attention creates such a strong sensation of worth and fulfillment that it quickly becomes a dangerous and consuming desire (read motivation). Without the attention, the subject grows desperate and manic. When left unchecked, this ultimately leads to self-destruction in one way or another.



There's no way to deny it. My motivation was attention. I wanted so badly to be respected and accepted by my peers that I wanted to do something that would be "my thing" in various social circles. I was never very popular in my work though, and I grew frustrated. My attitude started pushing away my friends, acquaintances, people I cared about, people I loved...and I eventually just got to the point where I was ready to give up.

Nearly a year ago, this month, I was possibly at the lowest point of my entire life. I had pushed away my family, lost ties with most of my groups of friends, ruined my relationship with one of my best friends, and even screwed things up with the people who did want to know me better. I couldn't even stand to be alone with myself.

The climax to it all, though, was that I didn't receive a single "Happy Birthday" on my Facebook page on my birthday. Now, that's a REALLY stupid and childish thing to get worked up over, but in my mind at the time, it was the coup de grâce. I just lost it. I honestly can't remember hardly a thing from the week or so following because I was completely gone. Every last drop of attention had be sucked out of my life, and I had been so dependent on it for my sense of self-worth for...I don't even know how long...4 years, maybe.

The most shaking part of the whole ordeal is that, at the time, I had no idea that's what I wanted. I was reacting, often manically, trying to satisfy a need. I didn't understand why I craved the things I craved or why I acted in certain ways, and trying to work through these thoughts often turned into an even bigger fiasco where I didn't accomplish anything and caused more damage to the people closest to me.



As I'm sure you can deduce from the nature of this blog and supporting posts, motivation out of obsession is hardly effective. In the end, despite everything, the site still failed. I sit here, typing as I reflect on my experiences, bitterly smirking at the irony of the whole damn mess. I'm glad I've taken the time to stop and reflect on this particular failure. While this blog was initially more of an acute analysis for personal record keeping, I've learned things about myself that expand far beyond, and I know there's still much more to learn.

Even as recently as my last post, I was still quite driven by that attention. Now that I've come to the realization of just how deeply that bled into my whole life, I have mixed feelings about what I've written and some of the directions I've begun to adventure in. I'm starting to rediscover motivation in a much more positive vector. There's a passion in art and music and working on projects in me, and I want to develop these passions to share them, talk about them, and grow with other people.

Squinted Eyes at Dawn's Arrival

Whatever it was, it finally clicked into place. I see it, now - still a little murky, but clearer than it has been in months.

A name and a concept came to me for what I want to do. It will certainly generate a tremendous amount of work, on top of everything else I'm trying to manage at the moment. Will it be foolish to plan for the future when I can't even get a grip on the present? This is one of the pitfalls of Productionkips, so dare I sully the start of this long-awaited new idea with what was considered a mistake of the past, or was it only a mistake because of how I did it?

Regardless of these reservations, I've scrambled to snatch up digital claims - names, domains, free services - left and right without even knowing if it will be used. This will buy me time to catch up further and plan things out properly this time.

I've gotten excited about this idea and I began to run with it this evening, planning out articles and features and making names for things, as if I had had time to survey the pieces and was now starting to piece together a very large puzzle. Now I pause and wonder, is this where I want to build the puzzle? Is this even a puzzle I WANT to build??

I look around me and things are quite similar to a month ago...piles of lists and mess and filth that I have yet to attend to, and not just physically in my apartment. I'm still rebuilding my Minecraft server and have much work to do, yet I've become sidetracked with this whim of a future project. A quick mental check as to why I was so easily distracted confirms my suspicions - I crave success like a fish craves water. I hunger for fame like a starving man food. Even the thought of feeling that I've accomplished SOMETHING that the whole world can see makes me salivate and fidget anxiously.

Perhaps I bear morally poisoned traits to feel the way I do, but if that's the driving force needed to feel accomplished in this regard, then I guess I'm just a corrupt person. I will find a way to make all of this come together at some point, I just hope that I have the proper mindset to make this a reality with this next attempt. Impatient? Absolutely, but should I find success, then I shall ask forgiveness for my haste. Otherwise, failure will be a fitting punishment.

Regardless what becomes this glimmer of a resurrection, I hope that I continue with this blog to remember what it's taught me and helped me to realize, as well as chronicle my learning.

Wishing versus Doing

Time ticks by, still nothing happens. There's always an excuse, something's always in the way. I need to think about it, I need to brainstorm, I need to plan...so many needs, yet no ACTION is taken. This stagnancy has poisoned the flow of my passion and creativity, and dare I say, my day-to-day life. Piles of letters and to-do lists litter my desk - unread, unaccounted for. Dust and crumbs cover all of the surfaces, a deliberate display of disgusting detachment.

How long before I lose my mind to this spiraling pit of self-decay I have manufactured for myself? Or will I wake up and find the solution that's right in front of me?

Paradigm Shift

I'll admit it, I'm growing increasingly anxious with each day that I feel my work doesn't exist. The site's still up, yet in my mind it's been shut down and forgotten by it's fans. I want there to be something out there, but not for the right reasons.

I think I had begun to use my site as a means of self-valuation. I wanted to feel like I had accomplished something, like I was valuable or had something unique that would distinguish me from other people. It became drastically more of a problem when I did so without any regard to what I was producing, if anything. It's like a dismissed and disgraced commander stumbling about, drunk and belligerent, bragging to all who would lend ear about the forces he once led.

The thing I've wanted so much recently, more than a break or inspiration or anything else that may be productive, is a name. For some reason, I'm desperately driven to assign some kind of a name to this entire project before I'll work on it. Now, this is a terrible thing to do in general, as it's drastically limiting and, since I don't have a clear vision of where I'd like to take things, possibly a poor (if not highly inappropriate) fit for what the project may become.

Mulling over all of these thoughts, this evening, I've come to a mildly bitter realization. I have a real chance to shift into whatever focus I choose, even if it's drastically different from my original direction. This is quite similar to what I've gone through career-wise recently, much to my mutual joy and dismay for both occurrences. While the opportunity is enormous, a complete paradigm shift is extremely taxing and exceedingly easy to rush.

At least, I know that I will not be at rest mentally until I revive this project. I worried that my work would disappear and mean nothing to anyone besides myself, but it seems that in the ashes of my old work, a new project will slowly work it's way into the light, one way or another.

Of Crestfallen Hearts and Dilapidated Skylines

Four years, maybe even five now. I don't even remember when I first officially started it all. I remember thinking to myself,
          "I don't see any reason why I don't know how to do this. Let's turn it into a project"
and just like that, I had inadvertently created Productionkips.

I'd say that it officially began when I started game development for Kongregate. I had made a group of friends in the room "Digg Mark 1" and had become quite addicted to the site specifically because of the social-gaming fusion it presented. I set out to make an RPG named KonQuest staring some of my friends from the site as various heroes and villains and, as development wore on, I saw a need to chronicle development and post releases publicly.

I created a Google sites page for Spartakips Productions - a rather unoriginal title, but I never was very good at coming up with names for things. Even the username most of the internet knows me by, Spartakips, is really just a mash-up of memes that I took to after the movie "300" came out, which I still haven't seen.

Classy, right?

The site is still active and you can see that I actually never got around to finishing it's development, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I was pumped about this game of mine. I spent roughly 3 months developing out all the systems I wanted in place and building the environment for the game and planning out a direction for the story. The bulk of the non-essential script I just improvised as I went. Things were going well, and I had it at about an hour of gameplay before you got to the intro, which was kind of the scale I was shooting for.

After all of this, however, I ran into terrible programming complications. I had never even heard of Ruby before I went to tackle this project, let alone actually code with it. So with the combat engine that was to be implemented for the entire post-intro part of the game in an unworkable tangle of botched scripts, I put out requests for Ruby debuggers and moved on to a side project to pass the time.

https://sites.google.com/site/spartakips/download
Yes, you can still download it in case you're curious.

Being an avid Kongregate participant, it was only natural for me to proceed to look into flash development. With KonQuest on hiatus indefinitely, I started on a whole slew of little games. One of the games, Idlekips, became very popular with Kongregators who visited the site solely to chat with friends. Shortly after release, however, an update was made to the API used with the site, and my game was essentially broken.

Around this time, my friend had set me up on his server and set me in with my own site, Productionkips. There's a very strong chance that hyperlink won't go anywhere, though, so don't get too excited. I really got into it - I was making my own banners, tweaking my page, making posts, trying to make new games...

...but I ultimately ended up just running in circles and didn't have much to show for it. Bugs appeared faster than I could fix them, projects weeks into development hit walls or were thrown out because I didn't like the directions they were headed in, problems around the site popped up, side projects went nowhere, and the combination of everything together just ended up feeling like I was writing progress reports that were filled with excuses. So what did I do?

Well, I started a webcomic! I had always wanted to, and I'm still a huge webcomic advocate and reader. My past endeavours essentially brushed under the rug of a new theme and layout, I set out to start this grand webcomic that I'd make based off of stories and experiences. It was amazingly fun and refreshing!

Having never been particularly artistic, I learned from the ground up. I experimented with purely digitial comic creation, then migrated to inked scans, then went full sketch-ink-scan-photoshop with my comics. Everytime I had an idea, I'd scribble it down on a post-it or scrap of paper or napkin and pile everything up when I got home to review. I have a folder in my filing cabinet full of hundreds of comics, just waiting to be drawn and posted.

Following my now-apparent trend, however, new comics became less and less frequent. It would be 3 to 4 months before a single strip would be posted. At the time of writing this, I had not posted anything in over half a year.

Now, the site is being terminated, and with it, Productionkips.

I know that, given it's stark decay, it's the right decision. It costs money to host a site and hold a domain name, and there's no point in doing that if the site doesn't generate any new content or traffic. However, it shook me deeply inside. Even though Productionkips had crumbled to pieces because of my negligence, I now realize just how big of a part of me this whole idea is. A fifth of my life I've poured into this....ideal and concept that I associate with the site and what I've done. It's more than a hobby to me, and I'm filled with shame at the sight of my failure.

It's as if there was someone who set out to build a castle on a whim and started slapping stones together, feeling out the designs as it went. A single tower was completed, but the rest of the structure was basically just left off, unfinished. Because of the shoddy design of the tower, it kept needing repairs until, eventually, the damage was too great and the tower collapsed upon itself with it's negligent owner still inside.

So here I am, it's after 3am and I work in a few short hours, yet despite my exhaustion, my stomach turns at the concept of sleep - downright repulsed by it. My apartment is a mess. There's clutter and trash strewn about the place, files that need to be filed, dishes that need to be washed. I'm surviving and paying the bills on almost purely credit, or negative money as I prefer to call it. I still haven't made plans for returning to school to finish a full degree. My health is suffering with a series of unusual symptoms, plagued by chronic twitches and nausea. And the one thing I always looked forward to working on and always talked about is in ruins.



But I'm alive, and there's always something to be said about that.