8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Tag: self confidence

Chapter List

  • Young Restless

    I made the mistake of asking an AI chatbot for motivation the other day.

    When one leans into these sorts of modern tools for creative inspiration it is helpful to remember that they are the strangest sorts of things often juxtaposing unearned flattery with inhumanly blunt criticism. Grain of salt on standby.

    My curiosity was with a very human problem for which I knew the answer but I figured an all-knowing resource-consuming generative search tool might come up with something unique to say: why do I so often run out of steam on new projects?

    The joys of starting a new hobby, tackling a new challenge, or learning a new skill are often gloriously rewarding.

    And when we were young, damn, everything was new and interesting.

    I’m wheeling in on fifty this year and I find that the joy of newness is not only something I crave, but an energy and vibe that tanks likes a bad metaphor with the lifespan of an ice cream treat in the sunshine.

    The AI knew why just as well as I did: some mix of psychology and endorphins and reward stimuli in the primal parts of my woefully organic brain. 

    Fixing the issue is a bigger challenge than just asking a bot, though, and I think it might help to spend some time getting my own very human brain around the problem.

    Under the category of Young & Restless I’ll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Professional Games 

    In early 2025 I founded a game studio.

    Sounds impressive, no? In a way it is like any other clever idea: you give an idea a name and send it off in a direction and it becomes important and meaningful. It becomes work.

    Why did I found a game studio?

    Because I write code.  My profession for two decades has involved technology and systems and building things on computers. The gaming industry may seem lighthearted and playful, but at the end of the day games are just more code (and art and music and databases and stories) built inside of a computer.

    I spent the next five months working on the soul and systems of a simulation-meets-cozy style game and pushing it through various iterations of functionality until I was actually able to load it onto one of those handheld gaming PCs and sit on the couch playing my buggy (but functional) game.

    It’s now mid-2026 as I write this and the game development has been stalled for about a year. I’ve poked at it. Prodded it. Added tiny nudges to the system. But stalled, really.

    I bring it up here because it comes to mind when I think of the idea I’m trying to get across in this chapter of the blog: creativity isn’t just a whim. It can be work and a product and an invention that may someday wind up in a store being sold to people who would pay for it.

    And on days that I’m being particularly honest I think I would tell you that the game development didn’t stall for lack of time or motivation or direction. It probably stalled because the profession that morphed in a newfound passion quietly transformed back into a profession when I wasn’t looking. And it took me a few months to get my head around that idea.

  • Selfie Guy

    I took a walk with my new camera.

    I wrote about this about a week ago, having just bought a new action camera (an upgrade from the three similar models I’ve owned over the last decade and a half) I decided to give my vocal chops a test drive.

    So, I took a walk with my new camera. And the dog. And the rain. And a glowing mindset of finding a quiet place to make a selfie-video.

    I’m not sure if that’s the right term. I spun the camera around to face myself and tried to do some vocal word-craft based on a fifty word point form script I put together on my phone, doing my darnedest to record a coherent vlog-like video and do something I’ve never really done before: spin the camera around and put my face in the lens and not the viewfinder.

    A runner ran by once and gave me a sidelong glance.

    The path emerged from the woods alongside a freeway exit ramp and at least half a dozen guys each in their F150s turned their heads ninety degrees to offer a lingering stare at the dude and his selfie-stick so obviously talking to the camera.

    It’s a vulnerable thing this: becoming the performer in a one man production crew in your own neighbourhood when you’ve never done this sort of thing.

    I had been planning to make a whole series about this effort, but the time commitments of recording one of these every week, editing them, and then trying to write knowledgeably on the effort punched me in the face harder than if one of those truck dudes had pulled off to the side of the road to do it for me.

    Expertise is earned. I get that. But I think I may need to force this effort a little less.

  • Unworthy Comparisons

    Don’t ever let me hear you say that what you are about to write… and then post …and then share is “not worth it” or doesn’t measure up.

    Do let me remind you what passes for paid for media these days. I opened up my news app this morning before I wrote this and here is a selection of some of the more absurd articles I saw in my “top news” list, and again… I pay for this feed.

    There was a celebrity gossip story explaining that such and such a celebrity had posted an image of herself on Instagram. The article recapped the insta post. That was it. That was the article.

    There was an article explaining how to use a kitchen drawer, including an explanation of stacking objects inside so that they didn’t tip over or misbalance the cabinet. That’s it. That was the article.

    There was an ordered list of the best foods on the Costco menu. There are only about ten things on the Costco menu and “best” is, of course, at best a subjective measure of anything. That’s it. That was the article.

    We judge ourselves far too much and too often self-censor because we think we can’t stand up to the yardstick of social validation.

    But just write what you want to write.

    Tell the story that is important to you. 

    Don’t compare yourself to the rest of the world because often the world is often too absurd and basic—too unworthy—to bother comparing with.

  • Confidence Boosts

    I bought yet another book of sheet music recently.

    That’s what musicians probably do, right? I assume so myself. Going to the music store makes me feel like how I used to feel going to the bookstore or the record store (way back when that was a thing) and I spent hours browsing through the stacked pages of a million potential adventures through grand ideas or creative expression.  Sheet music still seems to hold that grip on me.

    I bought a book of sheet music that is probably too hard for me to play.

    Precisely, it was a thick book of classical standards, two and a half centimetres of paper bound up with literally hundreds of works by Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and a couple dozen more mostly-famous composers. Intermediate piano music.

    Don’t get me wrong.  I can read music. I’ve been playing some form of instrument for about forty-five years, most recently going on a music journey with the violin.  But having delved in a serious attempt to learn how to play the piano this past year I would still neatly categorize myself as a beginner. 

    And now I have this sheath of music for intermediate players. It’s probably, almost certainly, too hard for me to play… right now.

    Confidence is many things, often immeasurable things, but sometimes I need to remind myself that I must have a least a little bit of it: I invested in my future self this week and I bought a book of music that is aspirational, too difficult for me today, but some part of me must believe that tomorrow will be better, huh?