Playing in Private, Building in Public
The last couple of months have been hectic and the opposite of fun but they have forced me to reflect on a number of things; mainly what I value overall within my life, what I want to do more of, what I want to do less of and what fulfilment looks like to me personally.
Thus far in my career I’ve focused on climbing the traditional career ladder within a corporate environment, not all that long ago my career goal was to get a Senior Product Designer title. Nothing more and nothing less. I saw this as a potential gateway to higher salaries, easier navigation of the job market and somewhat of an ego boost or form of validation as well. Of course I’m a great designer, I’m a senior in my head and in the real world.
Or so I thought.
I realised not all that long ago that the 9–5 lifestyle isn’t necessarily the best fit for how I work or my long-term goals and desires. I paused therapy recently and replaced it with a fairly rigorous workout schedule inspired partly by watching Rocky and also genuinely just catching the gym bug.
I also got thinking recently and realised that to feel truly accomplished I wanted to build something myself from the ground-up and scale it. I want to truly own ‘something’ and work tirelessly on it instead of being a cog in someone else’s machine. However, I have always preferred being in the shadows and the thought of being a founder is still somewhat icky.
At the same time as all of this, I’ve been trying to figure out how to avoid burnout and stay sane. I’ve been freelancing since March and it’s been a largely smooth and thankfully well-paid ride too. I’ve been enjoying the added freedom I have and I’m daunted by the prospect of returning to a 9–5 and having to be on call constantly.
So, personal projects have been nice.
I somewhat neglected these for quite a long time (since around December 2022) and I didn’t realise how important they were until I started playing around in Blender and Spark AR again the other week on a mini concept for a DLT Malta filter.
At my core; I enjoy playing around, experimenting and making things other people enjoy using whatever tools I have at my disposal. And when I neglect making fun things I feel demotivated when I work on actual work.
Since playing around in Blender and Spark AR more I’ve also been inundated somewhat with content about the concept of play, examples below:
In particular, the first image had me thinking about what play means to me personally. Recently I have been “playing” in Blender and Spark AR, but is it truly playing if there is some form of material gain involved? Is posting the projects I consider “play” disqualifying them as play because of the potential material gain I could procure from sharing my works? Then I saw the second image and started to think about play as something that can almost be communal and accessible to all.
My solution for now is creating 3D and AR projects for the sake of creating those projects and sharing them as and when I feel called to.
I saw a video recently which encouraged me to show more of myself to the world and I took it to heart because I’m a Leo rising and Venus RX in Leo is upcoming too. Or maybe I really am that self-centred. Video is linked below:
Thanks for reading.
