I put the static site generator behind this blog engine together around a year ago with the intention of using it as motivation to keep learning and documenting the things I was learning. I debated doing the usual "how I built this blog" series, but the world has enough of those, and I've yet to do anything that feels genuinely novel enough here to justify one more.

I let things slide, and eventually forgot about my writing ambitions after my partner and I had our second child and the combination of parenting two small children (on the other side of the world to the rest of our family) and working a fairly demanding job turned the next year into a sleep-deprived blur. During this period, and for the first time in my life, I found myself unable to code outside a work context: I was too exhausted to focus on anything after putting the kids to bed. I'd always considered coding regularly to be a core part of who I was, so neglecting that practice felt like a deep loss.

Our kids have recently started sleeping more consistently through the night, so we're all feeling a bit more human! It feels like we've broken out of the trenches and we're gradually getting our lives back on track.

But. While I have some of the energy I used to, I'm having trouble jump-starting my drive to code. After watching some videos on data-oriented design, I felt inspired to jump into C and try my hand at a bit of game dev. I've been voraciously eating up content about both game dev and C on YouTube (I can recommend the Wookash podcast for some great interviews) and started playing around with raylib.

Playing around is about as far as it's gotten, though. I find myself quickly running out of motivation to do anything past few simple learning projects (breakout clone, a couple of different IK solvers) which is frustrating because I feel like I just need to get over the initial 'just get something working' hump to start enjoying the process of coding again.

Perhaps I'm a bit burnt out? Perhaps I'm not fully recovered? Perhaps the reality of what I'd like to do (code fun little games for my kids) doesn't really meet up with my imagined fantasy of it.

Whatever the reason, I'm determined to claw back this piece of my life somehow. I do hope I do it by becoming productive in C (the longer I spend in the industry, the more attractive simple, lower level coding becomes) but whatever it is, I'll document my journey through it here.