Do Stuff - Kind-Of-An-Open-Letter-To-Myself

I've been meaning to write this post for some time now, well I've been meaning to write several posts for some time now so I thought - let's write one post that is especially hard to follow, that's even better right? What finally pushed me to write was yesterday's (as I'm writing this) pastagang birthday party. If you don't know what pastagang is, then this post is not about pastagang ...but you should get the idea by the end anyway (or just read pastagang.cc), this post will be quite chaotic.

It's something different this time, a little bit more personal. I had quite a lot of "breakthroughs" this year and want to share this. Maybe, but just maybe you will find this relatable. I'm not an influencer. I am the only planned target audience for this post. If you are not me, add "maybe" to every "should" you read. Some of the things may not apply to you. You may even think this whole post is just plain wrong, and I'm fine with that. You are getting an almost unedited look at my stream of thoughts, and if you think that this post is a mess - thank goodness, this means you are not in my head but an actual human being, wheeeew.

To kick this off maybe let's start with a list of things that I learned over the years. Things that may sound obvious, but sometimes you have to pay certain attention to the obvious to actually realize how important it is.

Editor's note (that's also me): That list ended up being pretty much the whole post.

Don't judge others (except for their immoral acts or views)

Ok this one seems obvious, but I'm not talking about this from the perspective of trying to be a good person. I'm talking about this from a purely egoistic standpoint. If you are a creator (and everyone is a creator), nothing destroys your creativity as much as being judged. And you are the only single person that judges yourself the most - and the only one you can't hide from. If you see someone that created something and think...

This is ass, I can do better

...the next time you see someone do something better than you, you will be the "ass" in question.

Don't try to impress anyone (other than yourself)

You did a {thing}, you are so excited about it you want to show it to everyone. No one cares. No more excitement. You don't ever do the {thing}. People view the world differently, some people won't like your {thing}, some people will be unimpressed, some people who are doing the {thing} all their lives will tell you that you first need $10000 of "proper gear" and 8h of practice a day to ever be considered good. Some people won't get what you are even talking about because they lack knowledge in the field to understand why you find the {thing} cool.

But at first you impressed yourself, isn't that enough?

And I don't mean you shouldn't care if someone likes the things you do. Good for you! It's just about the expectations. Because if you expect people to be as enthusiastic about what you do as you are, you will be let down hard. This doesn't mean you shouldn't be sharing things, but more on that later.

You don't need permission to have fun

Woah this is life changing, finally I'm cured.

You don't need to know music theory to do music.

You don't need to know how to code to hammer something together.

You don't need the "good paints" to make a painting.

You don't need permission to contribute.

You don't need permission to not sand the planks before painting.

You don't need permission to overcook pasta.

Stop gatekeeping fun, everyone's welcome. This is how I got into most hobbies and this is how I got shamed for stuff like this online to the point that even I started to shame myself for this. People will try to force their own insecurities onto you. If your community makes you feel this way, maybe you are in the wrong community. The world and the internet are huge, find some other place. And don't use Reddit or you will learn that you are holding the flashlight wrong and you should vacuum your house three times a day.

If you want to try out a new hobby but don't feel like getting completely serious about it, just force yourself through.

Make a game by copying random code snippets from the internet until it works.

Paint using cheap paints.

Find a half-broken synth and play music without knowing what you are doing.

Buy thirty kilograms of fishtank sand and a bucket of wood glue and make a diorama in the middle of the room that you won't be able to move out for weeks. (I will add a picture of this if I ever find one.)

Join pastagang; this is not a sponsored post.

Nothing bad is going to happen. You are allowed to. Unless it's chemistry or skydiving, then you probably want to prepare.

It doesn't have to "make sense" (it already does)

Quit LinkedIn, we are having fun here, you will think about shareholder value during your work. Now it's time to CHILL. Can't even describe how many projects died before even getting to live, because someone asked "but why?" You don't need a "why", maybe "because this is cool" or -ekhem- "I find this cool" is enough.

Normalize doing stuff just for the sake of doing it.

Normalize doing stuff just because no one did it yet.

Normalize doing stuff for FUN.

The main reason I made mousefood is because I wondered if this would be possible since no one did it before ...and people are having fun with it - it's good enough reason, and would still be good enough if I was the only one having fun.

If you want to do something, just do it and don't let others cool down your enthusiasm.

It doesn't have to be perfect (it already is)

If it's fun, it doesn't have to be perfect. You can make it better later, or maybe you don't have to, doesn't matter.

At yesterday's (as I'm writing this) nudel.cc jam, the site got nuked to oblivion, but we all had so much fun no one even cares - the core concept is so cool I would forgive it even if it fried my computer.

When I was 12 I discovered game maker. I had so much fun with it. The thing is, I only learned how to code when I was 17 ...so I just copied snippets of code from the internet and shuffled it until it worked.

Don't worry about the execution of random code from the internet, 12yr old me probably had all viruses imaginable on Windows XP!

Inefficient, but who cares - I had fun. You wouldn't believe how far you can get this way as I managed to make a kinda-working 3D game-thing. I remember that bullets were able to get right through you without causing damage if you were lucky, (consider it a feature).

I continued doing such game-things like this for a few years, later on moving to unity. It was fun. Then I finally learned how to code and messed around with some lego blacktron fangame - never completed this.

Oh I forgot to mention - it was fun.

At the university I made a game engine in C++, it wasn't good but it worked and it was fun. Finally I was in a place where I can actually make a game. Then something happened - I felt I needed to make things actually good. So instead of just picking a game engine and getting from there, I started to re-write my own game engine... this was an obsession. Eventually I got some nice results but this was not fun at all and I realized I would never create a game like this. I gave up.

The idea of making a game was still stuck in my head, I wanted to make a game since I was 12, that's more than half of my life. For the last two-or-so years I've been daydreaming about it so much that I realized I must act upon it. That's how I started working on Radioforestrion, but with a totally new (or reinvented) mindset.

It can even be "bad*" on purpose (embrace silliness)

^*not actually bad, when you find out absurdity is great.

You can have hinge sfx when closing your MacBook.

You can have TUIs on PSP.

You can have crow noises, low pass filter farts and odd samples distorted to oblivion in music. (Join pastagang cult now.)

Earlier this year I was messing around creating a lisp interpreter (absolutely normal hobby to have). The most fun I had was when I thought...

Hey, let's make it possible to overwrite builtins and... syntax at runtime!

As long as you are having fun, is it really "bad"? If you think so, well, that's like... your opinion. Check out how I made the player know how much money they have when entering a shop in Radioforestrion:

There's no cringe (in sharing stuff)

There are two major bugs in my brain that blocked me from getting into open source earlier - being brainwashed by capitalism that I shouldn't work for free and the fear of being judged when putting things I made for everyone to see. There's no shame in sharing stuff, but there's no other way to get through the fear than exposure (point 1 makes it much easier though). This year I gave my first talks. I did it because I wanted to share what I thought was cool, I would lose my mind if I didn't let it out; the other reason was to get through the fear of giving a public speech, of sharing things.

Will they ask me something I don't have an answer to? What if they don't find that cool?

I wanted to get over thoughts like this, and I think I'm on the right track. I'm proud of myself that I managed to do this. (Hey wait a moment, did I just tick point 2?)

Mess is good

Don't try to organize everything if this negatively affects your creativity, it's not worth it.

A few years ago I really wanted to "get my sh..tuff together", because I'm an adult and I should do adult stuff. No more tons of cables, synths, paints, electronics, tools and soldering equipment, legos, etc. all over the place.

I should be O-R-G-A-N-I-Z-E-D.

The result of that was that I stopped doing music, stopped painting, stopped soldering synth-stuff, stopped almost any creativity and became much sadder than the baseline-sad. Not only I didn't start anything because I didn't want to make a mess or felt too lazy to set everything up; it's much harder to jump right into creating, when there's nothing to catch your eye, like some eurorack that will start playing arpeggios when you flip a switch.

It's not worth it to sell your creativity for tidiness. Mess. Is. Good.

My desk as I'm writing this post.

Let {things} die

One very valuable thing when creating something is the ability to destroy what you are creating.

If you paint something at some point you will decide that the painting is "good enough", but if you want to progress, you have to keep going, there's always something you can change, something you can explore.

why let code die

• Let code die to have less emotional attachment to code and to write more code and then it gets easier
• also to create more room for new different code including all kinds of fun errors.
• to make space for others to fill the void

~ about pastagang 'let code die' mantra, source.

By the fear of "breaking" what's good, you lock yourself from all these explorations. Nothing feels more freeing than letting go. On nudel.cc we constantly change things, we build, we break, we kill it, and it's all fine. It's constantly evolving and there's no regret when it's gone, there's no attachment.

We let code die. Then we write more.

People are less competent than they seem (and it's fine)

What I experienced both among tech folks and artists, and what I too suffer from is imposter syndrome. And there's one huge thing that gives every self-titled "imposter" arguments against themselves.

People seem more competent than they really are mostly because people want to show their best side to you. You are the only person you have (mostly) a complete view on. If you talk with someone about e.g. Python and they suddenly throw PEP numbers at you, it's very easy to come to the conclusion...

Wow, this person is a genius and knows everything about Python, I am utter trash and I should be thrown out of the room for even trying to talk to them.

The problem is, you don't know if that person knows any more PEPs, I know PEP654 just because the number is easy to remember and I happened to read it. I probably don't know any other one by number.

Maybe they think you are a genius because you mentioned something they didn't know about - but you didn't even notice.

Or maybe the person indeed knows a lot, but you are still missing a lot of variables! Maybe they had more time, maybe they didn't have the same problems as you do, or maybe the other way around, maybe the way they got to this point was so painful, you'd rather not go through something similar.

OH NO, what should I do. How can I objectively compute if I'm stupid or not!

Just stop thinking about it, it doesn't matter. You are not worse than anybody else and if someone thinks that, that's like... their opinion.

And you may be thinking, hey this is obvious. But I will repeat myself - sometimes you really have to pay special attention to the obvious.

I "knew" this for a long time, but it didn't really strike me until I, by accident, landed on the other side of such a situation. Earlier this year I made mousefood, it was a fun project but it wasn't that complicated, just look into the code, nothing crazy in there. But the end result is really cool and it looks impressive, I just got really lucky to be the first one to try doing this. Since then I had numerous people taking me for some rust guru with no-idea-how-many-years of experience. Worse than that, I had a few people (whose creations I myself found very impressive) full-on belittle themselves before me, only this made me see myself - because I was doing the same.

The next time you think you are worse than someone, keep this in mind.

There's always someone "better*" than you (and that's good)

^*more experienced.

It's a good thing - there's always someone to learn from. I prefer it this way. "The top" must be a lonely place.

Do stuff, see ya.

Artistic interpretation of me writing this post. With pen on paper, like y'all should write code.