Season 2, 2026

2026-06-29

I've been excited to write up this recap for a few weeks now! I think it's because I'm finally getting to grips with balance and working from home. It's been a great big season with lots of stuff going on, so let's jump right in.

Season 2 Goals

> Minimise time spent in burnout. Maximise times of effective rest.

Overall, I think this season was one of the better ones for managing burnout. One of the big turning points here was just giving myself permission to get enough sleep, and trying to set time aside about 6 weeks into the season. (This turned out to be one of the busier weeks of the season in the end 😅). This season closed with a pretty big push, so I'm excited to take some slower time in the coming weeks.

> Make a small game

Alas, I did not come upon a simultaneous amount of time or energy substantial enough to accomplish this. I did put together my first ever game jam though! The RPG Jam for Freaks Only which got over 60 entrants and 15 submissions! Was super cool to be able to put this thing together and although I was too spent to partake in it myself, (or even play any of the games T^T.) I do look forward to hosting another jam in the future >:). I also worked with Max on a submission for Claymore's FIST Jam Ops VI called Comoedia Decenium.

> Have fun making music

This is going to sound a bit grim, but I did not accomplish this... There was a fair bit of music making going on (like 4 tracks??) but it was all work and I was feeling pushed up against the edges of the software I'm using (Logic Pro). Again I think part of this is that I didn't have much time alone to sit and play with stuff. But that's not really stopping any time soon so we can shelve this for the time being (lol). I do have my eye on Renoise, and maybe Bitwig, as a way to shake up the process. I'd like to try these tools over a few tracks for a personal project in the future to see if they gel well with me.

On paper, this would appear to be quite the bummer of a season, but (at least at time of writing) I'm feeling more on top of things and less snowed under than in the past...12 months?(yeesh) This is due to a couple of adjustments to my day-to-day, which I'll go over later.

There were also some bonus goals laid out for this season as well so let's take a look at those:

> Mario 64 16-Star in 17min

I've been pretty consistently streaming on Thursday nights and my PB is sitting at 20:05(or something close to that) right now, getting pretty close! I've got 1 month left before the deadline hits for this. I feel I am able to commit to the grind needed to push myself to this target, so hopefully the work pays off.

> Increase number of Game Audio Brisbane members & host a meetup

Accomplished! We had our first proper meet this season, and it was great to get all the people in the same room. The venue left a little to be desired, but we can work around that I think. It's great to see the audio community coming together, and it's getting close to the point of self sustaining, I'll just need to keep nurturing it for a little longer I think.

> QLD Games fest

Yeah it was huge! 2 projects I'm involved with were on the floor, and I got to work with Louis to put together the END GAME trivia show, which was a lot of fun! It was a lot of work, but I think everyone got across the line without pushing themselves over the edge, which was good.

I also laid out some goals to cope with burnout so let's check in with those here.

If the signs of burnout are appearing, schedule some time off.

uhh yeah kind of got there. I did have a week in the middle scheduled off, but it got filled with stuff pretty quick. I'll try to do the same in season 3, but this time actually say no to things so it can actually be for recovery haha.

Shorten milestone periods and limit concurrent milestones.

In season 1 I was using a task management system I had cobbled together in Notion. It worked to an extent, but it also meant that I was being reminded of everything I wasn't doing pretty much all the time. I've since split my note taking and reference to Obsidian and my task tracking to Super Productivity (which I do like, despite the name). The nice things about Super Productivity is that it handles time tracking quite well, and integrates with other task tracking programs we use across different projects, which means it's easy to grab tasks without double handling. Another big factor for these programs is that they're local first and don't require a network connection to function, which, as you'll read in the next section has become a priority for me.

One of the nice side effects of this is that tracking due dates and milestones had to move to my daily notebook, which I'm hoping will work well, as the visibility will be much higher, and easier to cross reference across multiple projects.

Take calls outside the studio

I did try this, but it became quite a nuisance and meant I wasn't spending enough time around the tools I like to use. I've since come to a solution which feels more apt:

No Outside Voices

I decided late this season to basically turn off the internet for the morning. I had tried this many times before, rate limiting particular apps, keeping certain devices off the wifi, but nothing quite stuck. This time, I just tried using my routers built in network scheduling tool to block internet access for my device s until 1pm, every day.

This meant that my habit of waking up, going straight to my phone or tablet and getting inundated with current events or messages was forcibly broken. I also stopped listening to podcasts on morning dog walks. Together, this meant that my mornings were allowed to be much more still, where I'm not feeling like I have to catch up on a bunch of stuff and then have people I've never met yelling in my ear about things that aren't really important or urgent. It also meant that I was able to spend the morning focussing on something I wanted to do, rather than getting lost in "research" rabbit-holes.

Calls for meetings in the morning can kind of get in the way of this, as my router only allows me to turn the connection on or off at the top of the hour (maybe some custom firmware could allow more granularity, but I'm not sure if I want that yet). It's not too bad, especially as it's only a couple of days out of the week. A nice side effect of all this is that it's easy to notice when lots of things are scheduled in the morning, as I'll have to just leave the internet on.

One of the interesting things I noticed was how easy it was for me to think up an excuse to turn the wifi back on. An idea for something to look into, checking in on a random thing. It never mattered, and the fact that I knew the connection would return in a matter of hours really helped to keep the habit sticking. Sometimes I felt like a real junkie, but it's become easier and easier to just get up, walk away from the computer, and do something else for like 5 minutes before being ready to get back to what I was doing before.

Welcome back Pebble

Many years ago, when I was still in uni, I got a second hand Pebble smartwatch and loved it to death. After the company was conglomerated, and my watch started to fall apart, I had been looking for a suitable replacement for quite some time. Of course, there were none that fit the niche pebble had carved. I jumped at the chance to get a new pebble model as soon as they were announced last year, and finally, it has made it's way to my wrist. As expected, I love this thing. It's great, it embodies pretty much everything I love about little gadgets. I won't ramble on here, but I'm excited it's back, especially in a time when everything in tech seems to be actively worsening.

Media Log

I've started using Letterboxd and Backloggd to track Movies and Games, with lists for each season. They mightn't be around forever though, so I'm still listing things here all the same.

Books

• Naruto Ch. 294-304 (Kishinmito, 2008-09)
• The Driver's Seat (Spark)
• The Taiga Syndrome (Garza)
• Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou Collection Deluxe Edition Vol. 1 (Ashinano, 2022)

TV

• Gundam Wing (only a couple of episodes)
• Adventure Time S5-6 (2009-10)
• Paranoia Agent (2004)
• Arrested Development S1-2 (2004-05)

Season 3 Forecast

Season 3 is the time to knuckle down and be good at finishing things! As soon as Season 3 comes to a close, MIGW kicks off and I'm able to show off all the work I've done for the year. This year, there are a number of projects I'm working on that will be showcasing at PAX, and I don't want any left neglected, so the plate spinning will certainly continue into the forseeable future.

PAX Preparations

Preparations for PAX & Games Week are the big focus for this season. There's going to be lots of work to get a bunch of booths ready for the show floor, getting builds polished, and prepping talks and booking events etc. I do feel very lucky that I'm working with so many people who are capable and want games week to go well for everyone.

Grant wrestling

In the middle of all of this, games grant funding will begin to open again. For me this means looking at pitch decks, setting out budgets, looking at time-lines and paying out at what the next year could hold. It looks like once again there are a chunk of projects I'm tied to that are going ahead with grants this round (which is great). Amongst all of this there will also be some grant acquittals, which basically is the same stuff but in reverse.

Incorporating

Looks like on team I'm a part of will be incorporating this season. Never done anything like this before, but I'm excited to see how the process works and how we can leverage it to make things easier for everyone involved. On the surface it seems a bit like stinky capitalism getting in the way, but hopefully we can use the system to our own benefit rather than being beholden to a bunch of paperwork we didn't have before.

Mario 64 speedrunning comes to a close

July 31st will mark the final day of Mario 64 speed running for me! It has been fun so far, but the hard yards are still ahead of me. As I mentioned earlier I'm hoping to get into a groove of daily runs or practise for the final month. I need to get rid of a 10th of my current time, and it's not going to be easy. I'm excited to write a little blog post about my time speedrunning and what I learned from it, so look out for that some time in August I reckon.

Season 3 Goals

Ok so where do I want to be at the end of Season 3? I want to feel proud of my contributions to the projects I'm a part of and the local games scene. I want to not be burnt out. I want to have a week to myself. I want to feel good going into games week. But I feel like that's all par for the course. Let's throw some ambitious numbers out there.

> Make 12 pieces of music

It sounds like a lot already, but there are a few projects with stacks of tracks that need doing and I want to give em the best I got. 12 is probably on the safe side of ambitious tbh, but it'll serve as a good yardstick for future adjustments. Maybe there'll be some tracks that are made just for the sake of making them...

> Go completely offline for 7 straight days

Now that I feel comfy with offline mornings (which still aren't fully offline), it's time to take it to the next level. This will require a bit of co-ordination on my end, but hopefully I can treat it like a holiday at home. (Not sure how it'll work considering there's someone else in the house that will need the internet...we'll cross that bridge when we come to it)

> Spruce up the Memory Card Audio Website

Want to make sure it reflects the work I've been doing over the past year. Will probably need to wrangle some assets from projects. I'll have to take a look at the copy on there too, which is something I kind of suck at hehe.

Ok, that feels like a lot, but a lot that I can manage. There will be things that will try to take priority, but I'm going to try and keep these goals in focus.

2026 is halfway over already!
Live your dream,

- Oscar

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