New Year’s Resolution 2020

Reflection of 2019’s Resolutions:

1) Produce at least 30 pieces of audio work with at least a dozen original compositions. Just like last year. And then get my original work uploaded to put in my portfolio.

-8 remasters (to practice mastering), 7 remixes, and 1 original composition made on a whim for Halloween. Still, I managed to create some high quality remixes and an original song.

Remixes:

-Bufotenin (from 2018, but uploaded with video 2019): https://youtu.be/tEelOHQBWVk

-Revenge of the Holy Battle: https://youtu.be/MbPlNbVL04Q

-Party at Ibiza: https://youtu.be/NP69lbJR7J4

-行け！メカ 翡翠 ちゃん! ~Go! Mech Hisui Chan!: https://youtu.be/0cW6UWqwINA

-It all goes down (at River City High School): https://youtu.be/vrni4x_rj8M

Original:

-Tricky Treats: https://youtu.be/eLG0_xNNf2M

2) Learn one difficult piece on piano and one difficult song on guitar. I didn’t get to accomplish this and I want to try again.

-I just never found the time to do this. I’ve been constantly practicing and working on music production that I rarely found time to practice music. I did practice a lot of guitar to record “Revenge of the Holy Battle”, but that’s about it.

3) Get my weight below 143-145 lbs.

-I started the year at 147-148 lbs, went to Japan and ate/walked a lot and came back home still at 148 lbs. But I had injured something in my ankle and one reason led to another which kept me from going to the gym. By summer, I had gone back up to 156 lbs before I started exercising again and got it down to a steady 153 lbs. I’m sad that all my hard work from 2018 was reverted so quickly in just a few months.

4) Create one game. There’s a series of compositions I want to create for a game I want to create (an idea I’ve had since 2008).

-I never found the time to even think about this.

5) Finish Romance of the Three Kingdoms books. I’m close to finishing volume 1 out of 4. And if possible, I’d like to get around to reading my other books.

-LOL, I read like one chapter from the Three Kingdoms Books. Like in 2018, I dedicated the month of April to reading. I finally finished the Hellgate: London trilogy books and even finished playing the game (they came out back in 2007). I read a book that a family friend wrote and then I never found the time to read again throughout the year.

6) Play through Persona 3 & 4. Then Persona 5. And then all the Persona spin-offs. Hopefully Atlus releases Persona Q2 in America.

-I didn’t touch Persona 3 and I’ve been trying to catch up on Persona 4 because what happened was a common bug caused the game to break my save files and delete them, so I had to start all over again.

It was very difficult to stick with my resolutions in 2019 because I was so heavily distracted. I had fulfilled a life long dream of visiting Japan for two weeks in January and knew I was not going to be able to do anything else but think about that trip when I got back home. While on that trip, I also knew I was probably going to feel depressed when I got back home because each day in Japan was a new and exciting experience and going back home meant returning to a monotonous routine. When I did get back home, I spent close to a month making videos, recording events, and creating a scrapbook to reflect on my trip and try to get over the excitement I had of the trip as I relived it in my head over and over. After I got over it, I started to feel a bit depressed as I suspected and countered it by keeping busy. I went from practicing mastering, to reading for a month, to creating a video for the remix I made in December of 2018 (Bufotenin), to working on a remix that took 3-4 months to finish (Revenge of the Holy Battle), to suddenly having a burst of inspiration and constantly working on remixes, to being offered my first real job in ages which I worked temporarily for 2.5 weeks, to finally finishing the videos for my last two remixes, and that was my year. I really had no time to “think” as I spent all my time “doing”. That excitement to keep creating and working is still kind of there, but I actually think I need a small break before I get back to working again because I kind of burnt myself out these last few months.

My Resolutions for 2020:

1) Just work on music. I feel so inspired and excited about making more music recently. I think I’ll just naturally make a lot of progress, finally have my portfolio done, and start applying for jobs with it because I feel pretty confident in my skills now.

2) Live healthy. I’ve already cut soda out of my diet years ago, I drink a lot of water, I exercise whenever I can, I’m eating less carbs if I can, and I go out walking for fresh air and sunlight. But the one thing I’m still not doing is going to sleep early and waking up early.

3) Try to draw. It’s been many years since I’ve drawn anything. Even though art is no longer my desired career path, I still miss the feeling of creating something visually.

4) Read the Romance of the Three Kingdom Books. Just do it.

5) Attack that backlog (videogames). I’ve been neglecting that backlog this past year and kept adding new games to the list. This past year and past decade was amazing for gaming despite the difficulty the industry faced with massive layoffs, restructuring, and the rise of free/mobile gaming being the top grossing market in the industry. There’s still a lot of amazing games I haven’t played through that I really want to get around to playing.

While my future isn’t clear, I feel quite focused on what I want to do. I’m expecting a lot of great things from myself this year in 2020. Good luck to everyone else’s endeavors, let’s make 2020 the beginning of a great decade!

End of a decade

It's hard to believe that we're at the end of the year, let alone the end of the decade. When this decade began, I was finishing my last two quarters of college and was eager to jump straight into the Electronic Entertainment Industry right away so that I can finally start learning about game development.  I was filling out papers for the JET program to study abroad in Japan in hopes of getting a different perspective in life.  I was still dead set on working with concept art, animation, and design. I had my whole future planned out and I thought I knew where I was headed.

Between that time and now, I've worked for an international online gaming company for 8-months, participated in two game jams to help out friends from the Videogame Development Club that were still at UCI at the time, had 4 games published, switched over to music and began studying composition and production, and ended the decade with going to Japan for two weeks, and finally getting my first real job for two short weeks this past month since 2011. Now my life is full of uncertainty and doubt.  Despite that, I know I'm stubborn and will probably continue to work towards getting into the game industry as I improve my abilities with working on music and continue to study game design. This decade didn't go according to plan and I feel like I didn't make as much progression in my life as I had hoped I would.  But it's not all bad!

After getting laid off from my first job in 2011, there wasn't very much for me to do as I kept looking for work and submitting applications. At the very least, I was still able to play games with a friend online from time to time.  But near the beginning of 2012, some friends from UCI started playing League of Legends and we all brought friends together to play in-house games.  For an entire year between 2012-2013, I played LoL every night and got to know all these strangers who were friends of friends.  After arranging a meet up in 2013 and hanging out with them in person, we all had gotten closer and have since then deviated off to playing other games other than LoL.  It's rare to go throughout a night without joining chat to play games or even just chat for a bit ever since then.  I've met so many new people and made so many new friends in that manner that I find myself lucky to be in such a unique position.  I think that's the greatest story I'd have to tell from this decade.

I never imagined that I'd be working with music as a career path, and yet I spent most of my time throughout the day practicing music, making music, arranging and remixing music, and constantly learning something new out of it.  With that, I was fulfilling a lot of childhood dreams I had of recreating my favorite videogame songs.  It's been a strange decade, because there's a lot I'm disappointed in and regret.  And yet, it felt like such a fulfilling time in my life as I reflect upon it.


This past month has been pretty hectic, mainly because of the job I took up that pretty much kept me busy throughout the entire day.  Originally, I had planned on finishing everything in 12 days and so I worked on Saturday and Sunday for first week as well in order to complete all my tasks by the second Friday.  Unfortunately, some plans were changed and I got a lot more work and was given more time to do it.  Not wanting to drag it out, I worked harder each day instead and added an extra 2 days.  It was an interesting experience, but it's definitely not something I'd want to do in the long term. (I'm purposely not talking about it too much since I signed an NDA and don't know how much I can actually talk about it without getting in trouble).

Two days after my last day of work, the Steam Winter Sale began. I really did try to keep my spendings to a minimum this year, especially after my Japan trip.  I did a good job throughout the year, but it was all for nothing after these past two months of spending.  Despite my efforts to keep the amount spent for the sale, I still bought quite a few games.  I'm even thinking of picking up a few more before the sale ends in two days (I'm in this deep already.....).  I've been playing games with my friends when I can and have had little to no time to play my single-player games this entire month.  I finally finished my last two remixes for the year:


I'm probably going to finish up my last video project, create a new one for all the games I've played the past few years, plan out the upcoming year, and then finally just relax and catch up on some games because I feel like I haven't stopped working or just "doing things" since the beginning of November and I feel really burnt out.

I'm currently experiencing some discomfort with my nose cavity and throat feeling dry, a slight headache, fatigue, and some queasiness in my stomach.  I hope I'm not getting sick leading up to the new year and new decade.  I did all that I could this year and this decade and perhaps I'll reflect on it a bit more, but it's almost time to start planning for a new future.

Happy New Year 2020!