Jonathan Blow's Twitch: / j_blow Tip me: ko-fi.com/blowfan Someone in Jonathan Blow's chat had broken up with his girlfriend to have more time to work on a game. A discussion ensues. Hmm.
Reminds of that one Ken Thompson quote (paraphrased): “I realized i needed about three weeks to make an operating system. One week for the editor. One week for the assembler. One week for the kernel. Thankfully, my wife took a three week trip, and then we had Unix.”
That's actually a good thing. Now that I am getting older I can feel less excited about doing things than I was before. I wish to go back. All of those emotions hold you back, but you are experiencing life more deeply. Everything is more interesting.
@@oredaze You're maligning wisdom, metaknowledge of the worth of things.. and lamenting the loss of delight at jangling keys. Yes, wisdom demystifies, disillusions, and dispels naivety. It also triages your limited time. With the wisdom to avoid transfixion by jangling keys (bc you understand them and they bore you now), you recover time you would've lost, absent the effect of wisdom. The only reason you're not excited now by things is because you've explored them enough to dispel the false version in your head and/or make it through the honeymoon period of discovering the nuances and novelty of the thing. Now it's not new, it's mysteries were not deep or compelling enough to occupy you forever with their exploration. Now it's time to move on. If this process didn't exist, you'd be obsessed by the first time you experienced anything interesting and would never recover your senses.
@@yunggolem4687 I do not want to malign wisdom. In fact I was deeply interested in philosophy for a very long time. So I am very much drawn to it. However I cannot ignore the facts. Wisdom did not make me switch priorities and it never will because the "jangling keys" just so happen to be my endgame interests. All the other benefits wisdom gives you, my character happened to possess before I had any wisdom. Maybe I was raised well, idk. The only positive thing wisdom did was it gave the perspective needed to [emotionally] handle bad events better. But if I went back in time I would have jumped hard at life (like most people do) instead of thinking about everything at every step. What the precious knowledge of life did was it demystified life itself, not the time wasting activities one has to avoid. It showed me the absurdity of (almost) everything we do or what other people consider as important. I favor knowledge on a smaller scale much much more nowadays.
Communicating your needs is vital in relationships, particularly if you're a creative who feels the daily need to produce something. For me, isolated alone time is critical for growth and career development. My wife understands that now, but it took a lot of conversations between us to relay that to her in a way she understood. I now work full time as a game artist in the AAA space while she watches the kids because she allowed that alone time for me for so many years. If you're with someone who can't support or understand your creative endeavors, that's going to cause a lot of tension and friction. If you love them and they love you, there will be compromise, but if you're young and not in a rush to be married, I say be single and create late into the night. I will say, though, having a family is a great external motivator to be the best creative you can be.
Why are people shitting on this advice in the comments? This seems like a really balanced take, what are you supposed to do just not work on your game?
@@Ash_18037 The fuck is that supposed to mean? Because I wouldn't be horny yet? Maybe you're at that age where pussy is the only thing that matters to you. I don't know Jon Blow's whole story I know a lot of people find him lolzy but he's literally just saying to set boundaries within a relationship here, like am I missing something lol, pretty standard stuff
Because a considerable amount of jon's followers don't have very balanced and mature views on women and relationships (or they've never actually been in one), so it clashes with their perceived reality of how things should be.
I think he gave a measured take on compromise in relationships. I mean, hey I would never actively take advice from Jon Blow but it’s not like he was saying some redpill shit.
If you find a woman who truly loves you, and whom you truly love, someone who shares your values and will start a loving family with you, I would not end that relationship for work. That being said, a woman like this will probably be reasonable and give you more space, but it's also more likely for a man to find a woman like this after a man has achieved some success through working.
Baby i don't have time for sex, i don't have time to hear how your day was, i don't have time for you. I have to pursue my game dev career Absolute sigma move
@@epicotakugamer4930 It depends, I think it is fair to expect of a partner to be able to hold their shit together until work is finished for the day, unless it a emergency or something. And the familydeserves to have clear divisions between work time and free time.
Found the person who only knows about Jon through RU-vid clips. Seriously though, negotiating boundaries is basic relationship stuff. If making stuff makes you happy, you need the time and space to do it.
This might just be a semantics rebuttal, but, I think "wanting happiness" is actually a trivialization of what it means to be human. Happiness is just an emotion, and all emotions are temporary/fleeting experiences. You will be sad sometimes, and happy other times; that is true no matter what you do or achieve in life. Meaning, striving, improving the lives of others, creative endeavor - these are the things that really matter to me. I'm _not_ saying that means everyone needs to live in hardcore monk-mode and grind away at their art like Jon does. You can (and perhaps should) learn to cultivate and treasure your relationships to family/friends/partners. The balance will be different for everyone. For some, a regular 9-5 and raising a family is enough. Others need that artistic outlet. I seriously doubt Jon makes games because it makes him 'happy', per-say. He makes them because he truly believes in the work he's doing, and it gives him a sense of meaning and purpose. He's willing to endure immense frustration, loneliness, or stress to keep that sense of meaning alive.
The descent into actual nihilism in this comment section is really eye opening to the kind of culture JBlow is accumulating, as per my impression of it I find this as a warning sign why just having this eye on your time on earth is far from being considered as "Truth of Life", and this is what the individualistic nature of our thought in this time is going to foster and develop as "The Successful Lifestyle", and I acknowledge that JBlow himself has his dedication to be a driving force for greater good of society because he believe that a humanbeing "Can", but every person on his own can only do so much!
The core of individualism is pursuing your own happiness. People who don't pursue it become miserable because they are always sacrificing for others. Regarding your last line, if you need the skills of other people, you can trade with them. This isn't living for their sake, like in collectivism, but you are pursuing your own self interest while also providing something (money) for someone else so that they may pursue their own self interest.
I dont think we should assume the worst here. I find it more likely that this man took the drive doing important work gave him to end it with a parasite than that he drank the coolaid.
I was expecting a twitter hot take but honestly that was pretty sound advice. Applies to any relationship really (looking sternly at the newspaper occupying cats of the queer community)
Skip your life to work more on a game whose release is in doubt... And even if he release it and make money from it... I dunno, but it seems like a waste of time, and when he realize it it will be too late... Sad story
You quite don't understand him , he don't work to make money he work so that he can work more he said that in multiple of his talks focusing on money bring nothing deep . You have to keep in mind there are people who are just happy to dedicate their life , and he was probably forwarding that message for those type of persons.
You cannot imagine someone who is willing to dedicate a great part of his life to his vocation, right? This is what is a sad story. And also it is sad that this person broke with his girlfriend because of this, because a good mentality should be able to embrace both things in a way, even if the life becomes harder then.
Comedy gold! Advice from a programmer who wrote a couple of decent games: "you're being 'near parasitic' my love, could you not sit on my book and just let me fucking do my thing?"
Jon is describing literally every woman here, no woman is going to be like, "I understand his work is more important than me, I need to give him space...." That said, if you are dedicated to great work it's fine to postpone or skip family life
@@cluelessdev3851 what you're going to find is that when those girls who "aren't like other girls" get married they're going to be like other girls. Not in every single aspect, but in this aspect, very consistently. there's a lot more leeway when you're young and dating sporadically, but when you're married to the same person day in and day out these patterns of humanity tend to take over
Exactly@@Zipperheaddttl is never like one or the other. There are moments in which you will be much more focused and there are moments in which you need to be a good partner. that is life, keeping balance. If you want to go all the way working you will be alone for your whole life. Like the Click movie. But also not good to be spending whole life doing vanilla life stuff either, otherwise your family wont have a future.
