23 things from 2023 - Part 5: Personal
This is part of my round up of 23 things from 2023. The index is here.
20. Giving up alcohol
After roughly 32 years of drinking, I gave up alcohol entirely this time a couple of years ago.
At peak, it was never “just one” and I drank on multiple nights of the week. Under the guise of being social, I’d been drinking as a way of coping with things like stress, social anxiety, even depression; but the reality is it was just deferring and building up those things for another day.
I’ve done dry January in the past, but it was always with the knowledge I’d have another drink once the month was over. It’s indefinite this time.
So how did it help in 2023? My ability to focus on deep problems has improved. Not starting days with a fuzzy head or hungover is a big part of this.
My sleep is more consistent, so I feel better rested every day.
Some things like stress and depression have actually lessened. Rather than help, alcohol was making things worse! Finding healthier ways to deal with those things properly is proving a better approach.
21. Counselling
Most of us bottle up negative feelings, or try to use things like alcohol as an outlet.
But there’s a serious stigma amongst people of my generation, certainly in the UK, that anything to do with mental health is a weakness – so nobody really talks about what’s on their mind – or really deals with issues that naturally arise in daily life.
Luckily my employer pays for a certain amount of “mental healthcare” – this includes credits towards professional counselling.
In 2023 I got over the stigma and saw a counsellor for the first time in my life. I discussed my concerns, my life story and fears about the future with her.
During the sessions I had, she was able to help me see certain negative thought patterns, and to re-assess coping strategies, such as those developed in my teens in response to being bullied at school.
She’s given me perspective, techniques, exercises and further reading to help better deal with whatever life throws at me.
22. Having a dog
Up until that point we’d both been pretty much “cat people” who didn’t dislike dogs, but also didn’t entirely appreciate them.
She’s a Tibetan Terrier, quite a nontypical breed for a first dog. They’re an ancient breed, favoured by monks and even the Dalai Lama https://lepalamto.com/the-tibetan-terrier/history/
Being one of her humans has been a learning curve, frustrating at times (nippy puppy teeth and unexpected trips to the vet), but on the whole, a bags of fun (if not a little stubborn) bundle of fur.
One thing I didn’t expect is how much she’s helped us connect to our local neighbourhood. Dogs need regular walks, which has forced us to explore our local area more than we ever had, find places for her to run around or have interesting things to sniff.
Dogs are also super social creatures, so she has introduced us to some local dogs – and by extension to their owners – who we now count as friends and acquaintances.
Another unexpected side benefit is as a remote worker, meeting people on my dog walking breaks gives me a nice fix of human contact away from my computer screen - much like meeting people in the kitchen or round the water cooler in an office environment.
23. Community as a remote first worker
As mentioned previously, I’m a 100% remote employee, I have been since the Covid pandemic. The nearest Unity office I could work from is a 3 hour commute away – and even if I did, my actual team is geographically distributed in various parts of the US and Europe.
Generally, due to the nature of my work, this works well for me – and I’m primarily connected to my colleagues by Slack, Zoom, email so always feel I have appropriate levels of contact with my team to get my work done.
But sometimes what’s missing that I used get from working in an office is having human company – particularly industry/geek peers who you can also discuss technology with, not specific (usually NDA) coding problems – but the more general stuff like what games people were playing, what gadgets they’d tried recently, industry news, new coding things to check out, etc.
I’ve found connecting with the local development community at meet-ups has been invaluable for this face to face connection with likeminded technical people – not just the games community, but any tech that seems interesting.
A less frequent thing is I’m a member of the Industry Advisory Board for the MSc Games Technology course at Newcastle University – it’s a great opportunity to connect with former colleagues, other developers, the academic staff, and the next generation of games programmers
Finally, although I don't miss open plan offices in the slightest, it is still a nice change to work in a traditional office from time to time, so I’ll head over to a local co-working space in the centre of town (https://www.thefloe.co.uk/). That has the added bonus that I can catch up with and go for lunch with my friends at Red Rover Interactive who are in the same building.