About courage and perseverence

Imagine you are building a boat. This is the first time you're doing this. It's very hard to do and you don't quite know how to but you have a slight idea anyway. So you spend a lot of time and effort working on the boat and when you are done, it looks ok but not quite good and there's a few leaks.

Now you try to sell that boat but nobody wants to buy it because it looks ugly and dangerous. You're very disappointed because you spent a lot of time on that boat, you invested yourself and bit of money for materials too and you don't get anything back for it.

However, you don't get discouraged. You roll up your sleeves and start working on another boat. With the experience you got and the things you learned building the first boat, you manage to build this one a bit quicker and it looks better and is safer too. You are very excited about your work.

This time you manage to sell the boat though not for quite as much money as you expected. After all you did spend a lot of time working on it again and you thought you'd be largely rewarded for that work. But anyway, you've sold it and you are happy.

And then you build another boat. This time it goes like a breeze. The boat looks slick, it doesn't have any leak and it's fun to sail! You sell this boat easily for a good sum of money and it makes you happy! From now on, every boat you build will look nicer and nicer and you can expect to make a sustainable business out of your work.

But what if you got discouraged after building the first boat? Or the second one? This would be easy to be disheartened after spending a lot of time and receiving nothing in return. But you learn! And in the long time you manage to build something out of all you've learned and this is the most important part. If you had given up after the first or second boat, you would have lost everything but your perseverence brought you where you need to be.

This is exactly the same thing when making games. Or movies, or books, or comics, or clay pots, or playing guitar, or ...

If there's something in your life you really want to be making, there's only one way to achieve it : roll up your sleeve, build up your courage and persevere. I've been making games independently now for about 4 years. This activity is not sustaining myself nor my family (yet) and I even had to borrow money to keep on doing it but I'm getting better and better and I persevere in that path. If I would have stopped after my first or second game, I would have had to go get a job and all I could do would be to look back at my previous games with a sigh and hope that some day, maybe, I would find time to make another one.

But that's not what I did. I rolled-up my sleeves, took up all I learned and made more games right away, even if it meant living with very little money for a long while. And I don't regret it one bit. Some day, soon, it will pay back for all I invested and I will have achieved my goal : I will have a running business that can sustain myself and my family and I will have built it myself out of love and sweat.

Now what is it YOU want to do?