Sometimes, the video game industry starts to wear on you. Sometimes, it gets tiresome. Sometimes, it gets to the point where if you have to do that same task one more goddamn time, you’re going to stab yourself in the face.
When this happens, hobbies are what will save your sanity. I really recommend having a couple of hobbies outside of work that are as far removed from video games as possible. If you make video games all day, and then come home and play video games all night, that’s a lot of time with a console or computer. There’s nothing wrong with that if you enjoy it, but for me personally, sometimes the last thing I want to do after a day of playtesting is play another game, even one that isn’t broken. There are also some serious health problems that can result from a sedentary lifestyle, as well as the repetitive stress injuries that come hand-in-hand with a lot of computer use. (Ask me how I know. Tennis elbow. FROM MOUSING.)
Personally, the two hobbies outside of work that keep me sane are knitting and yoga. Knitting because it’s a creative endeavor that at the same time requires none of the tools I use at work, and yoga because it is about as far from sitting in front of a screen as it is possible to be.
The things that I like about knitting are somewhat telling. It’s creative and lets me use my art skills when it comes to designing a garment or settling on a color scheme. It’s also something that I can control completely from start to finish. Nothing randomly glitches and crashes when you’re knitting. It’s impossible to have a corrupted save file with knitting. It’s portable, so I can do it on the bus, at home, or at a tea shop. I don’t have to play super-close attention to it, so I can do it while I’m watching TV or holding a conversation. I don’t have to make a special time for knitting the way I have to for drawing. I can pick up knitting and start right where I left off without wandering all over the map trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do. (Final Fantasy III on the DS, I’m looking at you.) And when I’m done knitting something, I have a finished product that doesn’t need to be submitted to any companies or be approved by any publishers. It’s mine, and I made it the way I wanted.
Yoga, on the other hand, requires me to actually pay attention to my body and nothing else for an hour. It makes me move in hundreds of ways that I don’t at work. There are poses and exercises that stretch the Perpetual Mouse Muscle Knot that lives in my right shoulder blade. I do yoga because I know that what I do for a living can be extremely damaging to my body in a lot of ways, and yoga is a way to counteract that. Also, it has brought me a lot closer to being able to touch my toes when I bend over, and that’s a serious accomplishment for someone with hamstrings like mine!
Whatever you do in the industry, remember to have a life outside of it. It’s much healthier for everyone.