THOUGHT UPDATE SUMMER 2022

Been a while since my last little UPDATE post here on Newgrounds. Of course I’ve been pretty damn busy for a while now, with nearly all my WORK FOCUS being on Friday Night Funkin’. For a while I was in mode of getting a buncho tax stuff sorted out, Kickstarter newspost writing, lawyers, biz shit, etc. List goes on for all of that. It feels like excuses and whatnot whenever mentioned. For a while it was a hard focus on that while game programming focus dwelled, but lately I’ve been dipping my toes back into programming, hopefully regaining a bit of that balance.

At the end of March / early April I visited my family back on the west coast of Canada. Right when FNF started becoming crazy hyper popular (late 2020), I moved across Canada, away from all of my family and my life, to Kitchener, Ontario. Compared to my hometown (100 Mile House, BC), Kitchener is GIANT lol. It was definitely something I had to get used to, my new life in Kitchener, and my new life online with FNF. Visiting family was good for me, I finished Avatar Last Airbender with my lil bros and that shit was yummy. But right after I regained my stamina, I hopped back into work. Sorting out FNF tax bullshit, gettin numbers, and just over a year after moving across the country, life tossed me into another MOVE.

It’s been hard to collect my thoughts, a lot of things happening all at once it feels like again. If I had more time / less responsibilities I would spend a week or so to put my brain into making a lil video game, and I really do wish I could. I find it hard to work on small projects that are outside of FNF, especially when it feels like we’re behind on work and have to play a bit of catch up. Feels like there’s higher priority work to get done than working on a dinky game for a weekend, so it’s in this perpetual thing of thinking that a new game would refresh you, but also feeling like after making a new game, you’d become exhausted.

Anyways, here are essentially a collection of things in my brain that been on my mind I decide to write about.

THE UBER EATS ERA + HEALTH

I think my health has been very on and off, but on a general UPWARD TREND. Beginning of 2021 I was a little ubereats freak because: 1) I now lived in a major city 2) Covid lockdowns 3) FNF money was rolling in so I could ball out like a dumbass and get ubereats and not worry about it. It wasn’t some glamorous life, was usually a rotation of either burger, shawarma, pizza, or maybe sushi if I was feeling saucy. Thinking back to those days though is filled with a little bit of DREAD however lolol. That was early FNF era. Staying up til the sun rose, and getting food delivered in one of the most stressful times in my life (so far).

It took me a long time to get out of it, ubereats became a genuine habit that was hard to break. During the “worst” of it, I remember feeling odd about making myself a bowl of oatmeal and being like “woah, I didn’t have to wait for someone to deliver this”. Before that, which was a few weeks before FNF kickstarter, I visited my family. My foster mom and her dad both told me that I looked a bit more chunky and gained a bit of weight lolol. Both of those instances were a bit of wakeup call lololol

It was really hard to snap out of it for a long time. I visited my family in August 2021, and that definitely helped. It’s the classic ass shit of hard to stop something when you don’t even see it as a problem, and for most of the spring/summer of 2021 it was just my life. September I started to cook for myself more and more, and that definitely helped get myself out of it. It started with the easiest things for myself to eat and cook, boiling shitty hotdogs, but as the month went on I baked some nice bread, made myself chilli, cooked up some tasty spinach… stuff… Along with that, whenever I wanted junk food, I would at least PHYSICALLY go to the fast food place to get stuff. UberEats is bullshit because it tempts you to order MORE FOOD if u got that ubereats pass or whatever, where you get free delivery if you order over 15$. SO that leads to ordering more food, and bigger portions, etc. etc. Tricks ur brain into eatin more!!! At the very least with going to a place physically, I had a bit more restraint, was easier to both SPEND less and EAT less. I can get a tiny ass mcdonalds burger for like 2$ instead of getting the full ass combo meal with whatever bullshit extra for 15$+!!!! I could get just a single slice of pizza for 2$ instead of ordering giant pizza for myself for 20$ or so!!!! You may be reading all of this and thinking I am a dumbass, but hey thats the life baybeeee thats the shit that no one tells you about.

When I visited my family just a few weeks ago, my foster mom told me I “looked healthier” so I’ll take that as progress.

It's hard to change mentality and habits, but it all starts with first little steps and stages. Sometimes you gotta cook hotdogs everyday for the greater good of yourself.

THERAPY

Since about June 2021 I’ve been going to THERAPY. It was all a bit triggered by certain aspects of FNF development during that time, and aspects of my life. I’m not too hesitant about aspects like this in my life, although I haven’t really talked about any of it with any of my friends. This is the exclusive scoop. None of it really was too jarring for me. When I was in high school I’ve been to COUNSELLING and talking about my THOUGHTS and all that, and also from some of my previous games and newsposts, I didn’t have too hard of a time OPENING UP or any of that.

So far I can definitely say it’s been positive. One is that early on it was something to get me out of the house. As mentioned, I started it in June 2021, during a time when I was still staying awake until 7AM or so, and then sleeping until 4-5PM. Working on FNF, I really can make my own schedule, but having no format for myself, it was hard to figure out something healthy. Having somewhere physical I HAD to be definitely helped get me out of the habit of being a hermit in my room for days on end. Since I woke up later in the day, there definitely could have been a streak of a few days when I didn't see sunlight at all. Nothing too dire, but it definitely was rough, and does affect you.

It’s almost always productive to talk about yourself and get your thoughts out with someone else, I think professional therapy can help with a different (and potentially more productive) INSIGHT than if you were to just talk to your close friends. It’s 100% good to have a circle of support in some form, and I think that counselling/therapy is a nice little extension to that. Not everyone has the FINANCES for that though.

I’ve moved cities. Right now I’m sorta in the process of figuring out closing things with therapist, since I can’t really make the 3hr trip from Toronto to Kitchener just for about an hours worth of therapy. And virtual therapy stuff got me snooze!!!

PERSONAL FINANCE AND CYCLE OF POVERTY

Here’s something that can be it’s own newspost entirely. PERSONAL FINANCE. I’ll be honest that it’s hard to know how it all works. The term CYCLE OF POVERTY is a bit applicable. I grew up generally poor-ish. When you grow up, you don’t really know any life outside of the one you have. Things like budgeting, saving, even INVESTING. Already those subjects can be difficult on their own to learn, but if you grow up with those things pretty VOID from your life entirely, it can be extra hard to pull yourself out of that situation. I got very lucky with Friday Night Funkin’ where it’s a JOB that pays well, and it’s stable (I won’t be let go anytime soon). And if we pull things off right, it maybe could even be a decent little seller when it’s all done. But that’s just one aspect of it all. That’s the JOB aspect. It doesn’t matter if you have a job where you make pennies, or if you work at some tech corp making 100k/year, if you don’t at least SOMEWHAT keep track of your money, you can fall to a life of paycheque to paycheque.

There are certain financial skills you do learn as a poor person. You do have the ability to STRETCH money. You can make a little bit of money last long. But making BIG money last is a different story. There are countless stories of people luckier than I am, LOTTERY WINNERS, who make ACTUAL millions (as opposed to FNF Kickstarter money, which is COMPANY money, not personal ninjamuffin99 bank account money). The situation is even a bit closer with athletes who lose all of their fortune, who are often young when they’re in their prime, and very similarly get a LOT of their wealth all at once. I recommend THIS article by Investopedia. One thing it mentions is the athletes who sorta ‘artificially’ stretch their money, by sorting out their own payments and paying themselves a salary of sorts (opposed to big lump sums from contracts, sponsorships, etc.).

For ourselves / FNF team, we sorta just tossed ourselves enough coin for a year’s worth of development, and then when next year rolls around, pay ourselves again. This was partly because it’s easy to just pay ourselves once, rather than on bi-weekly basis. However I do feel like for myself I might want to look into that. When you look into your bank account, and you see a large number, it becomes hard to see it long term. Off the top of your head, maybe you can nicely calculate the taxes you’d have to pay on it, maybe even how much rent per year that gets bitten out of it. But you lose sight of other things. It becomes a number that you slowly watch decrease as the year goes on. Maybe you see $10,000, just sitting there. How far does that get YOU? When you’re poor, you’re barely used to seeing $1,000 in your bank account sitting there, hell, maybe you’re barely even used to seeing $100 sitting there. A little over 2.5 years ago, I had no job/income, and every week me and my family looked forward to when we can pick up food from the food bank, and we lived like that for quite a time before that.

That was the life I knew just a few years ago, which was less than a year before Friday Night Funkin’ became successful. This section sorta calls back a bit to the UberEats section. I had a bit of poor spending habits, AND I didn’t have a life of INDULGENCES growing up, so when I got it, well, that’s what you’d call LIFESTYLE INFLATION. As mentioned earlier in newspost, I’m glad I don’t get ubereats anymore lol.

You can be raised to climb, but learning how not to fall is the real shit. I won’t be a dipshit and shill NFT’s or bitcoin or some shit, I really won’t be a chump and give ANY real financial advice. I’ll just say you should STAY VERY MINDFUL OF IT. If you’d describe yourself as POOR, you’re not only fighting the uphill battle, but you’ll be fighting to stay at the top and not fall back down again. Actually I lied here’s my advice. If you happen to stumble into a large lump sum of money, pay your debts off. Get a credit card and build credit if you don't already. If you’re smart enough, save your money for a good school or university.

Over time I feel like I’ve slowly gotten warmer to the idea of college or some shit like that, but that topic is it’s own separate post. If there is any takeaway to this post, it’s to LEARN GOOD PERSONAL FINANCE. I CANNOT GIVE ANY GOOD ADVICE BECAUSE I AM IN THE PROCESS OF DOING SO MYSELF!!!

ALSO JUST TO ASSURE PEOPLE AND FRIDAY NIGHT FUNKIN’ KICKSTARTER BACKERS, this whole personal finance situation is VERY different than the FNF biz finance side of things. That’s why it’s called PERSONAL finance! We aren’t reckless with FNF funds, it’s a bit interesting that way, but having company money in a company bank account also makes you look at things differently that way. It’s easier to feel like we can stretch that money out and handle it nicely. We pay people who do awesome work when we need to pay them, we pay our lawyers and accountants and all that, and we pay for things such as Kickstarter rewards and all that when we need to, and we pay ourselves (since that was the point of the Kickstarter in the first place). Money sits there otherwise. I think having us as a TEAM helps it out. If it was a SOLO VENTURE, it might be easier to be tempted to dip into the Funkin’ fund for personal expenditures, but having it be essentially the TEAM’S money, it’s easier to use it for the GREATER GOOD or whatever. In general though, it’s not really some devilish temptation of ours to spend a couple million on ourselves instead of making a video game, lol.