Re-reading Derek Yu's "loops of death" I realized I was in the polishing loop. Like, stuck in the polishing loop. One of the tasks I have is to add several UI widgets.
I had my vacation and then took another week off, so it's been a few weeks without any major progress, all the time chipping away at existing tasks and still trying to maintain the "2 out, 1 in" process of adding tasks. But I think I need to go a step further, and just stop adding things.
One person I follow on youtube, Superfast Matt, detailed his process of converting an old Jaguar to electric, using Tesla model E running gear. In one video titled "Why so many project cars go unfinished" he lays out the timeline for completing the project, and how each task has hundreds of subtasks needed to complete the project, but at the end of the timeline is this handy diagram.
So the adage of "art is never finished, only abandoned" is more true than anything. I need to figure out when to abandon this project. It is, technically, something you can play through all the way to the end without crashing, with a functioning save system. But like Derek Yu writes in his blog, I am scared to release this thing, because it means judgement.
I know, it seems unintuitive. But the release of a game is also the moment of judgment and of reckoning... and there is comfort in continuing to work and make improvements, grinding against familiar problems behind-the-scenes.
so what this means is, uhhh, well, time to finish it I guesssss