The concussion recovery is ongoing, and not moving as fast as I would like; I can do a few hours of screen work each day before my head starts to complain, but nowhere even close to what I used to be able to do (i.e. unlimited screen time every day without a moment’s pause). This hasn’t been helped by a series of other misfortunes: within a week here in Sydney I somehow contrived to come down with Norovirus, which leaves one’s body completely devoid of any of the fuel and nutrients it needs to heal (and actually itself is known to cause headaches), which took me out for close to a whole fortnight; and just a few days ago, while having finally almost fully recovered from this, I was involved in an accident which badly sprained my wrist, scraped a ton of skin off my hands and my knees; and so I’m pretty much typing this with one hand and hunt-and-pecking with the other.

Moving country and job in good health is one thing, especially if you have someone else with you to help out, but moving to a new country and job by myself, in a period where I’m already recovering from a serious injury, and then getting two more illnesses / injuries / shocks to the system in quick succession… I can’t lie, this month has been a struggle, and one of the hardest months I’ve had in recent memory. I am getting more screenwork in on most days, and hopefully this trend will continue; but even so there’s still so much more general admin stuff I need to do here in a new country and a new job to keep me occupied for at least another week or so. On the upside, though, I have completely fallen for Sydney, and I’m incredibly happy with the city, and the job, and everything: now if only I could be in a condition to actually take advantage of that!

As such, I don’t really know what to suggest the immediate future will look like right now, but hopefully I’ll have a nice new game development update next month, and at some point I need to post about all the new publications I’ve put out in the last couple of months as well. Thanks, as ever, for sticking with me, and hopefully November will be the month that things start to pick up again and my head really recovers – fingers crossed.

9 Comments

  • I saw your video for the roguelike celebration, I didn’t realize how intricate your game was with stuff like npc spacing and different dialects, seems super neat and I can’t wait to play it. Hope you get well soon

  • Your works and studies are an inspiration to behold in the name of gaming, and I certainly hope that you are able to recover fully soon. Don’t push yourself too much!

    • Thank you! That’s super kind of you and I really appreciate it :). Recovery does seem to be inching forward at the moment, fingers crossed…

  • I saw your video from Roguelike Celebration and it was sooo awesome! I’m glad you get to put your ideas in front of that community. There’s no way the future isn’t brighter with the makers of URR Dwarf Fortress, COQ and more sharing their ideas!

    I wish you a speedy recovery Mark! I hope you eventually have a year where you don’t get injured or sick!

    • Thanks Paul! Yeah, I really want to get back in to presenting stuff in the RL community, maybe get back to the podcast too… I’d love to actually attend the RL celebration in person one day. It might happen in 2020, but I haven’t really planned any of my travel intentions yet for the year aside from one big visit back to Europe in the summer. Anyway: thank you, and me too! That would be damned nice :). Things do seem to be improving at the moment though, slowly but surely…

  • We’re with you. We all deal with this thing we call life, and we are with you, no matter how alone or damaged you feel at times.

    • Thanks Pinchoboo! Hmm… there should be an RSS feed option? But if you don’t see one, let me know and I’ll figure out how to get it going!

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