˙uɐɔ I ʍouʞ I ¿sıɥʇ op I uɐƆ

It's becoming a habit of mine to take a relatively simple topic and stretch it out into several pages of writing that is of no interest to other people. This is why I will make an excellent academic.

Trailed thought. Let me start over.

It's becoming a habit of mine to take the time during the winter holidays to reflect upon the year that was, and unless I'm mistaken about my commitment to such a process this will be the seventh time I do so on TFF, to coincide with my eighth anniversary as a user this coming January (which is a sad, sad 'achievement').

It's been a hectic year. Perhaps even more so than 2012; which as you may remember featured the highlights of a trip to Tunisia and a stabbing. Consequently I won the award for Most Interesting Journal that year - well in my head anyway, since the awards didn't happen that year.

I had a lot of firsts this year, my first permanent (by which I mean a non-temporary contract) job at the Co-Op was a wonderful experience. Being the guy who who has to deny the potentially underage the opportunity to purchase alcohol reinforced the my belief that every adult should be forced to participate in National Service. I don't mean in the army (of course I don't - I'm an insufferable bleeding heart liberal), I mean at a cash register. It was most certainly a learning experience - I encountered the types of people I hadn't encountered since High School but this time in adult form. This is obviously not something I'm saying to sound high-and-mighty, but it was a very strange and stark reminder that there are people who are genuinely in a lot of financial and domestic trouble even within this country in this day and age - and it is very strange how easy it is for our individual circumstances to isolate us from this reality. As a university student in Glasgow's city centre I very rarely was exposed to people who survived on job seeker's allowance or minimum wage. And it seems like a strange thing to say, but I almost sympathise with the likes of David Cameron - a person who wouldn't know the price difference between Rizla and Swan filters even if it paraded in front of him naked. The most conservative of politicians seem to act out of an ignorance that is very difficult to escape from and is often completely unrealised.

I also experienced my first workshopping session and my first formal real-world conditioned testing of a personal hypothesis in an academic setting. Followed by my first university graduation (incidentally with a first class degree) - the first because of my acceptance onto the prestigious MProf programme at the University of Abertay Dundee, the first university in the world that offered any formal training in games development.

And now I've faced my first semester of a Masters programme, and my first experience of life in Scotland as a semi-independent adult. I have to say that this' whole work-life balance thing is a lot more difficult than it appears. Game development is very much not a nine-to-five industry; at least in the form of the Masters course and through Crytek's infamous 'Crunch Dinner' tweet - and I'm deeply afraid it could become worse since I've most certainly heard enough horror stories from the industry expert lecturers, mentors, and visitors.

My Christmas workload also seems to be quite heavy and I've a lot to do before the 13th of January, but being at home rather than being at uni has a serious impact on my working practices since the monitor on my laptop is teeny in comparison to the much more normally sized monitors at the uni. I've to finish my 3D Modelling & Texture work (a subject completely new to me), write the proposal for an innovation project, develop a presentation on my main project, complete two reflective essays, and organise the submission of my main project.

The worst part is that this hasn't been an example of poor time management, quite a few of these submissions only appeared and were clarified within the last few days. They ain't making it easy for me.