Title: "Valentine's 2025"
Piece Number: #001
Created on: Feb 13, 2025
I love this card! I, um, dsaldflkshfkajsfhs >/////>
Valentine's Day happened to be my last day at my games startup job, and part of my leaving was so Moody and I could focus more on our own games. That's one reason our little blue witch is there.
It was a big step in our lives.
I had worked at that place for five years and six months. It was the first industry job I had, and I was lucky to get it right out of school.
Well, partly I was lucky. Mostly I spent the prior decade making game prototypes and tools, and had done more in my spare time by the time I graduated than some people do in a decade of paid programming. I had a killer portfolio, but I didn't know it.
Point being, I "deserved" the job I had in a sense, but I was often wracked with guilt about being paid a lot of money (to us) to make insincere, cynical slop and to look the other way through years of bad decisions from the top down.
The job gave us both more material security than we had ever known, and allowed us to live a middle class life for a long time, but it had its own costs. One of them was constant pressure and anxiety, and it affected our relationship, our health, and our projects.
For all that the job gave us, peace of mind wasn't on the list.
After working 40 hours in 3 days for a deadline as a kind of last hurrah, I couldn't do it any more. I had recovered from burnouts before, but not this one. I dropped to part time. Moody was fully in my corner.
A few months of limping along at part time helped me recover, and helped us get a lot of work done on our own stuff. We were still doing ok financially, and the breathing room was invaluable.
Eventually, it became clear that working at the place, even part time, was keeping me tied to all the baggage that was killing me. I was working only 3 days a week, yet whenever I worked, I somehow encountered the same issues I encountered working much, much more.
When I considered finally leaving the company, to take my chances in a volatile job market with a recession on the horizon, Moody again supported the decision completely, had faith that we could make it, had faith in me.
This card came at a time when I had one foot on crumbling ground, and the other over an open chasm, when I didn't know how things would go for us or what 2025 would bring. More than anything, I was afraid of failing Moody, of making her suffer for my mistakes.
This card embodies Moody's constant commitment, faith, and boundless love, her dedication to all the things important to us, to the best and worst times, and to all the things we want to make, do, and see together.
Moody's support and companionship saved my life.
Her patience and love, her ability to see through the clouds surrounding me and love the me trapped in the center, even when she was obscured, even when I couldn't see her myself, are a precious gift I will cherish forever.
