On the morning of March 24, 2025 I had something close to an anxiety attack. I do not usually have attacks, much less anxiety attacks, so it is easy to tell when things are not right. I have always been a calmer, centered person. I like to read, write, watch a good series, play with my dog, laugh with my fiancée and sleep in peace. Come to think of it, I am a simple person. A simple person who never had much but wants to, and maybe that is why I can admit how greedy I am.
Being greedy is often seen as a cruel sin, but wanting more than you have should not be so bad if you have so little. I am talking about material things, and I do not cling to the “anti-materialist” feeling here. I prefer to be honest: I want things. I like having things, a PlayStation 5, a gaming PC, board games, the books I always dreamed of, good clothes, the ability to go out whenever I want and do whatever I want with MY MONEY. It is almost strange to say these words out loud, but that is because we are used to not wanting, to thinking small about what we want, because wanting a lot is a sin, it is bad. Let me tell you something: what is bad is not realizing this.
I was unemployed. I wrote here about that problem, about how discouraged I was with my career, about wanting to give up and the constant feeling of failure, the lack of progress. All of that is suffocating when it lasts too long. I am no longer unemployed, suffocated or in crisis. Something happened. Let us talk about it.
The journey so far… once again
In 2024 I made some decisions after a big move to a new city and a new lifestyle. The first was to create this newsletter. The second, which I shared here, was to start writing a new book. I bought study material for it, watched things, studied, researched, prepared, made videos about the process and the production, and then… well, then I stopped. I did not stop because I wanted to, I stopped because I had no money, and having no money is really bad. When I say that, I mean having no money beyond survival. Everything becomes tight, calculated, uncomfortable. You start asking yourself:
Why would I do this if it does not make me any money?
And that is where art dies. Writing, when you create, is art, it is expression, and as we all know, living off art is hard. I stopped everything. At that moment I thought, “I need a new job, more freelance gigs or work, so I can be comfortable and write my book.” That thought has an expiration date, and a lot of people must be having it right now or will have it at some point. It always shows up. Over time, that thought can turn into a feeling, and the feeling is anger.
I gave up on the book, stopped studying world and universe building, captivating characters, heroes and legends, stopped learning more about what was fascinating me at the time and went off to make some money, as if it were just any choice. The journey was shaping me, I guess. I could not do much. Anger either passes or evolves; sometimes it turns into hatred, other times it can become an endless feeling of failure, of frustration. I decided to hand the only money I had to a psychologist. She could help me. And she did.
It was not long before I resurfaced here with new ideas, new posts, a SPECIAL EDITION on Tales of Anayr and a lot of new thoughts. There were comics to write, Asleep to review, new chances knocking on the door and doors closing all the time. Let me tell you, when you commit to trying, really trying, with all your strength and as much of your time as you can, it gets hard to sleep. It even gets hard to have fun. And I have always had fun writing.
When you try a lot, and most of the time you cannot even get to a “job interview”, you start noticing some things more closely. What I noticed was that there was a path full of barriers between me and the person or company who needed my work. The path was social media, emails, messages, friends, and so on. The barriers were forms, clueless recruiters, endless selection stages, abusive tests and a giant sign that read “PROVE YOUR WORTH”.
Your worth, in today’s world, is decided by what you do, whatever you may think. That may sound bad, but it is a fact. If you disagree, be careful, you may be listening to too many coaches.
People only know about you what you say, what you show, what you do. Nobody can read your mind, and that is real. Exposing fears, nightmares, victories and dreams is a real need for anyone looking for something, whatever it is. When you expose it, it becomes more real. Do you know why? It is simple: what lives only in that little head of yours does not exist. Not yet.
A shot in the dark
On March 18, a friend told me he had gotten a job; he was going to make animations for a game. He sent me the link and I was surprised: the game ran straight in the browser but had visual quality worthy of console games. It was a card game, it had similarities with GWENT (a card game from The Witcher universe) and it immediately reminded me of another, more famous one, Legends of Runeterra, the card game based on the League of Legends universe.
I had studied that universe a while back, when I was planning a book that was never written.
The game had no narrative, but it would be much better if it did. I noticed that, but there was no opening, no one to talk to about it; not even my friend, from the inside, knew whether there were plans for narrative. That is when I saw an opportunity to take a shot in the dark, and I started drawing up a plan. I gave up on it on the day I mentioned at the start of this newsletter, the 24th.
On the afternoon of March 25, after a few more moments of “despair” for not finding a job, money or any peace with myself, I decided to bring that plan back. You know how it is: when you think too much, you give up, but if you give up and come back to the idea, you do not think as much before acting on it. I opened pitch.com and started building a narrative strategy for that card game I had seen. I thought of everything; I acted as if I worked on it.
First I found the card art in the project artist’s online portfolio, which was not easy, but it worked: the art was in full HD and would be perfect. I started laying out every narrative solution for the game, in a simple, direct way, without too much detail so I would not overdo it. I pointed out the mistakes, made harsh criticism of what was being done, and showed step by step, using market examples, that card games with narrative hold players for longer than card games without it. I was putting a promise into that elevator pitch for whoever read it, and the promise was “I can make your game better than it is.”
In life, we learn that much of what we consume is promises. Opening a book to read, a game to play or a movie to watch is, at its core, believing in a promise made by someone that it will be good. Digital marketing in general is based on making people believe the promises made. Politics too. Promises are the foundation of a lot of things, but we ignore that detail and just try to accept what comes after.
I need to keep the promises I make. And this was one of the most important ones, because deep down I knew I could do it, but here, on the surface of my thoughts, there was a small version of me asking “can you really?”
I sent the pitch straight to the company’s CEO, and he answered hours later: “Let’s set up a meeting. Do you have time tomorrow?”. We did. On March 26 I talked to him, a man of many words with a heavy accent (he is European but speaks English). I gave my best in that conversation and made my intentions clear, because, as I said, he cannot read minds. At the end of the meeting I signed a contract, and on April 1st I started working on the project. Sounds like a joke, right? But it is real.
It was a great shot in the dark, a bold strategy, but it worked. Now I just have to put up with that annoying voice questioning me, and do the best work of my life.
You can check out the game by clicking here. Its narrative has not been released yet, but it will be. I promise.
On getting there
There are some ghosts in getting what you want; there is a boredom that clings to the feeling of having, that famous boredom of owning. We cannot hold on to that, but I enjoy thinking about the journey to “getting there”. Do you know why? Let me list a few things.
I work on Asleep, a game where I design and develop the world, the dialogue, the protagonist’s thoughts and the events. The game has a strong narrative, and it was the first game I released.
I also write comic scripts (and in the next newsletter I will share news about that), and comics are very much about dialogue, about speaking through images and above all about creating important characters, heroes or not.
I read a lot. I study universes, how they are made, where ideas come from, from the oldest to the newest. I did that a few months ago and I still do it today. I also read before bed: fantasy, different narrative structures and plenty of things I need to get out of my head when I wake up. And I love what I read then. I love that moment before falling asleep, book or Kindle in hand, escaping reality, social media and the noise in my head.
Absolutely all of this seems to have prepared me to get there.
Things are what they are, but I feel I have never been as ready to do what I need to do as I am now, and the question that remains is: Did the journey shape me, or did I shape the journey?
Think about it.
See you, explorers!
Originally published in Prosa & Pixel, on Substack. See it on Substack · Subscribe to Prosa & Pixel · All issues