What a whirlwind of activity this year has been! Hard to believe it’s been just about six months since the Part 2 post in this series…
Some great things have happened recently. The mission to streamline my budget and reduce debt has reached an important milestone this July, and an unexpected RPGReload article showed up on TouchArcade about Rogue Touch!
A quick review and a Chronosoft state of the union talk:
Try to put a frog into boiling water and he’ll immediately jump up out; but if you place him in cool water and slowly raise the temperature he will sit there until he dies…
That frog was me, and the water temperature represents my monthly expenses that slowly went up every year of adulthood (lifestyle creep, business, and my prior marriage were contributing factors) without me really noticing or trying to do anything about it.
Believe it or not, up until recently I needed to pull in well over $10K per month just to tread water (very hot water for this poor frog)! That’s not including attempts at saving for retirement or a rainy-day fund, but simply to cover all the monthly bills. It would have been financial suicide to go full indie-game-dev under those circumstances.
My twitter followers probably caught wind of this already- I managed to secure a buyer for my house in June, and completed the sale a little over a week ago. A huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders… No longer am I trapped in a dungeon of debt and despair (perhaps only the Dungeon of Doom)! Officially debt-free and now holding some extra savings/investments, it means July 8th 2015 will be known as my own personal “Independence Day” 😀
What does this mean for the future of ChronoSoft? I’m not 100% “Financially Independent” yet but I do have enough savings to smooth any bumps in the road. In the meantime I still plan to do some industrial automation consulting to cover my now modest lifestyle. The difference today is I am in a position to say “no” to some projects, giving myself the freedom to dive into Game Development properly for the first time since 2009!
Next post will be finally be new discussion of my upcoming games… and some reflection on the great people I’ve had the honor to interact with during my design phase, as well as you all in the community here and at TouchArcade.
Thank you all for reading, playing, and waiting patiently for more!