At the end of September, I was laid off from the Walt Disney Company right before my two-year anniversary.

Instead of diving right back into looking for full-time work (especially during a particularly bad time for job-searching in video games and interactive entertainment in general), I’ve decided to commit to trying to make it full-time as an independent developer.

For years, I’ve been accumulating ideas that I swore I’d eventually turn into games, if I ever just had the time and the luxury of being able to support myself without steady full-time income. So this is a nerve-wracking but exciting opportunity to work on prototypes and practice the skills that have atrophied over the years.

I’m also keeping an eye out for any contract work! Ideally in video games, location-based entertainment, or mobile app development.

My fiancé and I moved from Oakland to Los Angeles in April of 2022. After years of practicing the San Francisco Bay Area condescending disdain for Southern California, and thinking of LA as nothing more than an obstacle between me and Disneyland, I’ve been really surprised by how much I’ve grown to like it here. I never would’ve predicted that the San Fernando Valley would be exactly my speed.

We got married in January of 2025, so next year will be our 16th anniversary together and first anniversary as husbands. If you’re about to be offended you weren’t invited, don’t be: it was a small (but great!) ceremony at the local civic center, and we were really lucky to have some long-time friends local and able to make some time on a weekday to join us on short notice.

A highlight of the year was traveling to (finally) meet my husband’s aunts, uncle, and cousins, at a really nice family reunion/marriage celebration arranged by his mom and stepfather. I felt really fortunate to be so warmly welcomed into the family.

The other travel highlight of the year was a trip to Edmonton for a gaming convention, my first-ever time in Canada. It was nice to have even a brief visit to a country that seems to generally have its shit together.

At the moment, I’m still making the transition from full-time employee to someone who has to be disciplined enough to be productive on his own time.

Some of the skills I’m trying to learn or improve:

• Godot Engine game development
• Sculpting with Nomad on the iPad
• Modelling, rigging and animating in Blender
• Getting reacquainted with VR development, in hopes that the Steam Frame will bring in a new wave of smaller and more experimental projects

This page is to give broader updates for friends and acquaintances — basically, the stuff you’d see in a year-end Christmas card update, if I were the type of person who was organized enough to send out Christmas cards.

I like it as a way to encourage a shift away from social media platforms and more old-school ways of connecting like personal blogs.

Social media simulates social interaction but actually fosters isolation. It satisfies the immediate need to feel connected, but is too brief and ephemeral to take the place of actual connection. It’s bad, and we should all use it less!

More information about the philosophy of the “Now” page is at nownownow.com.