My Git Wizard

Being self-employed can be…

… I nearly wrote ‘tough’, then had to check myself.  It’s 10 a.m., I’ve been working for about an hour, I’m wearing my spacesuit-like sleeping bag with legs (it’s very cold outside and I resent using central heating when I could just heat myself) and have just finished drinking a hot chocolate.  At some point I might brush my hair; maybe once I’ve finished writing the next chapter.

Okay, so ‘tough’ is relative.

However there are certain, shall we say, challenges, that as a self-employed monkey it can be hard to deal with.  As I’ve often said, there are social challenges.  Getting out of the house and meeting people.  Seeing the world.  Going places, doing things.  For this, of course, I fall back on lighting design, as even if sometimes the people you meet in theatre are… eclectic… at least there’s no shortage of humanity.

There are domestic challenges.  My house is very literally my office.  On the one hand, hurrah my morning commute is all the way from my bed to my desk via the bathroom; on the other hand, there’s no sense of going home.  Going home, that great ritual by which the day is declared done, that act whereby all work ceases and all that remains is flaking out in your flat and letting your brain wind down.  My flat is a place of effort and endeavour, and as such there’s not really an off-button associated with its front door.  Equally, it IS a place of relaxation and sometimes it’s tempting to relax a bit too much, though this is frequently countered by the other, great problem of being a freelancer…

… the guilt.  Every day must be full of labour.  IT MUST BE.  For you see, there is no on but myself to motivate me, no one but myself to answer too, and as a result, for the simple sake of survival, I’m something of a harsh taskmaster.  Perhaps… sometimes… too harsh.  Saturdays?  What are Saturdays?  Saturdays are a day for work in theatre, and that habit has spread into writing too.  And besides, there were two hours on Friday when I went and had coffee with a friend so I MUST work this Saturday to make up for it, yes?  YES.  Because if I am just relaxing, rather than sorting something out or planning ahead, a one-woman-army of good intentions, surely I will die?!  Or… something…

Enter: My Git Wizard.  I blame the woman who we shall call AZ15 for this, as well as my Chinese-learning buddy.  Because between the temptation to sit and play the piano of a morning, and the guilt if I realise that this is what I’ve done; between the need to keep my flat functioning as an office and the desire just to sit around in slippers all day, my life has become driven by to-do lists which, like all good freelancers, I invariably start with good intentions and then ignore for days on end.  I’ve got a lot of mechanisms by which I try to dodge this, and have tried all the various (free) apps on my phone to try and both keep track of what I need to do, and motivate me to get them done.  High on the list is exercise – it can be hard to remember to look after yourself when there’s no morning commute.

And now, to my horror, I’ve started using HabitRPG and I discover that I need, no – need to get a pet dragon.

The app is very simple in its premise and execution, and startlingly seductive.  Log on, create an avatar, choose a class (I’m a git wizard – naturally – though at level 49 I’m already quite excited by the idea of reaching level 100 and being reborn as a rogue, fingers crossed) and set yourself various tasks and habits you wish to perform or break.  For every successful habit or daily goal you achieve, your character is awarded gold and experience points, allowing you to level up and buy a bigger hat or a shiny wand.  For every habit you miss, and for every negative action you reinforce, you lose health points, risking death and the loss of much of what you own.  There’s no point-and-click questing – quests are achieved by constantly achieving the tasks you’ve set yourself.  You can also acquire pets and eventually mounts on the way (I need to have all the dragons, I don’t know why, it’s very odd) and play socially.  I am in a party with the legendary AZ15, and together we go forth to smite various foes and suffer damage together if we miss our tasks and conquer our foes together if we succeed… however she recently started casting snowballs at me, on which subject we shall have words later…

And to my horror, I discover I’m seduced.  And I am horrified.  Since when did I need the daily gratification of earning fictional gold and fiction XP points for just getting stuff done?  Am I so addicted to instant reward that the only way I remember to always take my preventer puffer is so I don’t break my streak-bonus?  Do I really need a pixellated git wizard to motivate me to do my taxes?  Really?  Is this how short-termist and trivial my brain has become?

… and then again… I have done my taxes on time this year, and paid my bill with time to spare.  I am taking my preventer puffer every day without fail.  I do answer my email promptly, I am now automatically choosing to stop the lift to my flat several floors short so I can take the stairs the last bit of the way.  (Freelancers: gotta take what exercise you can.)  I do practice Chinese every day, and am thinking more carefully about what I eat.

Even stranger, I almost feel like I’m part of a community.  A quite geeky (yes – I have played plenty of RPGs and yes, I am ALWAYS a sneaky wizard with an invisibility spell, die skeletons die!) community of people who looked at all the nonsense that’s talked about self-improvement, and decided to have fun with it.  HabitRPG could so easily have been just another ‘productivity app’ with a slick layout and messages like ‘you can do it!’ or ‘find yourself’ or other platitudes blasted across its surface, and instead chose to invest in finding a desert flying pig and a new wand and through this, sorta… yes, achieve things that they wish to achieve.  Very strangely, very seductively, very silly-like, and really kinda fun.

So here I am.  Horrified at my own puerile desire to get all the pets – just all the pets – and then be reborn as a rogue again, and yet, despite all of this, still taking the stairs every day, eating lotsa veg and sitting up straight in my chair instead of slouching over the keyboard, and damnit, I will do everything I’ve set myself to do today, even the rubbish bits, because there’s a dragon that needs slaying and I won’t let AZ15 fight it alone…