Small successes

Sometimes all I need is a small success to keep me on track. That's why persevering, sticking at it, eventually works. The law of averages, and the accumulation of experimental data, tends to bring about success when we keep on plugging away at a problem. The problem sometimes is trying to 'win' or solve a problem by continuing the same actions. What it takes is often backing off until I can see a new approach, and try something new.

So, with an issue of authentication/registering a new player in the app, it seemed for weeks it was hit or miss. Finally yesterday I had two friends try the app for the first time and the registration worked perfectly! YAY! Still more testing to do, but that small success motivates me to keep on and move the project forward.

WOW, talking about Failure!

Yes, I know that we're all about success and all, but sometimes we just get stuck in a string of failures. A few days over a month from the start, at the moment I have no source files that compile, and no app to show!

GRRRR!

Just a little depressing :)

But we will go on. Because that's what we do. I never promised you a rose garden.

On the brighter side - there is always a brighter side, even if I have to look unusually hard to find it.

Been seeing my incoming email going directly to Trash for days, and couldn't figure out why. Pared my inbox down to about a thousand messages, reinstalled Outlook, wiped my hard drive and reinstalled Windows. To no avail.

Then read a post about the problem maybe not being with Outlook but my email provider. Hmm. Went in  to Godaddy's web email feature and found that there was a rule to send any incoming mail addressed to me directly to Trash! Now how did that get there? Whew! One small step for mankind!

Also, rented a virtual desktop in the cloud to use for development so that the developer and I can both access it and ensure that we are on the same page when trying to resolve issues.

See, feeling better already.

It felt like slogging through mud all day, but at the end of the day, there was some success. Makes it all worthwhile. 

Apollo (Len)

We have an app for that!

SUCCESS NOW! The Game

You Deserve This

Another day, another Success or Failure

As I start talking with people about the game, I find that some people have huge issues with FAILURE!

It seems to me as though they want success, but not bad enough to face the failures that often precede it. I understand that. I have been in situations where I have literally been unable to move or think due to the belief that whatever I did was certain to be a failure. I mean, I felt like 'What's the point?'

Failure can be a scary thing for sure. If we have some past history with people blaming us or punishing us in some way - sometimes as simple as disapproval, or withdrawal of affection and sometimes actual physical violence such as hitting or spanking.

Many of us needed to seek professional help, counseling, therapy etc to get over this paralyzing fear. Some people seem to be able to work it out by themselves or with the help of friends. But it's never easy.

Like any fear, the only way to ultimately conquer it is to walk right up to it, acknowledge it, face it and push through it. It can be traumatic, it can even be dangerous - that's why professional help is often advisable. Either way, you are the one that has to move through it.

My experience has been that it is ALWAYS better on the other side of the fear and that it is extremely rare that the expected consequences are as bad as we feared.

And success is not often achieved without a few rounds of failure first. You can take away the name, but that doesn't erase the fear. You can call it trying or almost there or good enough, but whatever you call 'not succeeding' it is generally a necessary component of 'getting it right' or being 100% successful in our endeavor.

That's why, in the game, we use the complementary terms Success and Failure. Because you can't really have one without the other. OK, sometimes you can, if you stick with the the easy stuff. But when you get outside of your comfort zone - which is where the great successes are found - you will fail often. And that's OK. 

We have an app for that!

SUCCESS NOW! The Game

You Deserve This

Onward and upward - through the rain and the snow etc.

One of the clearest memories from my childhood was my mother reading a particular poem to me, Excelsior by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Here are the first few lines.

The shades of night were falling fast,

As through an Alpine village passed

A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,

A banner with the strange device,

      Excelsior!

Somehow, quite unconsciously, I think that poem had a profound effect on my approach to life. It was a lesson about not giving up, keeping on, persevering.

It's been a stressful week, trying to get things done and running into obstacles, potholes, walls, ravines and whole damn Abysses.

But I've learned in my life to just keep at it, find a way around it, over it, beneath it, whatever it takes.

Work on the game is progressing, slower than I'd like, but new target date for Alpha release is June 15th. Starting to put together a list of Alpha and Beta testers. Even if you read this way later than when it was written, since we will always be in development for the next level, we will always need Alpha and Beta testers. Just contact me through the form in the right column of the site.

YOU DESERVE SUCCESS NOW!