Finishing my first game while working full-time

This revealed itself as I was working on a game engine reimplementation. For two years I was personally satisfied with myself by being able to return to a hobby and actively enjoy my time programming, and I thought I had managed to find something I was comfortable with doing just for myself.

It turned out that I was deceiving myself by saying that I was in it for the personal enjoyment. This was false. I was ultimately working towards a goal that I didn't properly define, which was releasing the engine. This is the goal that everyone talks about when discussing game development, and it is a goal that carries value only because it involves other people - people that learn about and play your game.

So in the future I will have to be more perceptive of the goals I'm hesitant to admit exist. From the beginning, I was only ever going to work on such a project with the eventual goal of making a release, as in making my project have an effect on people other than myself. That meant I was only working on my project for other people, and not for myself. The enjoyment I found in working on it was nothing more than a prerequisite to getting to work. It makes you feel virtuous to think otherwise, but it's nothing more than an elaborate lie.

I don't understand how one could possibly develop games just for their own sake if shipping the finished game to other people is the point of game development.

I guess I would say that if you aren't willing to permanently delete everything that you've worked on the moment you've finished a project, then you're not actually "doing it for yourself". That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you have to be honest or perceptive enough to be able to admit the truth.

I think if you actually _want_ to finish something you finish it.

I was wondering why I was often stressed out even though my life was good and I mostly did the things I want to do. Years ago, I had 3 things in my life - work, rock climbing, and coding/reading/videogames ("geeking out"), and I was never stressed for time. Then I got married, so now spending time with my wife became another thing. For a few years, it just so happened by itself that I've been coding, reading or playing videogames very little - turns out I could only fit 3.2 things in my life, not 4, something had to give. That actually made me stressed out and I didn't understand why... When I did, becoming more organized and wasting less time upped it to maybe 3.5, so now I can read a book/code/geek out now and then. But, alas, not as much as I would want.

That's one of the main reasons I'll never have kids - there's just no way I can handle 5 things, and I don't think I'd want any of the remaining ones to suffer for the payoffs (well, maybe work, but not just yet). That is also why you cannot add game making to your life without sacrifice...

EDIT: fixed some grammar