At times I have been guilty of romanticizing a systematic upheaval in my day to day life. Like how we sometimes glorify the apocalypse because, sure, it will be worse, but it will also be refreshing not to slog to work every damn day. Surely that’s not just me…right? While we know these scenarios would obviously be hundreds of times worse than our ordinary lives in ways we haven’t thought of, it’s the complete reset that I think we crave.
Ok, so being unemployed doesn’t really compare to an apocalypse, despite how American life is getting bleaker and sadder every day. But still, in some ways it feels like an opportunity to reset and restructure my life, even while an everpresent shadow looms, questioning at every purchase, “just how long can you do this?” The dystopian state of the job scene is a blog post for another day and one I will return to because we can be doing so much better for our job seekers in the game and software industries, but today I want to focus on how I’m filling my days since losing my job several months back.
First and foremost I’m focused on learning and shoring up skills that I haven’t touched in a while and, as a bonus, that might help me broaden what I have to offer as a job candidate. So I’ve made a personal curriculum around re-engaging with C++. This includes reading books like Accelerated C++, and Effective C++, following online tutorials at learncpp.com and eventually working on some projects in Unreal. I’m also learning watercolor and knitting as creative outlets and to fulfill some of my 2026 goals.
I was at my last job for around 4 years and while there I let most of my side projects fall by the wayside. Partially this was because I was working all day in my home office and I didn’t want to spend my evenings there as well, and partially because I found new hobbies to fill my time. Looking back, I really regret this because those personal projects are more tangible, promotable and more reflective of my ability to wear multiple hats than anything we built (without releasing) at my day job. So to remedy this drought, I’ve been working on a few projects, some with friends and some solo.
For my first project I want to explore how to make a game about making the world better. I’ve always wanted to make games that make a difference, but that has rarely lined up with the goals of the companies where I’ve worked. I think a lot of people are feeling hopeless right now. Like nothing they can do at an individual level makes much of a difference to the injustices that we see going on in our nations. This is the idea I’m trying to explore in a game I’m temporarily calling Love/Hate Game.
The game is pretty abstract at the moment, and it might just stay that way, but it’s about spreading love across a map of people to combat hate that emits from other individuals. There’s a lot to do to make it more visually appealing, but I also want to lean into my strengths and not make something that relies on art or complex animation since those are not my strong suit. There are a lot more concepts to explore and depth to build, and I hope to add the code to my github soon (so keep an eye out). I know it won’t heal the world, but maybe it can remind people that they can make a difference in their communities—that they can start a wave.
I’m also working on two additional projects with friends, which in truth, is probably too many projects to focus deeply on, so in the spirit of learning and killing two birds with one stone, I’ve used these as opportunities to finally try out AI in my workflow. Since so many job postings in the software space now want or require familiarity with AI, this is a good chance to delve in and learn with practical project work. I’ve worked with both Claude and Copilot. It’s been interesting learning the gotchas and the best way to phrase prompts for good results. I’ll follow up with a blog post of my findings in the future, but I think that’s it for now.
If you know of any job opportunities you’d think I’d be right for, please contact me on LinkedIn or nicoleepps.com. See you in the next one.