James Barry

This is my 6th Year in Review. This page is an effort to put into the words the progress I have made in life over the past 365 days. Areas where I succeeded, areas where I did not, and overall what I am working towards next year.

This review is 100% for me. I share it to encourage others to do something similar, while also increasing my own personal accountability.

I will be asking myself the same three questions I asked last year:

• What went well this year?
• What didn’t go well this year?
• What am I working toward?

What went will this year?

• Relationships: I got married!!! There is nothing like the feeling of having everybody in your life come together to celebrate you and your love. It was such a blur, but I wouldn’t have changed a single thing. 11/10 best weekend of my life.
• Career: This is an interesting one, because this year I had a focus on 2 major areas. First was my full-time job which went well. We completely re-designed the core game of Cell to Singularity. I was in charge of a large amount of the game design and economy. It felt like I was doing 2 jobs at once (design & development) this year which was a LOT. However this resulted in a promotion to the position of lead game designer, so it was definitely worth it.
• Health & Fitness: I kicked my diet and workout regime into another gear due to the wedding coming up. I ended up feeling and looking fantastic, but don’t think that is something I will be able to keep up at the same level of intensity. Also, didn’t even get sick once this year!

What didn’t go well this year?

• Side Hustle: I released a few major updates to my side-project Idle Brewery this year. One which added in another currency and prestige system, another which added in balloons and improved another currency system, then lastly a lot of updates to help improve the advertising and monetization of the game so I could scale. Overall… I’m not sure if it was worth all the work and effort. However, the BIG silver lining here is that I’ve exhausted all possibilities with the game. It’s highly unlikely I can’t scale it further without adding more aggressive monetization or ads and knowing this just brings me peace of mind.
• Competition: I committed to a big sailing program for New York Yacht Club’s Invitational Cup. We ended up mid fleet after I devoted 30+ days to sailing this year… that honestly just felt like a poor use of my time. I should go surfing more and spend my weekends doing stuff I enjoy instead of trying to win / do new regattas.
• Balance: Holy crap, this year completely burned me out. So much so that I’m not doing this year in review until January 12th. Hopefully no year is as busy as this one in the future. Between the wedding, sailing, and working 2 jobs I completely over-committed myself.
• Consumerism: Due to my life being unbalanced, I definitely over consumed and found myself looking for happiness in purchasing items online. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t bring me much happiness.
• Spirituality: I feel slowly like I’m becoming disconnected. I’m not even sure from what, but I feel like my life is starting to boil down to work, money, and a focus on making sure I’m setup properly for the future. It just seems like everything is a task list and I’m unsure how to fix this… because it feels like the pressure to earn and achieve is becoming higher post-marriage (i.e. to prepare for building a family).

What am I working toward?

• Financial Strength + House: Now that the wedding is complete, we are focused on buying our first house which seems like a massive undertaking. They are so goddamn expensive and every single one has pretty much doubled in price over the past five years… still achievable but it’s definitely starting to shift what I focus on and my priorities in life.
• Embracing Moderation: I am… not good at moderation. In fact, I am awful at it. Which is why this year, my theme (not a resolution), is to live a life of moderation. Continue doing everything I love doing, but just not at the same level of intensity.

Final Thoughts…

Last year I wrote “It feels like I’m no longer “striving”, but instead just trying to maintain my position in life”. This feels even more true this year, but what I’ve realized is that maintaining your position becomes harder since expectations continuously increase as you age. Being in a good spot in your 20s means having a job. Being in a good spot in your 30s / 40s means having a family and a house. A much, much harder task. I’m in a good spot, but I can feel my path of options of what I can do narrowing which is in a way, terrifying, yet not unexpected. I think this next year will be another one of major growth and maturity. I sure hope so.

This is my 5th Year in Review. This page is an effort to put into the words the progress I have made in life over the past 365 days. Areas where I succeeded, areas where I did not, and overall what I am working towards next year.

This review is 100% for me. I share it to encourage others to do something similar, while also increasing my own personal accountability.

I will be asking myself the same three questions I asked last year:

• What went well this year?
• What didn’t go well this year?
• What am I working toward?

What went well this year?

Relationships / Romantic Life: I got ENGAGED! So that area of my life is going quite well. Not much more to say there 🙂.

Career: My big goal this year was to make a living through game development. I thought I would be able to do this by bootstrapping my company into profitability. What I didn’t expect was that I would get a job at another studio doing exactly what I do at my own company. So far I’ve been greatly enjoying it and it’s opened the door to new opportunities that I never could have even dreamed of. Also, my own game, Idle Brewery is also doing pretty well!

Competition: I was part of a team that won the majority of the awards on the Corinthian sailing circuit. I’m going to be sailing with them again this year, which I am quite excited about.

What didn’t go well this year?

Health: This year, I spent the majority of the fall and winter sick with a cold and cough. The severity ranged from a minor annoyance, to a full blown illness where I couldn’t leave the house and had to miss a wedding. Then, at the very end of the year I fell while skiing and severely bruised my rib. Which hurts, a LOT.

Emotions: I spent a lot of this year either angry, sad, or frustrated. While the highs were high, there were a lot of lows and I was working all of the time and pushing myself towards burnout. On the bright side, the second part of the year was much more enjoyable than the first and it looks like things are continuing to trend in the right direction.

Balance: See above^. I feel like on one hand, my life has no balance. I am constantly focused on work, working out, improving some area of my life, competition, producing something OR completely destressing, usually by watching TV or playing video games. I don’t know if this is healthy, and I don’t really know what I to do about it. Part of me wants to work and accomplish more, because I’m not where I want to be yet, but I can only get so many hours of work in each day. I’m a walking conundrum. Simultaneously I know I need balance, yet I want less.

Reality Checks: Kinda like the point above, this one is less of a “what didn’t go well”, but more a general thought. I got a serious reality check this year on how high the bar is in my own industry. It’s higher than I ever thought was possible. Luckily, this doesn’t make me want to give up, but it’s just intimidating knowing how much there is to learn and improve.

What am I working toward?

Surviving: This new year I have a lot on my plate. I have my own game, a full time job, a large sailing commitment, and an upcoming wedding. Lots to do! Just getting through the year will be an achievement in and of itself.

Being Less of a People Pleaser: Yup. I am a people pleaser. I like making others happy, often at my own expense. This year, I want to avoid this, which should help with the next point:

Protecting My Time and Attention: Nothing is more valuable than these two resources. In fact, they are the resources that I am currently most starved for.

Final thoughts…

I’m ending this year having achieved many of the goals that I’ve been working towards.

However, it seems like the goal posts just tend to move, and I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. Working hard on what I care about has opened up opportunities for me that I never dreamed of, and I want to keep my momentum going.

However it feels like I’m no longer “striving”, but instead just trying to maintain my position in life because I’m finally where I want to be… I am finally where I want to be. I guess that’s why this year in review feels so weird to me. In 2024 I reached a milestone that I had been working towards for my entire 20s: being happy with my career. Now that I reached it, I don’t know what the future holds in store for me, but I do know one thing; I am excited.

This is my 4th Year in Review. This page is an effort to put into the words the progress I have made in life over the past 365 days. Areas where I succeeded, areas where I did not, and overall what I am working towards next year.

This review is 100% for me. I share it to encourage others to do something similar, while also increasing my own personal accountability.

I will be asking myself the same three questions I asked last year:

• What went well this year?
• What didn’t go well this year?
• What am I working toward?

What Went Well This Year?

Game Development: I built and launched my first game on the app store. It’s a bit unbelievable when I think about how much I’ve accomplished in one year and frankly, I have built and created an amazing game, especially for my first title. If you’re interested in playing it, just search “Idle Brewery: Beer Tycoon” on either the Google Play or Apple App Store.

Problem Solving: One primary benefit of learning to program is you learn how to solve problems. I have solved thousands of problems this year in game development. Some large, some small, but all were important. I have worked this specific muscle in my brain to the point of exhaustion every week for the past year, and because of this it has continued to get stronger and stronger. It’s a skill that nobody can ever take from me.

Fitness: I moved to Boston in September of 2023 I joined a climbing gym with 4 locations within biking distance from the house I am renting. I have been climbing nonstop whenever I can which has allowed me to complete some fairly difficult climbs (many V4s climbs and a few V5s) which is the upper range of what an intermediate climber is able to do. I’ve been climbing for over 10 years at this point so part of my internal voice says I should be further along in my climbing, but it is just a hobby for me. I’m not training, I’m just climbing as much as I can and I know that if I continue to put time in I’ll slowly get past these difficulty plateaus.

Relationships: The older I get, the more value I place on my relationships. This is even more true these days now that I spend the majority of my workday alone. Each year I push myself to go more and more out of my way to stay connected with everybody that I used to know.

What didn’t go well this year?

Business & Finances: I dipped into my savings this year as I did not have a large amount of income coming in. While my business is profitable, I’m still working on getting it to the level where it can fully sustain me and that will be my top priority for the next year. If I’m being totally honest, part of me is disappointed that I am not further along.

Expectations: In my mind, this was my “Hell or High Water Year” to make my living as a solo game developer. While I made enormous amounts of progress towards that goal, including have a fully published game and a profitable business, I did not fully reach my goal of making a living from game development and for me that is crushing. It put a bit of a damper on the entire end of my year and I’m realizing that there are some underlying issues with how I approach my life. My expectations for myself can often be too high, and I also tend to be too hard on myself.

Mental Health & Mindfulness: The downside of building an online business is the same as the upside. You can constantly monitor it from anywhere, and it’s incredibly tempting to do so every single day. I got into a bad habit of checking in on my different social channels and looking at my app analytics daily, especially right when I woke up. I plan to break this habit in 2024 and live my life in a less reactionary state.

What am I working toward?

Caring Less: This is such a weird goal to type out, but I care way too much about what others think and my work. It got to the point where I became overly obsessive and was working constantly 24/7 which led me to my current state of burnout.

Financial Stability: Same goal as last year. While it’s a bit lackluster to just say “I’m going to continue trying to make a living doing what I’m doing”, it’s the main thing that I am focused on and there’s not many other major goals I feel I can focus on unit I achieve this one.

Mindfulness. My dad recently describes life as “Room A” vs “Room B”. Room A is a room full of salesmen who are only making outgoing calls. Room B is also a group of salesmen making outgoing calls, but also have to deal with incoming requests. Apparently, the people in Room A are much more happier in life because they get to live on and set their own schedules. My brain is HARDWIRED to live in Room B, but I specifically chose a career Room A because I knew it would better for my mental health. I want to embrace that more this year, as well as generally being more mindful of my life in general. As the great Ferriss Bueller once said “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”.

This is my 3rd Year in Review. This page is an effort to put into the words the progress I have made in life over the past 365 days. Areas where I succeeded, areas where I did not, and overall what I am working towards next year.

This review is 100% for me. I share it to encourage others to do something similar, while also increasing my own personal accountability.

I will be asking myself the same three questions I asked last year:

• What went well this year?
• What didn’t go well this year?
• What am I working toward?

What Went Well?

Life Direction: For the first time in my life, I feel that I am no longer searching for a direction. If you’re lucky, most of your 20s are spent searching for something. What will naturally drive, inspire and motivation each day. At 28, I think I finally discovered what motivates me is programming, specifically for Game Development. I think this is true for two reasons. 1st, programming is motivating because at its core, it is the daily exercise of problem solving which I love. A more complex form of Sudoku and other logic problems. This makes everyday a mental challenge, and leaves me feeling like I’ve used my day well. 2 – Game Development is one of the most multi-discipline industries out there, especially when you’re doing it alone. Yes, it’s a competitive industry, but it also keeps me engaged every single day and there is always something to work on that interests me. It feeds my desire to “be productive all the time”, which in turn makes me feel happy and fulfilled.

Programming: To do a deep dive into the above, this year I made the jump from “learning how to program” to being a true developer. I am confident that there are many things I can build, big and small, and the real question is just how long it will take and what do I want to work on. For now, my focus is on improving how I learn and approach problem solving and building my programming knowledge base.

Building a Product: I released a beta version of my game, Idle Brewery, right before the holidays on both the Apple Store and the Android Store. It worked with only a few bugs, and overall the reception from my family and friends was positive! There is definitely still some major work to do on that front, but it is work that I am excited to take on.

Relationships: This year my oldest brother asked me to be the Godfather of his son. I celebrated my 7-year anniversary with my girlfriend, and spent a ton of time with my close friends and family.

Sailing: My team won Match Race US Nationals this year, which is the first national event that I have ever won. I’m incredibly proud of this achievement.

What Didn’t Go Well?

Mental Health: Whenever I do not actively focus on mental health, it starts to slip backwards and I fall into old, well-worn grooves of prioritizing short-term stimuli over the long-term care of my mind. The biggest way I can combat this is to stick to my routines, specifically my morning routine of journaling and meditation. This is easy when I’m at home in my own element, but whenever I travel or am somewhere new I feel myself quickly.

Career and Stability: This was a personal choice and for 3rd time in my career, I am starting over completely from scratch. I doubled down on this decision because rather than focusing on finding a new job immediately, I took the path of building something for myself. While this comes with risks, I knew my own project would motivate me more than working on somebody else’s business. The risk here is that I may not be able to build something that will allow me to support myself, but that is a risk I’m willing to take. The truth is, you can only take these risks so many times in your life, and since this is the second time I’ve attempted to take this one I’m determined to put in the maximum effort to make it work.

Giving Back: This was a year that I spent focusing 100% on myself, which is not a bad thing. There are many times throughout your life when you need to prioritize yourself over others. That said, giving back and helping others is a core part of a life well-lived and in future years I plan to make this a larger focus of my goals.

What Am I Working Towards?

One Thing. Making A Living Off My Games: Hell or high water, this is what I am singlehandedly working towards. My primary public goal last year was to become a developer. I accomplished that. My private goal was to earn $1000 from an online game. That is a goal that missed, primarily because the scope for my game was too large.

I’m not sure how I will make it into a career, but the one thing I’m sure about is the best thing I can do is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I just launched the beta version of Idle Brewery and hopefully I’ll be able to publish it to the app store in the next month or so. After that, my focus will become split around marketing, updating that game, and starting work on my next game.

Anyway, that is it. It’s a solo-goal year and I look forward to seeing how far I get over the next 365 days.

As Always…

My life is a work in progress. If you’re reading this, you’re witnessing the two-year mark of me deliberately building a life that I want to live. Even more so than last year, I am astounded by the progress one can make in 12-months, and I hope my example can inspire you to make a positive change in your own life.