My Quarantine Challenges: Step up, create, and change the world!

People know me for EXODE.

I do not speak of our current crisis when I speak about EXODE - EXODE already has many details to share and a lot to say for itself. I also believe it's good to speak about 'gaming'.

But maybe this post - the one about our quarantine challenge, a blogging initiative on HIVE, announced here - will help to share most of the rest.

Life is a great adventure

People have to understand life is a "limited" adventure, but also a great one.

I know we are under a lot of psychological stress.
Our families, our children, our spouse.
Our job. Our health.
We are facing a big challenge here.

However we must not forget the difficulties some previous generations were into. They were into true and absolute horror. They lost countless relatives, so many parents lost their children.

This may be the exact time where we have to understand everything in life, and to set up different priorities.

I think there is a "Greater Good" to aim at.

Fortunately there comes a point in life when you come to understand a lot more things. Our human mind is a good learning machine.

With time, often we all share common experiences, often we all share some common difficulties in life.

With time, we understand that; when someone says "I have this problem", we can genuinely say: "Me too. I understand and I feel for you.".

With time, we understand that other people, in other cultures, are actually good people facing problems, just like we do.

If you take the time to take all that in, to think about it, and understand your life: we can come to understand each other better. All the anxiety, the political "we are good/they are bad" angle, the fear of other cultures, the terror from others, can maybe "lessen a bit"; attack our mind a bit less.

Let's think about ourself as a human being.
We don't live eternally.
Accepting that means that running for money only has a limited importance.
Running for ownership too.

I believe we have to do, during our life, something that makes it better for some persons.
For our children maybe.
For others.

Or at least, to deliver what we believe we are made for in life.
Like our multicellular being delivering what it's DNA is made for.

Maybe you should write a book.
Maybe you should learn to do some music.
Or drawing; our teachers made us believe we were so bad at these things, but take some online course and you'll see you can be good.
Or teach people.
Or make your children better persons.

The quarantine can lead to:

• a better relationship with your children,
• some share of parent wisdom with them, helping them understand things sooner,
• time for you to explore who you are, what you should aim at, and how to do it.
• and for everyone, even those without children, you can now focus on what you can create for yourself.

My plans when it happened

When the lockdown happened in my country, nearly one month ago, and the epidemic spread, this changed the whole world, but this did not exactly change my plans.

I was already working all day long (and most of the evening) on my computer.

This is because I am a programmer, and an independent, an indie.
This means working sometimes 12-18 hours a day 'on ambitious things'.

My quarantine challenge started before the quarantine happened.
It started when "JS" happened.

At that time, I realized I was "sitting on" advantages the blockchain was giving - in games such as Splinterlands from @yabapmatt and @aggroed, in services such as Blocktrades.us by @blocktrades , in my digital assets and value. I was a player and user. I had been for a year. Why was I not contributing or doing anything more?

I knew I was very different than the usual blockchain developers.
I am an indie game developer.

I also do a lot of tech personally, but more on database (made my own NoSQL engine in 2009 - before it was 'cool'), semantics engines (made one in 2010), or AI (conversational engine), and of course, games.

And I believe there is some power, still, in that difference.
Because we don't need clones of our great guys.
I can make some game that will attract people outside HIVE, and if it's the only great thing I do at first, that still will be something positive.

When "JS" happened, this woke me up.
I realized I could do so much more. And I was doing so few.
I decided to step up - I put a post about it here.

The plan was as follows:

1. I free all my time: by stopping my work for any client.
2. I make a game and support the blockchain with value.
3. I become a witness and support decentralization.

This means stepping up, and in a huge way!

Of course, at that moment, the family was worried.
And just as I was following that plan, something else happened: the fork!

It divided the community big time, lessening support with people on one side or the other.
But the plan was about the same:

1. I join HIVE.
2. I stop working for any client. My full time and life energy is on this project.
3. I make a game and support the HIVE blockchain with value.
4. I become a HIVE witness and support decentralization.

Part 1 is done.

Part 2 is done.
I went "all in". I sold all my digital assets.
I sent everything I had, the last bucks, into funding my effort for EXODE.
Thanks to that, I was able to fund the development weeks for it.
And now EXODE is funded 100 percent (for a small team who knows what to do), because its presale was successful.

Part 3 is happening.

EXODE happened already. There were numerous announcements, such as a Game Manifesto , our Community Gifts, our progress, our presale launch, many good posts such as our interview with @manoldonchev, and recently our AMA session in Battle games.

To launch a project on a blockchain is an amazing experience. The community is supportive, participative. This is a major change in my life already.

This is also the first game to launch entirely on HIVE. Officials from HIVE did not announce it yet, because it is a presale, and they may still be studying it, and I am okay with that. There will be time for more.

EXODE is still real, more and more people are understanding its core values, and in a few weeks it will be a playable game. The project is now unstoppable. If you want to know more about it, you can look at its concept video here. But please feel free to explore other information sources too.

More and more will be shared.

Part 4 (witness server) is happening too.

My HIVE witness server is replaying the blockchain history at the moment, and is not available yet to process blocks, but it will happen. I'll make my witness announcement at that time; sharing what I want to do, how I plan to achieve it.

But as you can guess, it's all about making content, usage, attracting players from outside HIVE, and making usage of blockchain 'transparent' and 'smooth'.

So, it's all set - plans made, but actions happening already.

So, it is all that easy?

It is not exactly easy.
I work a lot of course; but all this feels perfectly natural for me - so working is not an issue.

It also feels human; and I feel that I am doing the right thing.

I think it's important, when you do something, to feel that you are doing something right, that falls in line with what you think is good.

I decided for a tight roadmap on April - the first month for EXODE.
I think it is good for the game, and for the community.
It builds up some pressure of course.

I had a development rush before presale, and it's continuing because I decided to, and my main fear is being late for a day, or two, or three. Having such delay is nothing, but you know how our mind is. We hate ourself when this happens.

I would like to spend more time with my children, but the family is backing all of it, and rest assured everyone is "happy", as much as one can be with the circumstances. We start to really feel we are "running in circles at home", but that's the case of everyone I suppose.

And also recently, something happened - it's no big thing compared to what other people experienced, but we really lost (and lost bad) one way we managed to get some happiness in life, despite lockdown.

We had a white rabbit.
It was very social.
It was giving happiness to every citizen in our block.

About 30+ people were stopping by every day to pet him, even after lockdown, they were still coming to him and giving him things.

From what we can see, there is no sign of a fight, not even a small patch of hair, absolutely nothing.

And the rabbit is nowhere around, there is no hole, and he is somewhat big enough for a rabbit, and not a single patch of grass around the place was eaten (even if he escaped, he would never leave a good patch of grass unattended), and no one is seeing anything in the nearby grass fields and gardens and parks too.

People are saying someone must have stolen him.

Because that's the only explanation left, as there is no trace of a fight.
And the opening where the rabbit has gone through was opened like a human would need to do (but not big enough for a larger animal, especially one carrying a big rabbit).

Our whole little town is discussing the event. Many people stop by every street because they knew our rabbit and they loved him. Even as I write this, two days after, I still hear people calling by the rabbit's name at the present moment.

You may find the thing very odd, but it's just the real situation: many families and children were visiting him every day. Even the local newspaper is going to make an article about it this sunday; they called us about it because they noticed the whole town was discussing it in the streets.

I don't understand why would anyone steal a precious and loved rabbit!
I understand some people can become a little crazy with lockdown, but I just can't comprehend.

Who could do that?
Why?
They loved it so much, yet they wanted to put it in a dark house instead of his happy garden?

They want to give someone a rabbit for Easter?

Our little family is in shock from all this; we do not dare visit our garden now, despite a superb weather, as it has all his toys, all his things, and he was so relaxed and happy being free in this garden. I have two daughters often in tears from it. I don't understand why would anyone steal our lovely rabbit.

It created a psychological shock exactly where we did not expect it. It makes lockdown harder, also because we don't understand.

So I prefer to imagine him enjoying some happy life somewhere.
And I continue working on EXODE - I believe such things are challenges, events.
Bad things happen.....

Life must go on, and happiness too.

Sorry for sharing this episode - a commonplace episode, yes. Very commonplace, and not so scary compared to the horror going on in the world. But this is just part of our challenges at the moment.

Our Quarantine Challenges!