I've been making games for 8 years now and in the last 3 years, I finally could go full time. No more responsibilities. No university. Nothing. Just me, sitting in my room all day making video games. Perfect. Now we all need to take breaks at one point though. And I totally did take breaks! Like sometimes. A little bit. Un Unless I worked during my days off ... ehm the point is my body didnt like that.
I had some minor wrist injuries in the last 3 years every now and then but this time was different. My wrist hurt and lost a lot of its mobility. While I technically coulda still worked, even I had to admit that this is not good. So I took tons off days off to let my wrist rest. It healed. But as soon as I worked again the pain would come back. So I realized something fundamental had to change!
I started learning about all the causes of my problem. For instance my keyboard, like a lot of keyboards made my wrist rotate which strains it. To fix that and more I bought a super expensive keyboard that promises to fix all my problems. It keeps the wrist straight and lets the fingers sit on the keys in a relaxed position. The pinky doesnt do all the heavy lifting. Instead the thumbs push backspace, space, delete, enter and so on. The layout is customizable. I learned about ergonomic keyboards from a video from mayuko which I'm linking right here as you should definetly check it out.
On top of that I bought this orbital that lets you put any shortcuts on it. These two definetly took me some time to get used to. But they are worth it and definetly fixed a lot of my problems.
Here is a link to the orbital and the keyboard:
https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Device-Orbital-supports-illustration-editing/dp/B07XC6KNQR/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=orbital2%E8%84%B3%E3%83%9E%E3%82%B8%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF&qid=1661784600&sr=8-5https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Kinesis-Advantage2-Ergonomic-Keyboard-KB600LFQ/dp/B07K1SMRGS/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=advantage+2+lf&qid=1661784565&sr=8-1But that alone didnt fix everything. I learned countless things that I should avoid like bending my wrist to type like the weirdo that I was, sleep posture, how to exercise my wrist to make it stronger (Play piano), how to stretch it out, how to rest it, when to cool it and how to just sleep in the middle of the day to let it rest as often and as much as possible. Essentially for 3 months I learned stuff about my wrist, applied it, sleept and repeated.
This was a long and painful time since I constantly wanted to work because I love my job, I also felt like I should work but I KNEW that I needed to rest. These conflicting feelings killed me and sleeping was the best cure somehow. That, time with my friends and sunshine.
I felt a lot better this month since I was finally able to work again. I started with an hour a day and gradually increased the time. Now I am at six hours a day, five days a week. I want to do more but I have to give it some time. The pain still comes back sometimes. Its less painful everytime and heals faster and faster though. So I am now all good as long as I keep up all the resting, cooling, stretching, training ... yeah its kinda like a second job.
I beat my wrist pain by detecting all the bad habits I had. Sleeping on my arm, typing weird, bad posture due to my keyboard, and tons tons more. Then I worked on changing them. This was insanely difficult but there was no other way.
The easy thing was to buy better equipment which is more ergonomic. For instance having lots of shortcuts on the orbital isn't necessary. It does speed up stuff a bit but mainly it changes my wrist position every now and then. Not letting your body be in the same position is key. No matter the position your body just cant stay in it forever.
Now if you take one thing away from this, change your posture often! Just stand up every 30m for 1 to 5 minutes. Go stretch a bit. Get some water. Do the dishes. It can be really easy to have an excuse for standing up and taking a break. That and rest when you need it. Its important!
Just think about it like this: a part of work is to rest so you can work again. If your body breaks from working to much, you didn't do your job right.
Did you ever struggle with an injury that took you away from work and if so, what did you do?
All this is the reason why I haven't uploaded anything recently and why there has been no updates on our game. After this much time away from making games I am highly motivation though! Thats another reason why we are making an entire game in September. If you want to know more about that project check out this video right here:
That's all, I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace
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