Halloween Special - My Scary Experiences

I was a little busy with stuff, real-life and in gaming but now I'm writing it. As mentioned in yesterday's / day before yesterday's post. I will go through the experiences I had in my life that were scary. 'Cause it's matching the theme of Halloween.

Defining 'Scary'

I'm not talking about shocking situations or being scared of forgetting something or failing a test. I really mean scary in the sense of "Spooky Scary Skeletons. Send shivers down your spine." ~Andrew Gold. I'm going to start with the most recent experiences and then randomly go through them as I go on.

Disclaimer

I'm not claiming any of these stories or happenings as true. Not at all. I'm going to mention them and some thoughts I have about them but if you don't believe these to be what they seem to be that's totally fine. I don't believe them all either. We all know there might be scientific explanations for it.

Additionally, I have no idea how much performing and learning magick attracts these happenings or occurrences. Well without further ado.. let's go!

Clap Behind a Door

This happened at night I assume around one to four in the morning. I usually spend a lot of time until late in the night if I don't need to stand up too early. So, I often brush my teeth at those times. Well, sometimes it's past four a.m. but that's rare. Anyways I went to brush my teeth. I always close the bathroom door so I don't wake anyone of my family with the light and/or the sound from the brushing or the toilet flushing. I was about doing my usual procedure when I heard a clap. I couldn't tell if it was behind the door or in the same room. Given the situation, I assumed it was my father. I don't quite get it why anyone would clap outside of the bathroom. I mean like.. why? It seems... so random. By the way, there wasn't more than that.

Creepy Brother Phantom Thing

I really need to write down my dreams, it's something you should do as a magician/wizard/witch. Anyways I don't remember too many details fact is that I dreamed that I was standing on my bed watching the closet for an extended amount of time waiting for something to happen. Then suddenly the closet door opened and a phantom-like creature came out. It walked towards me and changed it's face to look like my brother. However, something about the face was... off. That got me to panic quite a bit. I tried to calm myself down and put my hands out to touch it nonetheless. This may seem stupid or like coming out of a movie but it has to do with my yearning for having more progress in magick research. Also, I can imagine a foreign creature that wants to help you to change their look to something more familiar to you. Like... I understand the idea of it but.. it doesn't work well in most cases.

Being Dragged Away From Your Family

While talking about bad dreams or nightmares. I once had a nightmare where I was sitting on the bed having fun with my family and everything, when all of a sudden I was dragged out of bed by something I couldn't see. I was scared, shouting like nothing else. Even worse, I woke up on the floor right after that dream of seeing a red light (an alarm clock) from another room. I was lying there extremely creeped out, not able to get back to bed and tried to sleep there. I don't remember what I did after that.

Chain Letters Are Evil

I also just remembered that I once got a chain letter. I already knew the purpose of them and did not really believe in them so I ignored them. However, the fact of dying didn't let my unconscious rest. It was too late to fulfill the requirement of my then. So, to save myself I went to a different room and slept there instead. Of course, nothing happened. It's just a chain letter, right? Right?

White Figure in the Room

I know about people who claimed to see the "black man". For me, I never saw a black man instead I saw a white figure. I was very little then and it most often stood at the balcony or in the pathway to my parent's room. I wasn't really scared of it in particular, I assumed it was like my protecting angel or something watching over me while I sleep. I still think it's interesting to mention it.

Meeting the Shadow People

There are people out there who met the shadow people before. Same for me. However... I think no one met them like this. I woke up from my sleep right to its face. It was looking at me in a weird way like... put your hands into the air and then tilt 90° to the right. It also didn't look human but all rounded, no face, just some eyes. I remember them being white, does that make sense? I don't know. The fact is it didn't look scary wasn't scary but... THE F'ING JUMPSCARE!!! Anyone would react like that if they'd wake up to anything unfamiliar so close! After calming down and looking back it was gone. I can imagine having scared it off. Poor fellow, I'm sorry for reacting like that...

Being Pushed-down by an Invisible Force

If you follow the blog for a longer time you might have read a post about this before. It was a day I was working for my company at home and I decided to take a small nap to refresh myself as I sometimes tend to do in the breaks. I didn't expect this to happen though. I woke up and something pushed me down. Like with great force. So I tried to push back which partially worked. After pushing it back for a little while the force was gone. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was a demon, later after a discussion with my mentor it could've been some creature that likes to sit on energy sources and might have decided to sit on me without knowing. For all, I know that the creature could've been scared as hell as well.

Hand on the Stairs

This was also creepy to me as a child, I just imagined it to be my imagination but I actually saw a hand on the stairs. I thought it to be my imagination because it didn't look or seem real. It looked like.. it wasn't there, dunno how to put it into words.

Shadow Boy

This is also one of the dreams I had once. I don't remember the details but I was in the attic and then in our basement in the creepy room with the well in it. Anyways there was a shadow boy. I wanted to help so I put my hand on its shoulder to ask of how I can help and then it turned around and I was shaking and jumped back falling to the ground. Kinda ridiculous because, hey, what did you expect you would see when touching that child? Pffff.

Voices from Another Room

This could've been an illusion from the cold I had at that time, but I was lying in my bed and heard these voices. They could've come from my parent's room or my brother's room but.. that explanation would be too easy. First of all both groups should've been sound asleep. Second of all the direction of the voices came from the living room or somewhere outside the house. Since both groups were sleeping or at least there wasn't a reason to be in the living room it couldn't have been those. Unfortunately, I didn't understand what they were talking about or saying. I did try though. :P

The End...?

I think this is enough for now, I also need to keep some for next Halloween. :P Nah, these are the "best" (depending on definition) experiences I had so far. (from which also stuck).

If you want them to use for your Creepypasta, go ahead, I don't mind. It would be awesome if you refer to my blog though, helps me, you know.

And with that.. happy Halloween! Or.. maybe happy All Saints Day?

Day Before Halloween - Fear and Being a Magick User

Greetings Sapient being. It's been a while since the last post, even had one written that I removed because I didn't realize something rendering the whole post as misinformative and wrong. It happens from time to time. I don't have a group of people who check my posts working all on my own.

Anyways we have the 30th of October on the day I'm writing this post and it's not long until Halloween. Tomorrow evening already. So I've been wondering about what to write about. You know Halloween is this famous festival where people, especially younger ones wear scary, creepy or spooky costumes and they go trick or treating - an old ritual that was performed to scare away the evil spirits. Not to be confused with Carnival where you wear scary, creepy, spooky nowadays any kind of costume to scare away whatever makes the nights longer.

To be honest... I don't have anything specific. So instead I'm gonna write two posts about how getting into magick has affected my perception of scary things and what my current relation to nightmares and scares are and the scariest things I have seen, heard or experienced in my life.

My Current Perception of Scary Stuff

The Downside of Being Scared

Depending on which direction you go into when performing rituals or magick, fear has a big factor in the result of your actions. Almost always, negatively. As such there are actual rituals that you are encouraged to do to get rid of your fears so that they can't affect the result you want to go with. The most obvious example is that of a demon. Though I must admit that I do not believe in demons in the way it has been portrait in the western world. Anyways the idea is if you're scared of a demon it gets stronger. However fear may be a more or less unconscious reaction to a situation making this kinda difficult.

Fear Rituals

Still, from personal experience, these rituals that exist seem to take care of the unconscious part not too bad. So, what's the idea of these fear rituals or rituals against fear? Basically the same thing people do when they have arachnophobia. You have to fight your fear by confronting it. The way it's done in these rituals differs from throwing yourself into a closed space with spiders or clowns if you get the thought process. As with most rituals or magick stuff, in general, this is instead done with meditation. Sorry, scary clowns that wanted to get hired. How does it work? I'm going to take the example from Frater V.D. mentioned in his book "Die Hohe Schule Der Magie" (engl.: The High School of Magic") as I've used that ritual myself and had good experiences. Additionally, it's one of the non-dangerous ones. *cough cough*

Performing the Ritual

Anyways to perform this ritual first you have to get into a comfortable position. Sitting, lying, whichever fits you best. Make sure you don't get interrupted and don't have to change your position. This will interrupt your focus. It's a meditation after all. Spend some time doing nothing, basically emptying your head so to speak. Once you're ready to go through all the things you're scared of in your head. Don't judge them just think about them or imagine them neutrally. Go through everything that comes to your mind. Once you're through every little fear or detail you repeat the phrase "Who is scared of whom?" or "Wer hat vor wem Angst?" depending on whether you prefer to use German as your "magical" language.

And that's it. Pretty simple, not too crazy. It is just meditation and it helped me.

The Results

I've performed this ritual about three times, to be honest, I haven't been scared of anything much since then and the rest is basically gone due to the believes I hold for myself at the moment. I've written about those too. Another way to get over fears is to empower yourself. It sounds crazy and egoist when you perform the "Kabbalistic Cross" claiming to be a god yourself, but whether you are or not is not to be debated, the fact is it works. Empowering yourself actually empowers yourself. You could say it's a mind trick and an amazing one at that. You may have heard one or two crazy stories about superhuman feats that were achieved in special situations like a mother protecting their child. Actually looking at research about the placebo effect and what it was able to do. Another good video for showing this is from the YouTube Red series: "Mind Field" with the host Michael Stevens from "Vsauce".

Anyways enough about the details, the fact is I've been hardly ever scared of situations. This does not mean that I'm crazy doing dangerous stuff. I'm still careful in those situations that require it, but I'm thinking things through more calmly instead of panicking.

Unfortunately, this also ruined the "scariness" factor of horror movies and games which is quite disappointing. Luckily enough Amnesia: The Dark Descent has a good story attached to it, so that's still enjoyable.

Nightmares

I still have nightmares, sorry. They're not gone unfortunately but it might not be the same as what most people experience when they have nightmares. I'm going more into the exact things I dreamed about tomorrow but for now, I can say this: 

Waking up from a supposed nightmare does not have me scared, shocked, sweating or any of these. I wake up from them just like from a normal dream. Furthermore to scary parts in the dream, I might still react as before but only for the first moment, it's like the habit taking over for the first few seconds. Afterward, I try to carefully think things through or even defend myself. If you haven't heard about it before, you can pretty easily defend yourself against literally anything in your own dream with enough practice and with the right mindset. Also part of personal development in magick.

Conclusion

So yeah, that's my current relation towards fears and scary stuff and how I got to that point. If you plan to get into magick yourself I can only advice you the described ritual. Fear is a bad thing for you in the future. Especially if you want to protect yourself from bad things that might happen. It still takes me to get through everything. Keep in mind the fear of the unknown can be described as indirect proportional to your knowledge and I assume your knowledge of ghosts, demons, youkai, magick, etc. isn't much bigger than most peoples are.

And with that... Happy Preparational Halloween. :P

My Power Napping Experiment

I've recently had enough of having no time to do anything so I decided to do an experiment.

Time

Since I've started a full-time job I've been thinking a lot about time. Well, I've always been thinking about time. What exactly about time? Well, here we go.

A day has 24 hours and a week has 7 days. This means we have 7 * 24 = 168 hours a week to spend the way we like. If you work 40 hours a week that's 128 hours left. So we lose 40 / 168 = 0.2381 or 23.81% of our week to work. Now, of course, you need to sleep as well. The minimum sleep required is often said to be 6 hours. So that's 6 hours on 7 days or 6 * 7 = 42 hours. So we spent a minimum 42 / 168 = 0.25 or 25% of our week asleep. Now, some people may need more sleep some may need less sleep. If you're a longer sleeper you'll need maybe 8 hours. That's 8 * 7 = 56 hours a week. Taking this into perspective we get 56 / 168 = 0.3333 or 33.33% of our week. Isn't it good that we're doing the home office? Unfortunately, we don't. In my case even worse, I have to drive up to an hour every day to work and back because I don't like living in the city. So that's 5 workdays and 2 hours each for arrival and departure. So, 5 * 2 = 10 hours a week for traveling.

Of our 168 hours we have 168 - 42 - 40 - 10 = 76 hours left. That's only 76 / 168 = 0.4524 or 45.24% time left.

Comparison

• 25% of our week is spent sleeping at a minimum
• 23.81% of our week is spent working
• 10 / 168 = 0.06 or 6% of my week is spent traveling to work
• 45.24% of my week is spent for free time + needs like eating

Too Much To Do

Now this is partly my fault but I kinda got myself into the situation where I want to

• working on a leaderboard in a game
• raid in two different games
• play those games
• play and stream more games
• write these blog posts
• study game design, engineering and development
• work full time
• help a teen and a child in math
• do other projects (programming-wise)
• learn magic

As you might have noticed due to my disturbed frequency of Youtube publishes, streams and blog posts I can't keep up with it anymore. So I need to get time somehow. There are three options I have.

1. Give up work, I can't do that because I would have no income anymore
2. Give up some dedication, I don't want to do this though
3. Siphon the time from another activity

And this is where power napping came to my mind.

Power Napping

So, I've heard and read about this every now and then. People that say they sleep less and have more time for what they want to do. Well, how does it work? According to information, it's as simple as distributing your sleep over the day. This means you will sleep more often every now and then throughout the day but sleepless in total.

Now that sounds very interesting but I couldn't push myself to do it. Until Sunday that is. On Sunday I finally started to give it a try.

Science Behind Napping

On my search, I read some information on sleep duration, purpose and how it benefits us. I found the following information.

60-90 Minute Nap

Plays a key role in making new connections in the brain and solving creative problems.

30-60 Minute Nap

Improves decision-making, memorizing or recalling  (e.g. vocabulary or directions)

Up to 30 Minute Nap

Resets the system, gain a burst of alertness and improved motor performance.

Additionally longer sleep times improve memory and creativity.

My Personal Plan

I've read about people creating or using a power napping plan that helps with napping and lets them have a schedule. I also gave this a thought and this is what I came up with first.

Since I don't want to lose any of the advantages I want to build each type of nap into my daily routine, while leaving the amount at a minimum. I've decided to go with a one and a half-hour long nap, a one-hour long nap and a half an hour-long nap. That's a total sleep time of 1.5 + 1 + 0.5 = 3 hours.

The next question is "When?". First I thought about starting with one and a half continuing with one and last but not least finishing off with a half, however, sleeping a whole hour at work will definitely cause problems. So I swapped that with half an hour. The next plan is when exactly. Since I wake up for work around 6am to 6:30am I would say half an hour earlier than that should do s we got 4:30am. Since I have three sleeping cycles it would make sense to distribute them evenly. Since a day has 24 hours that's every 24 / 3 = 8 hours. So that they would be:

• one hour and a half at 4:30am
• half an hour at 12:30pm
• one hour at 8:30pm

I've set up an alarm and calculate in up to 30 minutes for the time it may take to fall asleep. I'm a light sleeper so getting woken up from the alarm is no problem.

 Problems Arose

At first, I forgot to use the alarm and I overslept.

When I created this I didn't take things into account. I have raided at 8:00pm. So what happened? The hour got shifted back on days I'm raiding.

I can't seem to fall asleep at work for those 30 minutes. The sitting position is very uncomfortable for this, with clothes, sometimes bad temperatures and constant noises it's hard. Though, I've read about using a face mask and earplugs.

Conclusion

Usually, if I sleep less than six hours three days in a row I'm all tired, grumpy and just want to sleep. It's Thursday already and I feel awake as ever. At least if it's not at work when I am supposed to have taken my 30 minutes nap. I'm gonna continue this experiment and I'm very excited about the results, especially on weekends. I might consider making a vlog instead of using the blog. It depends on the interest of people.

Why I May Share Myself

Welcome to 2018. Another year for technology to grow further. Another year for more and more people being introduced to the internet. More and more generations grow up with technology and the internet.

Question of Confidentiality

Everyone has to ask themselves this question when going online. The question of whether or not they should share information about them or not. Once something is on the internet you won't get rid of it. So the question of what you write online, what you tell others about you, what you write on your profile is really important. How much do you want to share of yourself? How much of you do you want public? These questions become even more interesting in the future.

The Generations

Different generations had different experiences with the internet and modern technologies. I had access to the internet in the 3rd or 4th grade of primary school and as long I had at least average grades I could go on the web as long as I want. Of course, except logging off for bedtime. I used that time when not playing with my friends and I spent hours and hours on the web. At some point, I spent more time on the internet than a part-time job would take. When there were holidays I've spent more time on the web than a full-time job. Older generations hadn't the ability to do that and newer generations may or may not grow up differently with more or less access to these technologies. Though it also depends on the parents, friends, and situations in one's life.

My Answer

As I already mentioned everyone has to decide for themselves and it's not an easy question. Your answer to this question can always be no but if it's a yes there's no turning back. Honestly, when I think about how my life has been up to this point this was a dilemma, I don't want everyone to know everything about me and yet every piece of information I share about me every now and then will probably be sold from person A to person B to earn money. The information age, isn't beautiful? The other thing is nationality. You were born in a country, this country knows probably a lot about you, of course, it must be able to administrate their citizens and that stuff. Though I never really felt myself being German that much - that's another topic in detail later someday. So if I feel more home on the internet than Germany, I can just share the data Germany has with the internet? I don't think the internet or Internetian goes through as nationality as of yet, lol. Anyways without further talking around it. I don't mind not "hiding in the dark" anymore. If the situation brings it I won't doubt myself for sharing. You live only once they say so let's make the best out of it as I can.

"You know you gotta, you know you gotta eventually make up your mind.
'Cause no one's gonna find you when you're hiding in the dark.
No one's gonna find you when you're hiding in the dark.
No one's gonna find you when you're hiding in the dark. No one's gonna find you."

~ "End Love" by OK Go 

Losing My Religion

Losing My Religion is a great song by R.E.M... I really enjoy listening to this band, however, neither the band nor the song has much to do with today's post. The reason I used this title is, that it fit the cause or topic.

Born a Christian

I was born and raised like a Christian, luckily as a Lutheran Christian. I always heard bad things from catholic friends. Things like, they had to learn too much and that they have to go to the church every week and to go to confession. I didn't have to do any of those. It felt freer and I enjoyed it. My own faith? Hm. It changed according to how things were going in life. Sometimes I prayed to the god other times I didn't. Just like many others at a young age, I thought of god being some old man in heaven. Of course, it bums out after years that nothing ever happens and that God isn't doing anything. So if you think about god being some old man or some powerful entity that can change anything and is omnipotent you kinda start to doubt everything.

Apparently, There's This Thing Called Agnostic

A few years into the Realschule, one of the subsequent schools you have to go to - if you had to choose between the best and most exhausting education, the worst and most chill education and a middle path, this would've been the middle path. I met this one guy that came to our class. It was a weird fellow. He was like hardly even in school always missing and yet he kept getting the best grades. On raising questions about his state teachers told us that he had a psychic problem. Unusual but happens, I guess? Anyways on someday - I don't remember if it was the teacher, me or another student - he was asked what he believes in and explained that he's agnostic and what that means. I don't remember the details but it must've sounded perfect for me back in the day. So obviously I started to call myself agnostic as well. I really liked the idea behind it.

What Is Agnostic?

In case you don't know. People who call themselves agnostic stopped wondering about the question of whether or not God exists. The basic premise of this religion is that asking yourself if god exists and how to behave costs too much energy and time. So instead they're going for an approach to say god either exists or not, we can't prove it, we can't disprove it so just live with it. At least this is what I've taken from it and how I've lived for quite some time until... something happened. Years later, though.

A New Era of My Life Started

So after graduation and finding a job, working there, in the third year of my apprenticeship I met this shy being online in an MMORPG WildStar and I kinda got talking to her and figured out she likes magic. I've always liked magic since I was young. The reason behind this is partly because I had some experiences during my school where it felt like I could heal myself after being hurt or exhausted. Another reason was that I was fascinated with the idea of magic like shown in games and movies. Since all those elements of ritualism and magic from the medieval times still exist and people have been claiming magic exists for several years, you can't just write it off. At least that was my opinion. So anyways this kinda got me into magic again. I found this book called "Die Hohe Schule Der Magie" (engl.: "The High School of Magic") by Frater V. D. and started reading and working through it. A quarter way through my coincidence I found out that a person that played Guild Wars 2 has deep knowledge about magic and when we got into talking about this we kinda made a little contract. She teaches me magic at the same time I pay her in in-game items I receive. Of course, I agreed to that contract.

How Did This Affect My Religion?

Well, there's this thing called Kabbalah, which is a religious-philosophical system. This kabbalah interpreted the well-known sentence differently.

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

 They say the idea behind this is, that God created us as gods. So we can be omnipotent. We are a god. I liked this idea and it helped me grow spiritually so I changed my religion to "agnostic with tendencies to Kabbalaism". I don't know if that's a thing but now it was. However, things didn't end there. A few years later like two or three, I've learned enough about magic to create my own opinion of it and well. From what I learned from a very distant, scientific and skeptical point of view it seemed quite obvious to me. The question if god or any god in that matter exists can be explained by how many people believe in it. If magical creatures are created by sending them attention, this would mean that gods might also exist for the same reason.

So There You Have It

This is my current belief. I believe in everything to have the potential to exist under the circumstance that at least one person believes in it. The chance for something to exist changes accordingly to the number of people who do believe them to be real.

I don't know if anyone else has reached this opinion or view on religion or if I'm the first but I have no idea what this religion is or will be called and I'm not going to come up with some stupid name so I'll leave it to others. If you know this exists or if you even know what it's called feel free to share. I'd love to know.

Starting Into The New Year

A new year is approaching I've started writing this post at 2:00pm UTC. So only 10 hours until the new year. Get your timers ready!! HYPE!

Anyways...

During My Childhood

We always celebrated new years either at home or at a friend's family, sitting on the couch watching the television program eating all kinds of snacks, sweets until the typical final countdown of the year. Once the timer reaches zero - the obligatory new years welcoming celebratory shout followed by some smaller firecrackers. Afterward, it's going out watching fireworks explode and also starting our own. Well, at least the adults. We children got those beans that explode when thrown on the ground, not that it mattered much. Unfortunately, I always had an issue with loud noises - Sylvester, church organs, concerts - I either had to put something in my ears or close them with my hands. Even a vacuum cleaner is almost too loud. I walk away from them like a cat. So getting older...

Teenage Celebration 

I started to celebrate the new year like I would celebrate anything. Chatting with people I like online and playing video games. I basically celebrated by doing what I like. Nothing wrong with it, right? I would watch the fireworks from my windows, or the windows of the house, still enjoying the view, but avoiding the smoke, the smell of gunpowder and the loud noises. I didn't mind this I enjoyed it just as much as with anyone else, though I felt bad for not celebrating with my family.

Celebration Now

Now it's back to what it was before, except that I'm not participating in friends' families celebration. Now I usually stay at home and celebrate with whoever's there, drinking some festive cocktails and enjoying the fireworks from either inside or outside depending on whether or not someone is there who got some so to say, heh.

Celebration This Year

So this year, I'm gonna be home alone with my brother since my parents are celebrating with their friends in a nearby city. I don't know what is planned exactly but the way I know him it's probably going to be cocktails and gaming this year. Not that I mind! I enjoy this kind of way. Besides being home alone with only my brother allows me to do some new year's rituals.

New Years Rituals

A new year is an abrupt change. The old is left behind and the new will come and it only takes an extremely short amount of time to flip. The best part: due to these "timers" counting down the last 24 hours there's a kind of energy accumulating. With each second the year's end comes near. With each second the excitement increases. All this energy and emotions can be channeled into a ritual just nicely. So what could a typical new year's ritual be about? Simple. You know how people make themselves a set of things they want to improve or do differently in the next year?

Let Go of the Old - Embrace A New Chance

Just think about everything you didn't like, everything you hated, everything you want to change but relate these things to the current year. You can either do this the whole year or the last seconds or minutes. Once the clock switches to midnight wish it gone and think about the new year (positively) what it brings, the improvement, the change. Don't look back to the old year and what happened. Even better after you're done thinking about the new year forget about the future and live in the now. This will allow everything of the old year to be gone and the second part will allow the energies to weave the improved future, the improved year.

So this is at least the idea behind it. You could also write everything of the old year, or throughout 2018 on a paper and burn it exactly at midnight focusing on how it's gone and start a-new on a new paper with a new year and new goals.

Like with the Christmas rituals, all you have to do is convince your unconsciousness. If done right, it might be enough.

By the way, a small post like the Christmas one. I just want to use this to tell a bit about my life and share some ritual ideas with anyone interested in giving it a try or to get people an idea of how these celebrations can be used for rituals. I mean if the atmosphere is there and the energies are there too, why not use them?

Well, Happy New Year everyone! A year, where life - hopefully - is fully enjoyable for me too.

A new year full of new blog posts.

It's My Life - Game Developer

The completely different topic today. Why? I don't know I just feel like sharing my life, how I got this way, how I ended up where I am currently.

A Gamers Childhood

Due to my brothers, I started playing video games at a really young age. I remember having a picture of me holding a game boy - yes, the old grey one - with both my brothers next to me. It didn't stop there. The game boy was soon replaced with a game boy color, which was followed by a Super Nintendo Entertainment System. We had a SEGA, at some point borrowed a Dreamcast and I grew up with these. If I wasn't living the fantasy of jumping around like Mario in the apartment or playing with Lego or in kindergarten I was playing video games. Alone, with friends, whatever. At some point, I even got my own computer. My brother set it up with OpenSUSE as the operating system.

The Change

Of course, what did I do on that computer? I played video games! We had lots of CDs with games on them. All because of my brothers who played them too. Games like 'break out', 'The Settlers II: Veni Vidi Vici' and even 'Grand Theft Auto: II' (Yes, I know I was too young for it). It came only natural that I started to wonder how these games were made. I somehow picked up that those games consist of 1's and 0's and that those 1's and 0's produced the text you get when opening an .exe with a normal editor like notepad. I also used to do this myself. I opened the .exe files of the games I played with notepad and changes the characters to see what happens, how the games change. Of course as to be expected the games were kinda corrupt and partly unplayable, but it was fun.

A Young Developer Already

I already mentioned that I used to recreate those games by making my own rules. Like for example, I said:

"okay, the green grass now represents the weird green liquid from the Legend of Zelda games that had those zombies in it"

• Or during winter I've created pathways in the snow that were supposed to represent the overworld map where you can select the levels from Super Mario World.
• For the bathtub, I used to build Lego towers where the people had to climb while it was sinking in the water
• And with matchbox cars, I recreated the missions of 'Burnout: Revenge' creating my own missions partially inspired by 'Blast Corps'  
• I have also picked up the hobby of drawing and building my own Mario Party board games on thick paper.

Age of the Peg Game

I got this mosaic peg game where you had small rectangular colorful stones. There were red, orange, black, white, blue, yellow and green and I was all over this game. It was probably my favorite game when I wasn't playing video games. Now, what do children do with these peg games? They create pictures of scenery! Now, what do I do with this peg game? I've created and recreated games. For example, I used 2 red stones above each other and said: "That's Mario!". It was a lot of work to keep everything "up-to-date" on the "screen" but I somehow managed. I also created completely own games where for example you can place a stone, then the other players place a stone and by adding to already placed ones you can upgrade those. Higher upgraded buildings are stronger in taking over lower builds, the one who eradicates the other has won. For all these games I also needed a point system. I could have used those stones to build the numbers but that takes too much space. So I had to define a color code and I did the following:

• red - 0
• orange - 1
• black - 2
• white - 3
• blue - 4
• yellow - 5
• green - 6
• orange up-side-down: 7
• black up-side-down: 8
• white up-side-down: 9

Up-side-down because they had a hole in the lower end.

Beginning of Internet Presence

Graduating from the elementary school I've also started getting used to my own computer with a Windows XP running on it. During my first few years in the Realschule - I guess that would be the middle school - I was already surviving the world wide web, playing browser game after browser game. During my search, I came across a game called 'Super Mario Flash' that had a built-in Level Editor. I got into it making my own levels and quickly started to play others and sharing my levels on the Super Mario Flash forums. My English must've been terrible. That terrible that even some people responded that they don't understand what I mean. Reading other people's posts and trying to learn my best to communicate with them with the English I've picked up in 2-3 years from school I've improved my English quite efficiently. Chatting every day with some friends I've made. I still remember some of the names "Pipe", "Ocelot". I've even picked up two long-distance relationships there with one being several years. Meanwhile, I've started playing MMORPGs. The only one I remember was 'Metin 2'. However, since those MMOs I've played weren't good and they got extremely grindy after the first areas or didn't really pick up my interested I told myself to give up on MMOs and never play those again. Especially how time-consuming they are.

The Dawning of the Programmer

Those first years of my experience in the browser also got me teaching myself HTML and CSS to make my own websites. A few years later I've decided to get into programming. So I've started to learn C. I've learned quickly that this was too hard and since I actually wanted to learn C++, a trial of learning that instead was given. However with no success so I jumped back at HTML, CSS and added JavaScript into the mix. At some point, I tried C again and this time I understood and progressed swiftly. I've taught myself C until I've gotten through one or two tutorials so I've picked up C++ next and went through the tutorial successfully. With these languages learned I have programmed my own text-based games, but it wasn't enough. I wanted to make real games. So I looked up for possibilities and I found an API called Allegro. I read through the tutorials and used it to make a few of my first games which included a game full of achievements that requires you to press space to gain points, a game where you can make music and use your keyboard as an instrument and a badly programmed Mario remake that actually only contained him jumping linear and some collision detection. Sharing my experiences with my friends in the chat

Age of Level Designing

At some point me and my friends also picked up another Mario game with a level editor. It was called Super Mario Brothers X. It was a desktop application that you had to download and it was free. I was intrigued, especially since I was searching for a new one. So I've got into this, played more levels and projects of other people and made my own game projects.

Fun fact: Super Mario Brothers X was actually programmed by the same game developer of Terraria: Redigit. So at this point greetings to all your old friends: Redigit, Valterri, Knuckles, Bossedit and many, many more of the SMBx community!

OpenGL & DirectX Trial Time

Continuing my adventure to create my own games I ditched allegro due to it not feeling professional. So I switched to DirectX instead. Oh boy, what did I get myself into here? I've tried, really hard and got a lot done. 3D graphics of simple shapes, some 2D mechanics but it was hard. Real hard. Additionally, I was limited to Windows only, not really what I wanted. So I've switched to OpenGL. It wasn't a huge difference but OpenGL is missing a lot DirectX had because OpenGL is only for graphics. So I've been on the search for something else.

The Age of the Modder

Minecraft has been released! The hype was great and I've got it back when it was in the alpha, I think, and it was worth it. I've found a gaming clan and played Minecraft with the friends I made there almost every day. At some point, we were modifying our server and Minecraft client with mods and add-ons getting even more out of the experience. Testing all those mods and add-ons left me with my own ideas. Hyped to create them I read myself into Minecraft modding and taught myself Java to a certain degree and continued learning it while modding.

The End Is Nigh

Of the Realschule I mean... not the world ending or something.. Anyways many people didn't know what they would do in their life but I was certain: Programmer. I want to become a programmer and so I've searched for apprenticeships (that's how it works in Germany) and applied to several companies. It took a while but like 3 or 4 months in I got several messages back. I've visited about 3 companies to introduce myself and then decided for the Technical University Munich because it sounded good and maybe I could educate myself further.

The Apprenticeship

During my apprenticeship I had a lot of fun with colleagues, I've learned more Java and C++, got introduced to Qt, taught myself C# privately and creating more games like a text-based RPG or a text-based version of the 'Alchemy' game for Android. I got the chance to get introduced to Python, which was one of the best things that happened in my life and in the 3rd year I've also learned to develop for Android and we got to create a game project in groups of two. The only thing that wasn't good aside from some hierarchical problems between the boss and the colleague that was taking care of me was that I didn't feel the same from developing these apps that I felt from working on programming games. Thus I've decided to finish my apprenticeship, go to the Berufsoberschule in Freising and get the certificate that allows me to study. Going through the summer holidays, I came across an API called SDL.

The Berufsoberschule

During my Berufsoberschule, I already informed myself a little about what the study Computer Science: Game Development contains and since friends of mine were interested in developing a game we've decided to use an engine for that. Our options were the Unity Engine, Unreal Engine, and Cry Engine. Since I would have used the Unity Engine during my studying anyways we've decided on that one. However, problems soon occurred and we weren't so convinced of it anymore and decided to switch to the Unreal Engine. Unfortunately, the Unreal Engine is much more complicated than the Unity Engine. So we put our project on ice for now. I went through the two years trying to balance my gaming and school life as good as I can. Occasionally developing something in Unity or SDL.

And Then Everything Went Downhill!

The time has come to the exam is in front of the door and it went bad. Real bad. The exams were in German, English, math, and physics.

I've got a 3 (C) in English.
Usually, I'm writing 1's (A's) or 2's (B's).

Got a 5 (E) in math.
I know I've been struggling with integration, it always felt like a puzzle to find the correct path.

Got a 5 (E) in German.
My German grades have never been good, but writing and analyzing poems got my high hopes and better grades in the previous tests.

And a 5 (E) in physics.
For some reason, I have huge problems in math and physics with solving the problems that are described in front of me.

Overall I would've graduated with no problems but you're not allowed to have three 5's or E's in the final exam. To solve this problem I could choose one topic to go to the oral exam and I chose physics. Did the oral exam. Bam! Got a 1 (A) on the oral exam.

However, the problem remains. My grades are bad and I'm too proud to repeat the year. I've never repeated a year, I've always pulled through somehow and it felt just wrong to repeat the year. Especially since I know repeating the year is going to be a lot easier and the grades are a lot better. It's like cheating.

Matriculation

Next step after graduation: the matriculation. Sending all my data into the University and hoping for the best. Due to my bad grades, I wasn't able to get in right away, I had to go there for an oral exam where I can introduce myself and with this information they collect, they calculate the number of points I get in the end. I need 70 to enter. After the matriculation, I got 50. Alright, 20 to go sound doable. Whelp. I went there answered the questions as good as I could and the end result is...

63 out of 70

I couldn't believe it. 7 points are missing. 7 points for my dream to come true.

Life Goes On and On

I won't give up yet. I'll make my dream come true. I have so many ideas all I need is to earn money somehow while having the time to develop my games. I need a start off but I can't go with Kickstarter. I'm not experienced enough and every idea has a chance to be a flop. I'm not a fan of risks. So yeah, here I am writing this text sharing my story up hoping to make my dream come true by finding a way to be able to do what I love or finding a job as a game developer or similar.