I wrote about avoiding the burnout last year, for which my technique is to never stop moving but instead ease off on certain elements. Taking a 3 week break from working on side projects was intentional in order to avoid burning myself out. Usually, I know I'm ready to get "back into it" when I start to feel the itch to work again. After spending the whole year working on my game last year, it turns out that I needed about 3 weeks off to recover.

Even though I feel recovered from working on the game, I still want to intentionally avoid working on the next game for a while. This is part of my reprioritization plan as I prepare for what is ahead.

I want Latin to be a part of my next game, since it will involve magical cats and casting spells. Latin is a good language to use for magic, but I don't want to use pseudo Latin like what is found in Harry Potter. I want to be able to use real classical Latin in the game, and for that reason, I need to spend a little more time learning the language itself.

Programmers are natural learners. Being free from working on a side project will give me time to do a month or two of learning something new in my field. I'm not planning big projects like AI. I'm mostly going to be focused on increasing my "business" software development skills, such as the ones that are useful for normal software engineering jobs. I'm also going to be focusing on some of the basics, much like doing drills.