I have a fiancee and two cats. I have a clear dilineation between "working on my game" time and "hanging out" time. I have a separate room I go into and when I close my door, I am no longer available. Conversely, when I am hanging out, I am not at all working. To do this requires clear communication and self control.

Started that way, too (though one cat instead of two). Now married with a toddler. If I get an hour or two to myself to code, it's a great day :)

Yup. With young kids and a spouse you're lucky if you get 15 hours of actual solo free time a week, unless you're cutting into sleep. And they'll be scattered throughout the week, then further broken into smaller parts by various interruptions, some probably claimed by various family & friend events more weeks than not unless you don't... you know, do stuff with people.

If you want to have side projects under those circumstances, I hope you like working in chunks of a few minutes at a time, days-long gaps in between sessions, with the constant threat of interruption looming and an ever-growing pile of things-you-should-probably-be-doing-instead stressing you out.

How do you manage to eke out 15 :)

Really great to know that I'm not the only one struggling with this--thanks for sharing!

I'm married and a father of three and I still find time for these things.

Sometimes this just means things take longer because I'm working on something after the kids are in bed or off visiting friends, but also I try to get my children involved. As an example; if I'm working through art or animation tutorials (still learning since I'm a programmer) and the kids are around they sit down and do them with me so that it is family time.

Your kids sitting around? Sitting and doing stuff? Please, you should not brag about you ability to do a side project, because you have just easy life. At least according to your comment.

I have only one kid, 2 years old, and I have no time for anything. My kid never sits down, never does anything longer than 5 minutes, always wants to do stuff together, always on the run, exploring every pebble on the street, every plant, running around other kids while they peacefully play with their parents. Me and wife on a regular basis get comments on the playground "All your days look like this? Ooops..." Plus, I have no grandparents near by and low chances to be accepted in kindergarten. So we are on our own. On weekends I am taking my kid out full day to get my wife some space, because she would go nuts without it after 5 days in a row - so I have not a single free day whole year. Saying all that, yes, I have 2 hours per day for myself. Right after 22:00 when I am sure the kid sleeps tight. But by that time I am wasted and not even able to read a proper book, because its just too much for my tired brain to grasp. Not even mention any form of creativity.

Sounds like an excuse to me. If you love to do something, you'll make the time for it.

It's not that people with families or other commitments don't have time to do things. They just make choices on what things are most important to them and do those things instead. And say crummy things like, "I wish I had the time for that".

It's not really the job of some guy that's describing his strategy to account for every other person and their decisions and all the alternate ways they choose to spend their time.

Life is compromise. People with families are even less likely to have the low overhead or appropriate safety net to quit their day jobs for a labour of love. They've chosen theirs already.

People with families who have a stable income capable of supporting that family will usually have time for at least 1 hobby. This covers the vast majority of middle class families. Not everyone is lucky enough for that, but quite a few software developers are (the category of people most likely to be working on an indie game in their spare time)