It’s been a while again…

So I’ve been trying…

You know it’s hard. Everything is so hard now. I keep wanting to do the things but it so much easier to just not, so much easier to fall right back into comfort zones. In order to grow though, in order to pursue the things you love you have to get uncomfortable. I know all the things I should do and yet…

So a friend told me what motivation really was. Honestly I always thought I was motivated but never had the drive to do. But motivation is the doing. Motivation is the act of accomplishing something. I never had the motivation in the first place.

I am venting right now because I need to get this out, a form of self care I guess. I needed to write out my feelings just to write honestly. I do have creative outlets, like D&D every Friday and Saturday nights, which has been awesome. And spending time with my roommate has helped me through a lot. This year has sucked so bad and I know it’s only going to get worse for a while, but I feel that we can get through this. I hope we can.

I haven’t lost hope, not yet, which I guess is the optimist in me, but hope feels like it’s hanging on by a thread. The world right now sucks, but luckily my job seems okay for now. My roommates… not so much but for now he’s okay. We are taking it one day at a time and trying not to worry about the future, cause if we worry too much about the future we will fall into despair.

Trying to do the things I want to do is difficult though. When trying to look to the future to accomplish something new, I guess strikes me with fear and apprehension. I want to do the things but I at the same time don’t. I guess why I have always liked retail. It’s a repetitive job that always needs to be done. Someone messes something up so you clean it to have someone once more mess it up. It’s a simple cycle that has no end so therefore you know what to expect. Going into something new, you don’t know what to expect. I’m afraid. I’m not even sure of what exactly. Fear of success, of having people looking to you for the answer, to rely on you specifically. Fear of failure, of never accomplishing your dreams, of seeing everyone else around you being successful and know you would never be able to accomplish anything like this. Fear of rejection, of no one accepting who I am, though most of those fears a squashed years ago, for the most part I don’t give a fuck what people think of me… but then… Fear of missing out, of seeing people you look up to hanging out with friends, spending money, enjoying life, while I am just feeling miserable at home not able to get away from a screen cause it’s the only comfort I have anymore.

I talked to my therapist this week and basically, this. I haven’t been honest to myself about how I have been feeling lately nor really honest with her for a while until that session. Or maybe…

Really I like my therapist because all I do is just talk and she listens. That’s what I need right now. Someone who has no connection to me but can listen and give me advice and tell me I’m a good person. It’s good hearing it from friends but better when it’s a stranger basically. She not being paid to tell me that I am a good person, she is paid to tell the truth, and I think that’s why it hits so much harder when she tells me things like I need more self care, I need to take care of my health, and that I am a good person.

It’s also been hard without that little fuzzy bundle of love. I felt with him around at least there was something more than just my roommate. I mean yeah I like having the freedom now, not having to worry about the lil guy, but at the same time if you don’t partake in that freedom are you really free.

Anyway I felt like I needed to write all this down cause I have had a lot on my mind lately, for obvious reasons.

So in other news. A friend whom I hadn’t talked to in years contacted me out of the blue about a month or so ago and started chatting with me. It is interesting that I seem to be a trans magnet sometimes too as they told me they were trans as well. I am glad they found me though. I was a little embarrassed previously cause I did some stupid things in my youth when they were around and was happy to have laughed it off with them XD (they made a comic about it, lets just say don’t go back to your room at a furcon when you’re roommate is sick and fool around). The thing about it is I was so embarrassed about this that I pretty much lost contact with them because of it, well with other reasons too, that was just the main thing I remembered.

Anyway we started talking and come to find out they are working on a game and asked if I wanted to join them and I said sure. My only issue… you know that wall of text I just wrote… yeah…

I have been trying to work with Godot, which is what their game is based in, and honestly it’s been slow going. I keep distracting myself and never finish what I start. So I need to force myself to work past these boundaries.

One of my favorite youtubers just had their 10 year anniversary episode and explained how they got to the point was because of the art and the passion. It wasn’t the working for money, wasn’t the need to prove themselves, but for the enjoyment, the love of the art. I haven’t honestly haven’t felt that in years. There’s a new Interactive Story type site based on Rewall that I was also invited to but I haven’t been able to join it either. Honestly with that though I feel there’s already so much lore I feel weird stepping in the middle of something I don’t have some vague awareness of since I have never read the Redwall series (I know bad furry).

It’s odd to say that I don’t have that passion anymore but honestly I think it’s more I have too much passion for some many things that maybe I have burnt myself out. My own thoughts are filled with my own projects that I can’t fill it with more until I get some of these out, and I can’t get some of these out because I am drowning in my fears and these projects are the waters drowning me.

*deep sigh*

Anyway this is still going to be my stepping stone to get out of my head. Help someone else with a project of their own. Maybe helping them will help myself get out of this funk. Let’s hope.

Cyan

Yesterday I had to put my kitten, Hessian, to sleep. He had diabetes and had lived a really long life but the last few days he had been suffers and yesterday he wouldn’t or couldn’t eat and could barely move.

We hoped he would get better during the day as we had to go get tires and didn’t realize it’d take 3 to 4 hours to get those changed, so while out we went to see Wicked. Wicked was surprisingly well done and followed the musical really well. After the move we got our car back got a couple of things from the local store, like some tuna as we know Hessian really loves it and when we gave it to him he sniffed it but didn’t even touch it. We knew then that we had to do it. He hadn’t eaten all day and what little he did he threw up.

We took him to the same place we had take our last two kittens as we knew they were a good place for this and very respectful. We cuddled him until the end and then… I just couldn’t anymore. I bawled. My kitten, my little foreshadow, my baby, was gone and my heart was broken.

I honestly figured this was going to be the day this morning cause I bawled yesterday morning knowing he was suffering. I am happy now that he is no longer suffering though but can’t stand the loss.

On the other hand, there’s this sense of freedom now. I don’t feel like I am trapped now because of the need to take care of him. I can actually go to my roommates family for Thanksgiving next weekend now. I can go visit my mom if I wanted to and I don’t have to worry about who will be taking care of him. I won’t have to worry about cleaning up after him, of him getting into things he shouldn’t be…

And all this makes me sad too cause I hate thinking that there are benefits of losing him. If I could have more time with him where I know he wasn’t suffering then I would have gladly taken it, but I knew even if we fixed him yesterday he would have just been feeling bad again in a month or couple of months… and I couldn’t do that to him and I was just too tired to do that to myself as well.

I think we made the right decision, but I hate having doubts and hate feeling that there are benefits. This little orange baby was a huge part of my life and I will never forget him.

So this weekend we started off by planning on going to Ikea because I wanted to get a new bookcase for my bedroom as I have wanted this originally but the item that I got was just slightly too big and have moved it out to the living room which is okay but also annoying. So while we were out the roomie was like well lets get lunch and oh since we are out and I don’t want to go to a huge crowded place lets get the update on the vaccine (why I feel crappy today) so we went to Culvers got their pot roast sandwich, which is fucking amazing btw, then scheduled our vaccine appointments there. We left the Culvers went to the Walgreens on the way to Ikea, got the shots then continued on our way. While we were driving there my roommate was like… lets just go and specifically get the furniture you want and not walk the whole place cause people are annoying in that place especially on weekends. So we took a shortcut after the first escalator and took then next set back down to the box of furnitures area. I grabbed what I needed and we headed out. Also I hate how those carts at Ikea move. Anyway i got a little frustrated but ended up getting in a line and waiting forever for people to figure out how to register We then got our purchases and went home.

On the way we stopped by a local pot place. My roommate had always wondered and same with me when my boss suggested it so got the chocolate that he suggested and we got a few other items. Originally I was going to stay in the car but I really needed to piss so my roommate told me they had bathrooms so I went in. I had to stop at the front desk to get my ID scanned and the guy behind the counter complimented me on my Meows Morales (cat version of Miles Morales/Spiderman) Got inside, did the deed, got our pot and left. Then we got home and had to deal with the Ikea furniture. Fucking heavy but we eventually got it inside thanks for the roomates idea of grabbing my old chair that I use as a foot stool. We then had some amazing Italian for dinner and then yeah had one of the bites of the chocolate.

I wrote most of that to a friend while a bit buzzed from the edible. But after that I went to bed at about 10:30pm and woke up dead to the world about 7:30am. I didn’t realize until about noon that I was feeling like crap because of the vaccine booster. Ugh so I was going to try and build my bookcase today but I just couldn’t. My mind and body just would not have been able to handle that today. So yeah been relaxing most of the rest of the day since then.

Cyan

My last therapy session I talked about my self doubt and how I felt like I wasn’t good enough which prevented me from trying, or one of the many reasons that did.

I don’t actually know how to get over that.

I mean I have suffered from self-doubt since High School. The reasons I got things done then was because I had structure behind them. I had deadlines and such, which most of the time I would meet but even then my ADHD would frequently push back on and make me late for because I would remember at the last second and even then typically get a C for that, which honestly didn’t help when trying to do homework when you can do things last second and still pass.

I have tried to set personal deadlines but because they are personal they really mean little to nothing. Like “Oh well, I missed that deadline, oooops” without some stakes there’s not urgency and without urgency there is no real deadline. At the same time I don’t know if setting arbitrary deadlines would actually work for me now, even if I tried to work with them aside from above example of not. It still feels hollow. I even tried working with the whole NaNoWriMo and still couldn’t get past the start cause the deadline was still defined by me, there were no stakes.

So then how does one get out of this mentality.

I’ve tried to over plan things so at least I know where I am going in order to make it easier for me to write/create, but it usually makes it more difficult cause it’s like, well now I have to have these characters do this thing in order to get here and do this thing. That typically doesn’t flow naturally. It difficult to determine the wills of a character once you are just creating them. Maybe that would be a better option then fully develop the character so I would know what they are and how they would react, what their motivations are. Even with that though I am stuck in the weeds of character development and not of full creation.

Write a draft and then continue with that draft. I can’t ever seem to do that. I always look back and then hate the thing I just wrote. It’s no wonder I look back at my childhood and envy that guy because of their ability to just do. I have lost that along the way somewhere. Because of rejection or just indifference. With no positive feedback I have just gone into the death spiral of my own negative feedback.

Cyan

So a few years ago… I wish it were just a few years ago… I went back to colleges after being “laid off” from my previous job that I didn’t realize how much I hated until I was “laid off” from it. During this second trip to college I took classes to try and become a video game designer. Honestly I feel I am more in line with story development and took classes more in line with that but at the same time here I learned to code and learned the basics of game design and the Unity Game Engine.

Unity was a great system, free to use, easy to use, and had many tutorials on how to develop for the system. And then a couple of years ago Unity did something really stupid and made it so everyone hated them, which I honestly don’t blame them.

So lately I have been trying to learn Godot. Godot is very similar to Unity but it is open source and constantly being developed. Recently right after the Unity debacle they added support for C# which is what all of Unity is programmed in, but honestly looking at how Godot does things I think it might be slightly better in some aspects just behind due to being newer than Unity.

Anyway I have had two games that I have been wanting to make for years now.

A Steampunk inspired Metroidvania

A Tactics game inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics, which I feel is by far the best tactical RPG out there.

I don’t really want to go into too much detail about them here, I already have plenty of notes on them that constantly change when I think of something new. But I honestly think my issue really is I hesitate to start. I don’t know exactly where to begin. Well I know exactly where I begin, I’m the story guy so I come up with story and ideas on how to play and see the game, but after that point I hesitate cause I either try to do too much at once or don’t do anything beyond planning.

What normally happens to me with creative endeavors is this: I come up with an idea, plan it out, get as much detail as I can to get a good start, and then will go to the next step… and then there’s five steps. I need the art so I can see the character in the style that I am trying to learn how to program which I need tutorials for cause I don’t know how this new system deals with characters like this and oh look at this idea maybe I should change the whole story why I go play and tweek that a bit since I can’t seem to do anything programming wise…

I just exhaust myself in the planning and preplanning and the learning that I never get anything more than a few notes and a test game opened and barely started.

My therapy has been helping me feel better about myself and feel better about doing things in general but I still can’t get the drive to just continue doing, and that drive tends to make it at this point a “Well you know you aren’t going to do anything so why bother even starting, why not play that mind numbing game you like instead.”

This is honestly what I wanted therapy to help me with. I suppose I should try meditation to calm my mind, which she suggests, but I don’t know how well that will actually work for me. And those doubts are what are preventing me from doing anything.

Cyan

Recently I got a new computer thanks to my roommate. He noticed that my PC had very little hard drive space on my C drive and that I was asking for better graphics so I could play more modern games so he decided that he wanted an upgrade too and helped me create a new PC. He bought a better graphics card for himself and a bigger C drive for my PC and then transferred his older graphics card to my PC.

So far it’s been great except I had to get slightly bigger and newer monitors for my new PC, you know better graphics require better monitors. So I got those as well and set everything up. All the stuff came on a Friday so couldn’t get anything set up in time for my normal D&D game Friday nights, then also slightly interrupted my Saturday game as I figured out how the hell Windows 11 worked. But for the most part got the hang of it.

Now I’ve had the new PC for a couple of months by this point and I do love it. Windows 11 is still a pain making things that were easy in Windows 10 more complicated but for the most part it’s just something I ignore as most everything else is just that same.

I do love the new PC though and well besides just getting an upgrade the main reason that I wanted it right now was more because I got the PC version of Horizon Forbidden West with the DLC Burning Shores. Since I never got a PS5 and have no plans on doing so I figured this was so far the only real game that I wanted to get on the system and a lot of the other games I like tend to be ported over to PC anyway so why get an exclusive system. I mean the real reason I got a PS3 when they came out was because they were actually the cheapest version of a Bluray player and why bother getting one machine that can just do that when you can get a game system that can also play Bluray for the same price. PS4 was just because better quality games and at that point PC and Console still had a major separation.

But yeah so I tore through Horizon: FW and BS in fact last weekend, Sunday played through all of BS in one evening. I didn’t do a lot of the sidequests by the end and may go back but probably not since I did pass FW on the PS4. RIght now though it has inspired me to start thinking about and trying to work on my own games again… Which will be my next blog post

Cyan

So with this renewed inspiration and motivation there are some projects that I have had on the back burner that I have been wanting to do but never accomplished. So I feel if I make a list of them I would possibly push me into doing them, or at least give me something to look at as I try to figure out why I’m not doing any of them.

Learn Blender

So I have wanted to learn Blender for years now (see last post) and not sure why I haven’t. It is a complicated program and I have a weird way of learning. I learn better when someone is showing me how to do something. Basically all the tutorials in the world could help a bit but if someone is walking me through it I can get the jist of it better. Now writing this out reminds me one of my D&D friends from Fridays said she would help me learn it so I should take her up on that. (Going to message her right now to see what we can set up).

Learn Godot

With Unity… well being Unity I decided to switch game development stuff over to Godot, which honestly is fine since I never really learned Unity very well either. Unity at least had a programming language that was more well known than Godot but it does seem like Godot has some things that make it somewhat easier to use.

Develop Games

I have like five to six games always floating through my head at any given point. The one that I have been trying to make for the longest time has been a steampunk/safari inspired metroidvania but getting it from my head to physical form has been the issue. I have been finding things that can help with it constantly but actually making it is the problem. My issue is I want to do all the things at the same time. Like I want to make the levels, but oh I need to have the character designed, and have I got the art for the world sprites yet, oh hey what about baddies I need some of those. I have got the primary story done, not written out but planned out in my head, but then of course I have to write out the story as well… This is all why I never get anything of it done. I want to do it all now and want it all perfect, or at least usable until I can perfect it.

Writing

This of course leads to writing. So the first time I went to college was because I wanted to be a writer. Not a technical writer but a fiction writer. And while there I wrote a lot. One of my favorite pieces of fiction I ever wrote was while in school for a collaborative fiction website. Most of my good written work was with this website. I even got that one and another story published by a different website. I have also written a story for a second life world in which I got it published as well. I have written anything really since then. Or I have tried but I get stuck right after I start. I don’t find it good enough so I can’t continue. I continue creating the story in my head but can never get what I have in my head out. It’s quite frustrating. I need to just write like I am writing now. Just go with the flow but then that perfectionist mindset pops in as soon as I stop and then have to go correct it. Like I finally got an idea for a story that I really like the idea of and started writing and after five sentences I had to stop and rewrite. And I did… and only got three… This is what brings me joy, the act of creating yet the act of writing gets in the way. The act of putting my thoughts into words betrays me.

Taking time for myself

My therapist keeps telling me I need to take time for myself. Get to know me, without someone else connected to me. When ever I talk about doing stuff it’s always we (my roommate and I) and it’s never I. She wants me to center myself, basically. I get it. I spent too much time as a we and not enough time as a me. I don’t feel that connection to the me anymore. My job doesn’t really help. Everyday it seems like it’s just a struggle to get through anymore. When I first started it wasn’t this bad and I was working hours on end to do stuff constantly then too but now it doesn’t feel like we even get a chance to breath. And I still love the job and company but I hate work. and everything feels like it’s “capital W” Work lately, like it’s a four letter word. I want to enjoy the things I do and I don’t feel like I am enjoying what I do anymore. And when I get to that burnout point I need to make some sort of change, which is why I want to get back into the creative stuff above so I can at least enjoy what I am doing even if it is Work. Also driving to an from is killing me. Two hours of being in the car a day which makes work feel like 11 hours a day and if you need you 7 to 8 hours of sleep a day that means you have 5 to 6 hours of free time. When you are physically and mentally strained you don’t want to do shit, at least I don’t. So one hour before work to get ready they 4 to 5 hours of time spent doing nothing before bed, or well eating. No wonder I feel so burnt out, why I feel I can’t take time for myself.

I took today off because I had some issue with my car that needed to get take care of and the first thing I did after breakfast, go back to sleep. I felt like shit and certainly didn’t feel rested. I feel so much more relaxed than I would have if I went into work, even though I would have done the job that needed to be done. I just feel like I need more. I love that the people at this place treat me well like a part of the company rather than just a disposable commodity. I wish we had more time off and pay though but small company is a small company. I also don’t mind the hours. But the travel to and stress of that travel and that time I could have to do other things would be much better, yet I know I would still waste them like I currently do.

Anyway that’s what I am trying to work on now.

Cyan

So I have been wanting to learn blender for a long time, really ever since Second Life made it so you could use mesh. I haven’t really ever been one for modeling stuff but I have always loved architectural design and re-creation. Since I have been getting back into SL it’s been getting me creatively motivated again. So I had made within SL a giant brewery based on the American Brewery building in Baltimore.

I tried to create this as best as I could within the limits I had of SL and the Mesh Studio program I was using at the time to make it.

As you can see I did my best and think I nailed it pretty well but would love for it to be better, and to do that I would need to learn blender. Blender though always confused me because it difficult to say the least. SL always seems to inspire me to build things specifically in the steampunk city of New Babbage. I always find these awesome buildings that inspire me or I want to completely replicate like the brewery above and I try my hardest to do so. What makes it so easy with SL is all you have to do is produce a “prim” and then just connect them together and make primitive (because of prim amount limitations) items. With Mesh Studio you can go one step further by making more intricate items and remove those prim limitations because the mesh will remove a lot of those limitations. So more and more complicated things can be made. The sad thing this mainly moved all building from SL into other programs which honestly I feel slowed a lot of people from going into certain areas of SL. Like Babbage is a city of builders and without the builders around the role play that came with it slowly died as well.

Luckily someone started setting up events next month which has gotten me inspired once more to get into SL and back to Babbage and also learn blender. Hopefully this time I can actually learn it.

Cyan

So if you haven’t noticed I haven’t written much until lately. Honestly the only times I have felt creative is when I was around other creative people, like at school. The best thing I felt I ever wrote was over 20 years ago when I was at college the first time and working with a bunch of other creatives to make an intro to a collaborative fiction series we were setting up, which sadly didn’t go very far.

This story was born out of a post modern novel I devoured. There are some books that I “had” to read for school but when I read them it was all consuming. I think they first was Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. There was something about that story the “utopia” that was actually a dystopia. I don’t know why but I finished that book within a weekend, when we were supposed to go over the book over a week or two. The second book, which inspired my said best work, was Mao II by Don DeLillo, another dystopian post modern work. I don’t know why they clicked for me but they just did, and it’s not all works that do that as I had read White Noise as well and wasn’t as transfixed.

What came out of that was a story about a man seeped into depression wondering through his life as the head of a space station and being murdered which started a war with a new faction of aliens being found in outer space. The only most confusing part of the story would be the introduction of the alternative races and character that would come up later. I did get this story and another published in college those many years ago, but the way they were published was slightly different. This was when online sites were more like submitting to a magazine so you know actual contact and payment for them using my art, which was very nice. The other thing it was a voice reading of my stories, which was awesome but the website was lost over the years sadly and the recordings from that are no where to be found and I really would love to have a copy of those. I have another piece published for a short story series based on a section based in Second Life which was also pretty cool.

But lately I just stopped. The closest I have gotten would be to play D&D with friends during the weekends. I’ve tried to write things but no. Like maybe writing a paragraph or two starting something and never going forward with it, but the motivation died.

Now the motivation is back just hard to once more find the inspiration. Luckily the place that I enjoy on Second Life is seeming to have a resurgence so hopefully with that I will gain the inspiration to match my newfound motivation as well.

Cyan

So if you don’t know me I tend to have very surreal dreams, and I revel in them. I love having weird things happen to even a point where sometimes I realize I’m in a dream and just like cool anyway lets see where this goes. It’s rare that I have nightmares anymore though they still occur and of course most dreams I still don’t remember but I do remember a lot of my dreams.

Lately a lot of my dreams center on this conglomeration of Target/Kmart/Grocery mega store, the last few times which seemed to just be outside in the middle of a cityscape. Multiple times I was worried about work and then realized that I don’t work in those places (never worked in grocery stores before).

I do love how the mind just grabs things from every place and melds them together to get so weird amalgamation of something familiar. I have many times walked through endless bathrooms, or malls, had houses that defy physics and logic, go for a drive in a car to sudden no longer be in a car and just walking around. I even love the perspective change, sometimes being in first person, sometimes in third.

I honestly never put much thought into what my dreams meant because they were so surreal. Most people that I know who remembers their dreams seem to have “normal” dreams. And it’s funny I have dreams from when I was much younger I can remember over things I was told yesterday. Like there was a time I was at the local mall and saw the Ninja Turtles being chased by Shredder. Or I was out in the woods during a storm with tornadoes in the horizon and the Smurfs led me into a giant warehouse, kind-of like the one from Indiana Jones. There was a series of dreams that I seemed to have that I constantly had and then realized one time they were all connected and after that stopped having those specific ones altogether.

Anyway just wanted to post about that :3 Laters

Cyan