March 13

Task Switching @_@

This has to be my biggest hurdle as a creative who wants to make things consistently. I can’t switch from task to task with ease. Sometimes not at all, like obsessive tasks I find myself in (coding, playing video games–which I just don’t do anymore because of this problem–arting.) There is something in my brain that will have me sit in a chair and attack a project, snapping at everyone/thing that interrupts, not eating, barely dragging away to the bathroom, etc, and it will lasts for days to weeks.

I work hard to not find myself in this bad place; I don’t like who I am and it’s not who I want to be. But I’m seeing this problem in more milder places, like I just can’t keep my house in order once I’ve started writing for the day. Writing requires me to get into a certain headspace which is very hard to willing leave once I’m there. I don’t know how to do multiple things a day. It’s a work day or it’s a life day, you know, and that work is usually focused on only one thing.

I know humans aren’t really supposed to be good at multitasking, but I don’t think this is really multitasking. This is monotasking, one after the other, and I just can’t seem to get in the hang of it. This is something I need to learn, like, hardcore. I feel like it would alleviate a lot of my stress if I can figure this out and be able to balance life and creative tasks.

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March 12

Arting

So, I think I might be moving toward the visual novel idea. I was thinking recently about all the reasons why I couldn’t move on it before. For one, I was looking at an Amazon focused strategy which required me to get all these books published first. Now that I’m in a website content strategy, that problem is alleviated completely, and I just need to get used to the idea. Like, it’s hard to keep remembering the freedom I have to create more than just the rewrite of PATB. I have options now that I don’t need to make content that’s only Amazon friendly.

Another big reason was time/money when it comes to graphics creation. To be blunt, although I used to make art a lot when I was younger, I don’t necessarily enjoy it much anymore. Digital art is time consuming, and usually life consuming for me, and the Demon Virus visual novel has a lot of characters that I would have to have model art for. It’s a lot of art–I’m talking about 10 main characters because of the branching plots, and they would each require different expressions, poses and outfits depending on storyline. Aka, hiring that shit out is $$$ I just don’t have.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with this little graphic, but it rules the majority of my creative life. As someone who was ill for so long (and, let’s be frank, broke,) I utilized the resources I had to create a quality product, and that involved taking a lot of time and refining and learning to get to the best level I could be with, well, pretty much everything I strive at. I don’t want to be ‘good’ at something; I always want to be my personal best. Not the best ever, but the best of my ability. So it’s usually time extensive. With a few drawing shortcuts, though, I’ve found some ways to make this process much faster than I feared it might be. I just tried it out with the Blowjob King character art, just to see if I could get a feel for it, and I’m happy with the results.

I’m basically creating my own reference in a 3D software and then using it for the body base of the 2D characters. It still requires creating line art, clothing choices, color, etc, but this takes a lot of pain out of the process. Having character bases that allow me to reference the exact height and body build which I can then pose accordingly takes a huge chunk of time out of the sketch process, and if you’re an artist, you likely know that unless you get the fundamentals correct in you sketch, you’re end product is doomed, like forgetting the foundation to a house.

I wish I could have done this with a more elaborate software that could do clothing, hair styles, etc, but I wasn’t able to find one that posed as well or naturally (or was affordable) as DesignDoll. I tried Daz studios last summer–It was frustrating, to put it kindly, and the characters were very stiff reference with a lack of intuitiveness for changing their body types, etc. Seriously, if I had the cash (I can only imagine this shit is super expensive) I would love to just create a character, pose it, and use it directly in the interactive novel. Like your own damn anime. I feel like this shit must exist at this point, but yeah, also assume it requires knowledge and cash way beyond me. But hey, I can find my shortcuts at least, and it makes a difference.

The last problem was, naturally, learning a new software to create a visual novel, but I think this is pretty much solved too. Last summer, before the mold drove me out of the house and I lost months, I had been playing with a visual novel builder that had been really intuitive. I have to go through my old notes and find the damn name of it again, but I remember it was basically a drag and drop editor set up–it was like an html editor in a lot of ways where I just had to provide the content and it could set up really quickly.

I’m still hesitating. I would really like to have the first PATB books published before I take on this project full steam, but I’m not sure if it’s ‘realistic.’ PATB, at this point, isn’t about new content, but about fixing up the old content so it’s publish ready, and I’m worried that’s going to be perceived as basically standing still. I don’t want to jump into Sorcerer Slayer until the other 2 books are finished–lets not add anything else future wise when I need to ensure the timeline is set in the past, you know?

I’m not pushing myself enough. I’m not talking stress; I’m talking challenges. I’m bored by the rewrites and my productivity is going down because of it. So I think as a creator, I have an obligation to figure out how to get out of this funk and get motivated. I’ve been trying with the rewrites, every day looking for new ways to make it interesting, push me to get to a remotely useful wordcount, but I think I’m just honestly too bored. I need a challenge that I can do side by side with the rewrites, one that’s paced at my choice so it doesn’t become a stressors. That first challenge is just to get back into writing anything other than PATB, which is why I’m writing up Blowjob King, but I think after that I’ll be looking at the visual novel idea as the next project.

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march 8

Perspective is kinda magical

Perspective is one of those things I think about a lot, not just in my writing but in my day to day. Perspective is honestly the key to PTSD, to surviving illness and trauma, and to just doing the same damn thing every single day and managing to love it anyways.

Yesterday I was feeling down, to put it kindly. I was kicking my ass about being stupid when it came to the website. In the moment, it didn’t feel stupid (I thought I was hacked and I was being damn brilliant) but after the fact once I realized the tech behind why it gave a false reading, I felt dumb. Looking back, all I could see was me fighting shadows. And it’s not like it’s the first time. This was everything when it came to having PTSD for over 30 years. You see these patterns that aren’t really there and then you reinforce them with what seems like rational data. I SHOULD be worried because being hacked means this and this and this for me and my users. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t hacked; as long as I believed I was, I acted as if I was. Perspective is amazing.

I once found myself in a used bookstore talking to a young man who, not too far into the conversation, revealed that the television and certain movies were communicating to him directly. He did not think this was out of the ordinary or irrational. No, to suggest that a bunch of actors came together to work on a set for months while a director and crew did everything to produce a movie that was not trying to send him a message was absurd to him. In his mind, of course the television was talking to him; he’s the only one there to hear.

Perspective is the difference of being a schizophrenic or being ‘sane,’ and yeah, sanity gets quotes because it’s fucking subjective. Perspective makes it subjective. The same way it makes a hardship feel bearable or impossible. Getting through mold toxicity and those horrible months of chemical sensitivity could have been the worst days of my life. Instead I chose to look at living out of my car as an adventure instead of as a curse. And hey, that positive attitude helped me see more positive things that eventually led me not only out of that situation, but also helped me regain my health. If I went in thinking that Parkinson’s was a death sentence, I never would have looked and found the awesome supplements that helped me regrow my neurons and dopamine receptors/transmitters enough to get my damn brain back.

I sat down today still feeling pretty damn dumb for chasing around my Cloudflare shadow for two days straight and felt even worse when I realized I didn’t have anything new written. I couldn’t write. Clearly, whatever the hell I was doing with my life was a fail if I could be distracted from work over something that didn’t even exist. I had lost my fun, and I was being an asshole in my head about it. I could have stayed there in that mental place–I have spent years in bad mental places and not tried to change a thing; I know how easy it is–but instead I decided to write about writer’s block and why it sucks and why I started writing in the first place. And I got to this point of realizing not only had I just written @2000 words when I had said I ‘couldn’t write’ but I was also looking forward to writing because I remembered all the reasons I love to write. I fucking love writing!

Perspective is this really cool bit of software in the brain that has so much control over what we do, and rarely do we give it the attention it deserves. Just like when you can trigger the survival instinct when thinking danger is there, or the hunger instinct when you smell food, you can trigger the ‘let’s write something fun’ instinct with the right thought. Perspective is the key to everything, an intentioned (hopefully) message to the psyche to get things in line and bring forth the needed behavior for the task. It’s freaking magic.

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march 5

Okay, updates are not worth this bs

One update just killed the embedded font throughout the website. I got it fixed (hours later because I’m just too freaking new to this shit) and I just want to sleep. The last half a week has totally sucked. Had a bad allergy reaction to my allergy shot, had to wait the weekend to have it fixed, only to have it brushed off and sick again an hour after the next shot. @_@ I’ve been having fevers constantly and my energy is flagging, but I’m not having the telltale mark around the injection site. I’m not flaming up even though the Parkinson’s is running rampant. My life has turned into running down a million fucking symptoms be it computer or health and slamming against a wall until I finally solve it.

I dunno. I gotta figure this out. I don’t want to slide backwards again and lose the health I gained. I just want something to be easy. If this shit didn’t steal my brain away at the same time, it might not always feel like such a struggle. *sigh* Whatev. Tomorrow is never the same, yeah?

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March 3

Freaking disorganization…

There has to be an easier way to organize emails and comments. I know I’m slow with this shit–I mean, I’m crawling at the moment when it comes to answering emails. I want some sort of system where if I forget, I can be reminded and deal with it at the same time every day. I think it’s one of those things where, if I don’t commit to the same time every day, I’m just going to procrastinate forever.

I love the comments and emails, btw, just to be clear. I’m just a mess when it comes to time management. You know, because the world we live in requires a management of something so completely out of our control like time. @_@ Ugh. How do people do this?! It takes me two-three days just to get around to refilling my damn supplements for the week.

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February 28

Oh dear…

I just discovered I can create tables like in Excel but on the website, and then link individual cells into whatever part of the website I want. I see this becoming a doomed obsession of neurotic word count. Yes, I’ll be making it to save time so I won’t have to do the counting again later, but that’s only because I obsessively count this shit in the first place. @_@

This will be FUN.♥ Because that’s the monster I have for a brain. >_>

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February 28

Insomnia :/

Dealing with some very frustrating insomnia the last few days. It’s a weird type, and I’m not super sure how to deal with it. I fall asleep around 4:30 am, get woken when the bf leaves for work, and then I’m suddenly wide awake about 2 hours later. It’s about 5 hours sleep total, which isn’t bad, but my body just drags for hours after, exhausted, trying to get those last hours I missed. It’s a gross limbo where I’m not really awake but I can’t sleep. I usually end up falling asleep again a little after noon, and when I wake up, I feel like a person again but I’ve lost so much time.

I’ve been wanting to get up at a ‘proper’ time. Sleeping through daylight leads to issues, the most annoying being how everything is closed and I turn into an antisocial mess. >_> Ugh, but this is like zombie mornings of doom, and I don’t know why my body keeps doing this. I feel like I’m losing half my day. :/

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February 26

I might have started exercising again…

I’ve been putting it off this time around now that my health is back. I’m really just so wary of it all, I think. But I spent 30 minutes doing aerobic exercise yesterday and it was easy. I mean, weirdly easy. Lol, when you can breathe, everything feels so much easier. I keep expecting that being sick this long would naturally lead to muscle atrophy; it just makes sense. But whatever the mold toxicity, allergies, and Parkinson’s have done, it doesn’t seem to have led to any kind of long term muscular problems. As long as I ensure my body gets dopamine where it needs to get it, I’m fine.

I want to push to have a more active lifestyle–and it will take pushing. I’m not good at doing something without a proper purpose. The idea of running on a wheel like a mouse just doesn’t fit my idea of life. But I need to get this body moving. We’re not like machines; we don’t wear down faster when we move. No, this organic form needs conflict and mild forms of stress to push it to grow and evolve and adapt. Muscle growth requires the small breakage of those muscle fibers first before healing into a form that can handle more weight. It’s a strangely profound metaphor for life.

Being uncomfortable may feel like shit, but when you embrace it as life defining moments that build you into something greater than you started, it takes on a whole new meaning.

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