Update + Possible Dream Series

Hello,

I should be posting about the game I created over the course of three weeks in June, but that’s not what this is about. The game is working & complete-sh (to me its just a proof of concept demo, it doesn’t have everything I wanted to do), I just haven’t bothered to do anything with it since finishing last semester. Maybe I’ll post about this later.

Evidence of game.

I’ve just returned to polytechnic after a three week break of doing nothing… initially.

I can’t remember how this started but, over a week ago I emailed a dream to my flatmates. I kinda treated it as a creative writing exercise. They seemed to really like it so I sent them another one. Then another one. I think the first couple dreams I shared was added to a zine.

The same guy mentioned there might be an audience for this & I realized – I have about seven years worth of material, with more to come in the future. Maybe I could turn this into a series of some kind.

So Far So Good

Hello, I’m finally on break from design school for two weeks. Now for an update.

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I would have written this post sooner except on Sunday my window, goaded by wind gusts, decided to fall out & shatter onto the street. Now my window is cardboarded up & I’m waiting for it to be replaced; no idea when.

But I digress – this post is actually about how making friends became absurdly excruciating.

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Returning to polytech has been a godsend to me. I am very much enjoying communication design & feel like I’ve found my element:

• I storyboarded an idea I had floating around for a long time (I’ll make a post about this later).
• Been learning about various design movements, like Art Nouveau & Russian Constructivism.
• Been introduced to drawing tablets & currently have an animation assignment I’ll do over the next two weeks based on an old dream (again, this will be its own post).
• I’ve been (more) properly introduced to photography. Didn’t realize how much there was to portraits & how experimental you can be (got really into collage & cut-outs).

Perhaps the most significant aspect is that I seem to actually be making friends. I realize that probably sounds banal but, given my reclusive nature & the way my life has been going, its just… very nice to have this happen, even though I feel my behaviour just made things more difficult.

Before Study

Hello, I just felt like doing a random update since my course is starting next week:

• Still chipping away at a scanned image of my mythic bird design. The scanner doesn’t do a great job of digitizing my sketches, & I thought setting it to max contrast would be enough to give me a cleanish sketch, but instead I was left with fuzzy outlines. Since then I’ve been meticulously cleaning the lines so I can colour it. I guess this is why artists ink their lines first.

• Passed my car onto my brother so he may regularly get his daughter to childcare. I seem to be doing fine with non-car life so far.

• I’ve actually been using Twine to do some writing. I’ve even been plotting out some of my game ideas in it, since you can have stories function like games. I don’t have anything worth releasing at this time & I won’t promise that I will in the future. At present, this is just something for myself.

• I also felt like updating my About page.

Saharasha Scan WIP

Otherwise not much else. I’ve honestly been struggling to keep myself occupied until now, but doing art has helped. I’m just waiting for my course to start but I’m also feeling trepidation.

When I studied IT I didn’t try to make friends & I was in a more negative place about myself. I’ve improved since then but I wonder if history will repeat itself. Admittedly, one of the reasons for returning to study was so I could figure out where I want to go & the kind of people I belong with. If its just the same results again I’m not sure how I’d handle it now that I’m flatting (I at least had my parents last time). I guess I’m used to it at this point in life, but a change would be nice.

I’ll see how next week goes. I’m not sure how posting will go from now on, but if this course is as intensive as IT was you may not hear from me in a long while. Future posts will most likely be about whatever projects I do for design school.

Farewell.

Study Confirmed, Now What?

I’ve received confirmation that my application for the Bachelor of Communication Design has been successful. I’m basically set to do study next year & hopefully begin a new direction with my life. In the meantime I’ve been doing some odd doodling & thinking about what to do until study begins.

I’m going to start with the first item on my ‘wish-to-do’ list:

• Make drawing, art, & design work a near daily habit.
• Try my hand at pixel art & perhaps go further with digital art.
• Get myself to write encounter scenarios (for like the 40th time!).
• Return to generic world-building.

I imagine that as I complete each piece I’ll make a post about them – beginning with the first page of a new sketchbook.

Some incomplete doodles. Top-left: Me having no idea what to draw… beside an Eevee. Right: A dragon. Bottom-left: “Hades, the world turtle”.

I just wanted to start with random ideas; I’ll focus on single concepts for later pages. Much of what I plan on drawing will be of characters & creatures (both my own concepts & fan-art of existing media), along with the odd scene from a dream. For these “dream scenes” I’d like to try out a more ‘simple’ & ‘cartoony’ art style as I’m tempted to depict them like a comic strip (I may need to do some research & experimentation towards this). As usual, I have a long list of creative ideas.

In short, continuing the art/design bandwagon with more regular posts to be expected, again.

Farewell.

Design! All or Nothing.

Yay, something not depressing!

To open up my job options, I have decided to study design! Given where my creative interests lie, & the kind of things I enjoy, it’s almost embarrassing that I didn’t pursue this earlier (though really I didn’t think returning to study was a viable option, particularly in something more artistic).

Next year I plan on returning to Polytechnic to at least do the first year of the Bachelor in Communication Design. Yesterday I talked with the administrator about this & she said I could instead do a ‘graduate diploma’ (I think) since I’m a Bachelor of IT graduate. This means I could skip to the final year if I so choose to. At this point I’m still unsure what to specialize in so doing the first year will at least give me an idea of where I want to go. It does help that I already did a design paper as part of my BIT.

However, I need to apply by November 30th to have a good chance of getting in, & I need to come up with a portfolio showcasing my current design abilities. I’ll also need to sort out my student loan. That gives me about six weeks to prove that I’m ready to do this.

Another Video + Update

Hello, got another video to share. This is a talk about the modern cultural role of games & how they could be done better. It voices many of the concerns I’ve been having about games today & made me realize who the audience of games may actually be (it also made me realize some games could be a sort of modern ‘drop-in centre’ for fringe elements of society). It is another 30 minute video (I like long videos) so set aside time if you want to watch it.

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This also gives me the excuse to give a quick update (wow its been months since I did this):

Existential Recurrence & Purpose

This is a post I’ve rewritten over and over again. I’ve thought about making this shorter but I feel the length is necessary for understanding this.

This post serves two purposes for me:

1. As a complete record of the process, thus this is going to be a long & thorough post (perhaps the longest single post I’ve written).
2. As a self reminder for reasons I’ll explain at the end.

In keeping with this theme I’ll be referencing things I’ve written about before, so I can understand if you want to skip this. I’m sick of this recurring as well.

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First off, something I forgot to add to an earlier post which also applies here.

The wish for death can be exacerbated by a long accumulation of painful moments, memories & associations where all viable alternatives have failed. This tiring slog can be made more hopeless when you are unable to properly communicate the suffering to another caring soul. Even when you can, no amount of understanding with the wrong people can truly solve such predicaments. The process may even lead to self alienation.

It can be caused by their inability to find a compelling solution to their existential horror, or their own cyclic frame of thinking. Sometimes it’s both. It’s hard to consolidate the later when you’re stuck with the first.

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My life has lost clarity.

I’ve become too painfully aware of my own recurring actions & results, all of which have seemingly lead to stagnation. I don’t know what alternative action to take, & to continue as I have is just insanity. It’s broken me.

I stopped because there was no point to it – only to dive deep into a marginally different recurrence.

See, I know that being disciplined about my wishes & balancing my needs are key to living a good life, but why should I? Why should I affirm my life & continue through guaranteed suffering? To what point & purpose am I living for?

Suicide

Good, the title didn’t scare you off. I guess this is what my last post was meant to touch on.

This post is both an outside account of my flatmate’s attempted suicide & my thoughts on the topic. If you want his own perspective on the experience he has written a post about it.

I feel I’ve left this post too late as the suicide attempt seems like just an uneasy memory now; even the guy himself seems “meh” about it. Also I’ve somehow perked myself back into taking some action over the past week rather then being mopey. Odd since (spoiler alert) I still don’t have a “real reason” for living & I keep getting signs I’m not just suddenly better, if my mentally restless evenings are anything to go by. This I’ll talk about later.

Suddenly it’s like writing these posts is the most important thing to do in my life.

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Since late March, the flatmate had brought up thoughts about committing suicide. We have been feeling concerned about him, yet the reality of it didn’t seem to seep in until he did something a month later.

Overdue Update – Still Alive

Hello again blog (& people who still check in), sorry I forgot about you for a while.

Part of the reason for my absence is because I got sick of just writing life update posts yet I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to write, nor did I feel the motivation to write at all. I-um… hmm… well, this next bit is going to be weird.

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I had a moment when writing this where I formed the sentence below & actually looked at the posts I linked:

I’ve also been feeling bad about… things I’ve already written about before: unemployment woes, social issues, worries about my future, blah blah recurring personal issues; so I felt no need to repeat myself.

Let me just toot my own horn for a bit – I think I just realized the value of my own posts (well, except for ones like ‘unemployment woes’, that’s just me complaining). Reading the later two has brought an earlier, better, mindset back. They reminded me of some important points for myself & may have re-centred me a bit. Now that I think about it, I’m actually kinda proud of those posts since they feel like the clearest version of my own thoughts.

Except now we have a problem – this segment has completely derailed this post… Try to bare in mind the rest of this short post was written before this part.

Awkward meta self indulgent segment aside.

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Since my last update in February:

• March = despair resembling a post from mid 2015. Only thing worth noting is I received my first contract payment – yay!
• April – getting better (I think), though still feeling troubled. For some reason the only points I can remember are:
  • I’ve actually been getting some solid weeks of work doing ‘business intelligence reporting’.
  • On the last week of April I had a flatmate attempt suicide. He’s fine now & doesn’t seem to be considering it again any time soon though the experience left me uneasy, particularly with how nonchalant everyone involved has been.
  • Whilst I have no intention of committing suicide (I think), I have been wondering – what am I living for?

Yeah, I’ve been thinking about death & existence a lot lately. I’ve been writing pieces of another post about this topic as I wrote this one, so there may be a post about that soon… whenever that is. I feel like I need to get back into writing.

Anyway, this is just me saying I’m still alive but I’m not sure why.

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😐

What’s happening with this post?

This may be the weirdest thing I’ve ever written.

February Life Update – New Adventures

Hello, this month has been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster. More than once I’ve just had to stop because I wanted to cry, but there have also been some unusually fun times. I guess you’d call it cathartic.

Also, side note, why has an old post of mine been getting views from a lot of random people this weekend? Not complaining, I just find it kinda weird that people are suddenly interested in a post from late 2014 (wow, this blog has been going for that long?).

Anyway, the main things this month:

• I’ve been getting myself setup as a freelance IT Sole-Trader, & thinking about how to make it viable has left me feeling a bit overwhelmed.

• I went on an impromptu road trip with some friends to Twizel overnight. It was nice to see central Canterbury & help a friend move some stuff back home.

• Been looking at the writing/lore aspect of my storytelling game prototype Sojourn.

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If you’re wondering what a Sole-Trader is, it’s essentially a one person business. If you’re wondering what I’m offering here’s my draft business card:

Yes, I’m intending on this being my business card (I wish I could say this was an original idea). I tried to do this in C# but I could see several problems with this approach.

Fortunately there isn’t much I need to legally do before I can begin work (I think I’ve got everything setup with my accountant now), but I’ve found myself having to wait regardless.