07112019
Another completely unproductive day. Woke up around 1600 from a strange dream. I was in school still – it looked like my middle school, but I was much older – and there were two girls with me, who were also around my age. I recognised one of them, but the other… she seemed like a friend I knew, but I’ve never seen her before in waking. The sky was bleak and the clouds seemed to move at unnatural speeds. We drove back from the school through an incoherent town that felt like the place where I grew up but wasn’t, to a field that felt like my home except it wasn’t. There was a massive tree in the yard before my house and when we arrived it was engulfed in flames. The sight of it filled me with a feeling of profound sadness and awe.
When I was younger there were many trees around my house but in time they were all removed. I distinctly remember that there was a beautiful tree with fragile pink leaves right in front of the main door. One night I got angry – over what, I have no idea – and I started ripping away at it with an axe. It bled to death slowly over the next year and a half, becoming black and withered. A thick amber fluid leaked from the gashes I’d opened up in its side. Looking at it filled me with a sense of immense shame and regret. My father cut down all the other trees around the house over the next several years. Tore them all up by their roots so that no trace of them remained except in photographs and other artefacts of memory.
Anyways, when I awoke, it was already late into the afternoon yet the sky outside was dark and filled with rain. I sat around for a while staring at the blank canvas of the sprite editor, copied and pasted a few frames, but got virtually nothing actually accomplished. These past few animation cycles have been unbearably difficult to get through for some reason, both on a technical and a personal level. On top of that I feel like there’s been this hazy fog encroaching upon me these past few months, that’s draining me of my ability to work effectively. I can’t tell though if it’s because of work, or in spite of it. I’ll give it another try tomorrow…