15082023

Finally had the call with Raw Fury this morning. They’ve given me the green light to proceed on the demo, after all! Now I have to actually get it done.

In practice, this more or less necessitates me to work continuously with little rest for the next ten days until the 25th, which is the soft deadline for builds to be approved on time for the start of September. Although I understand that, as far as concepts like “best practice” and “healthy work/life balance” go, this should give some cause for concern, privately I must admit that I actually welcome it: not only because it is the first time, not just in recent memory, but possibly in years that I’ve felt genuinely interested in not just the project itself but actually working on it as well, but because the constant external pressure grants me the perfect excuse to withdraw myself from the world, and avoid unpleasant thoughts.

It catches up to me as soon as I stop. My dreams these past few days have been increasingly filled with odious, monstrous things too appalling to recount. I spend most of my forced breaks either obsessively “maintaining” this site (I strongly suspect its very inception was a decision born far less from actual judicious planning, than a product of unsettled restlessness), or ruminating over Ana and other humiliating personal failures. I feel emotionally stifled, and work feels like the only real reprieve from it within my immediate control.

At the end of the day, I guess it’s not a terrible place to be, though. I could feel like this, and also not be working. As long as things are getting done on time, maybe it’s not so bad after all. I’ve come to realise that it’s only when things are like this that I have genuine hope that I’ll be able to finish this.