Month: October 2021

Same as yesterday, except maybe a little bit worse. Cleaned my room. Little progress.

Felt fucking horrible today. Spent the entire day swept up in a tide of extraordinary anger and despair, from which I have yet to free myself. Obviously I was unable to get anything of worth done. Did a reading of Philemon and Hebrews this morning, but it was a dead reading, totally devoid of any life or feeling. Scholastic noise, just like pretty much everything else I do.

First bit of real work in what feels like half a year now, must be. Finished up integrating the foundation for PLN into the main project structure, which in practice mostly involved going through the code and untangling hard dependencies, and modularising blocks of code as much as possible. Fortunately it ended up being significantly less tedious than I’d initially imagined – good on my past self for having the remarkable foresight, I suppose – and I was able to get basic character movement and utility set up by the end of today.

There’s a number of major structural changes I’ve implemented which hopefully won’t come back to haunt me down the line (at some point I should go through and make sure everything in Work still functions as intended…), but for now, I’m just focusing on getting this thing set up and built. Worst case scenario, I’ve made virtually no progress on the main project anyways these past few months, so I’ll just roll back the changes once I’m done and create a proper fork.

It feels quite good to be able to work again, although it comes in the midst of a particularly troubled state of mind. I felt an intense wave of wretched darkness all throughout the day, beginning shortly after I ate lunch. It was debilitating enough to render me useless for the rest of the afternoon and evening, and only now has it begun to show signs of receding. I currently feel the sense of peace one feels after the passing of a terrible fever. I’m tempted to act in this moment of clarity – I don’t know how, or towards what, but the desire overwhelms me nonetheless. Of course, I won’t do anything with it… but I wish I could. I certainly wish I could.

Finished up some administrative work this morning and then set about getting back to work integrating the framework for PLN into the main project. I feel terribly exhausted, and overcome with an odd sadness. I don’t know if I will continue working tonight, but I hope I’ll be able to finish up the framework tomorrow and start setting up some visuals.

Registered the company today. I guess that means this is now… “official”. (At the very least, to the IRS, whom I’ve managed to evade thus far these past 24 years, though now, no longer.) It’s a bit of a strange feeling. I simultaneously feel as if I feel nothing, but also – that feeling in itself carries with it its own valence and weight, which is palpable in my chest. 

I had a bit of a strange session today. I felt terribly inarticulate in the moment, and for several hours afterwards it was as if the burden upon me had only multiplied: but then I fell asleep this evening and discovered that, upon waking, I felt a sense of clarity come over me, that has eluded me these past few days. I feel much closer to the doctor after today for some reason, too.

I immediately set about working. It’s not that the pain itself is gone, per se (if anything, it’s perhaps even more pronounced); but rather, like suddenly, I can see it much better, and hold it within my hand, so that it no longer feels so vast and undefinable. 

Spent the day in contemplation, mostly just reading. I’ve been revisiting GMark lately, and specifically the subject of the bodily resurrection. There’s too much to recount here in detail but I’ve become transfixed by a potent, painful idea that seems to cling to me at every waking moment. Maybe it’s just because I feel so fucking useless when it comes to dealing with my other feelings that I’ve retreated into this familiar territory and language. I don’t know. I’m beginning to believe more and more lately that all philosophy is just the spasm of an impotent heart.

Didn’t end up working after all. The thing with Gloria turned out to be worse than I thought. Not this again…

Hung out with Haolun all of yesterday into today. I had a good time, and it helped me work through the dumb shit I was/am feeling about Gloria. I didn’t get around to doing any work these past two days, but I feel ready to work next week. I think I’m gonna spend most of tomorrow reading, and maybe try to get a bit of spritework done in the evening.

Spent most of the day just researching legal shit, feel totally drained. Gonna get back to work on tomorrow, start importing sprites into the main project and setting up preliminary framework to accommodate the new systems and controllers.

Got back in contact with the publisher today, ironed out the last of the logistical details. Now, I just have to take care of a bunch of legal business bullshit… it’s way out of my element, honestly, but it is what it is. Gotta face the music at some point or another.

Haven’t been particularly busy these past few days, just… adrift. I feel distracted, although not by anything specific. Maybe by a certain kind of instability, I guess. Feels like uncertainty. I no longer know what I don’t know. I feel like I’m growing less articulate somehow. Ironically, I find myself struggling to describe that.

Felt off again today. I can articulate it more clearly now, though: it’s loneliness. In relearning what it’s like to be in the presence of others, I’ve lost my tolerance for solitude; and am only now beginning to confront with painful clarity just how abject my loneliness was these past few years. All of a sudden, my own presence has become alien to me. I can’t get anything done on my own anymore. It’s like my sense of self has, in the process of over-correcting for its missed trajectory, become completely neutered such that even just a day spent in absence feels debilitating. This shit kinda fucking sucks…

Stayed up pretty late last night finishing up the update, but was able to get it out in time at the end of the day. For some reason I’ve been feeling a bit off today. Not even that particularly bad, just… compromised. Maybe “susceptible” is the better word. I feel like I’ve been someone, or maybe something all throughout the day, although I can’t name who or what that is. 

Maybe it’s just the weather though. It’s been getting much cooler lately, and it seems as if the leaves on the trees have begun to yellow and fall almost overnight. I always start missing people around this time of the year. More so than usual, at least.

Fairly relaxed day: my contact fell unexpectedly ill, so the meeting’s postponed till next week. I spent the day working on new materials for tomorrow’s update, as well as… procrastinating on actually writing the update, to which I’m only now getting around. Looks like I’ll be up pretty late tonight. Well, piss-poor planning leads to piss-poor performance, as they say. Time to get to it.

Feeling terribly tired, although not in a particularly bad way. Spent the day revisiting the plot drafts and looking over the revised public contract. I think I’ll head to bed early tonight: much work awaits tomorrow.

Haolun came over last night. We went to see No Time to Die. I really enjoyed it. It felt like the end of an era – not just of Craig’s run as Bond, which has easily been the most emotionally articulate and compelling of all the entries; but also, a long-overdue conclusion to my own earlier fascination with James Bond, which held me for so long in some of my most formative years early on. I felt a little bit sad, but mostly sobered as I left the theatre, seized by a subdued awareness of my time in this world. At the end of the film, a quote from Jack London is read aloud, which I found to be particularly moving, on top of everything else: “The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.”

To live, then.

I woke today in a state of preternatural peace, as if, overnight, I’d suddenly become emancipated from an immense burden. I spent the morning writing some emails, and then the better part of the evening in contemplation. Sawyer and I have begun playing through Far Cry 6 this afternoon. We’ve been enjoying it a lot so far. I’m very much looking forward to the rest of the playthrough.

Well, looks like the thing with Jayne’s over now. A done deal this time, at last, for real. Turns out she met someone else, at school, in the past, what? four or five weeks? Just like that. Huh. Pattern of planned obsolescence, I guess. Same as always with these types. 

What really gets me though is that she really had the audacity to tell me that she “would like to continue talking” to me, as if she ever had the capacity and/or patience and/or interest and/or whatever to attempt to maintain even the slightest fucking semblance of an actual conversation to begin with. That’s real fucking grand, Jayne. If she really wanted to talk to me, she could just… talk to me. And not once did she bother, in all those months. Not once did she reach out, ever. And of course, she didn’t – and won’t – respond this time, either. 

The only thing I regret is that I told her some shit that, in retrospect, she really did not deserve. The kinds of useless, pathetic feelings I should have kept to myself, to people more deserving. I wish I could be more cruel. It’s in these kinds of moments that I find myself hating myself, the person I’ve become: this sick, cloying sentimentality that’s seeped into my heart as of late and softened me to the casual indifference of the world. The worst part is that I was honest. I really did mean what I said. Whatever. It’s in the past now. She’s dust. Next time, I’ll look for someone more reliable who’s actually somewhat interested in me.

Otherwise, the weekend was very pleasant. I went south to see my friends, celebrate a birthday. I made some new friends too, I think. Drank a lot. (Kinda wish I’d found out that shit with Jayne before I started drinking, but, well, you know, nothing’s ever that convenient.) It was really nice seeing all of them. It’s moments like those that remind me that there’s much, much more to both life and philosophy than some dumb fucking teenage girl. 

Spent the day split between contemplation, and setting up the new project. I’m still a bit divided on whether I want to build this project within the framing of Work – which will allow me to rather seamlessly carry over the visual effects and all that, at the cost of forcing me to significantly retool certain fundamental scripts/structures in Work to accommodate this expanded scope – or whether I should start it within a new workspace completely, which will obviously afford me all the benefits of a totally clean slate, at the cost of forcing me to rebuild basically everything, and retrofit a bunch of the procedures and effects from Work into a brand new workflow.

I’m gonna give myself until the end of the weekend to settle on something, but for now, I’m just working on getting all the new character sprites done. I got most of the elaborate ones done today, although I still have to do the mirrored versions. I hope to have all of them done by the end of this weekend though.

Didn’t get as much work done today as I’d hoped, but I did make a few efforts that I feel have helped catalyse the emergence of clarity for the coming days’ work. I created a list of assets to be created and will begin developing them tomorrow. I hope to be able to have something ready to showcase this Saturday.

Woke up just before noon after experiencing a rather troubling dream, but I felt a good deal better overall throughout the day, especially compared to the past few days. I put the order in for the flight today: feels like the first meaningful commitment I’ve made for myself in a while. It’s given me something to look forward to. Tomorrow I’m going to try to get something done – for real, this time. 

Was feeling terrible for most of today, but then I went to see the doctor, and after I talked with her, I felt much better. My head feels a lot clearer now, less disrupted. For some reason, I still can’t find the will to work though. Maybe it’s just the thing with the publisher that’s keeping me held up. I know it’s not only that, of course; but right now, it definitely feels like the biggest stopgap. I reached out to them again yesterday, just to check in. I hope they get back to me soon. Obviously it’d be nice if it were good news; but even if it wasn’t, at this point, I just wish I could get some resolution on this matter. 

Dark, gloomy day. Unrelenting rain. I’ve been feeling actively suicidal all day, but fortunately, I awoke around 1500, so the day hasn’t been too long. Spent most of that time just re-rigging my kit. Think I’m just gonna read for a bit and then check in early tonight, hope this clears up by tomorrow.

I feel like I just completely fell through the bottom of today. No awareness, no insight of any kind. I just sat there and stared at a computer screen all day with the vague, sinking realisation that I was witnessing in real-time as yet another handful of moments in my life that I will not get back passed me by with excruciating indifference.

Found myself in a rather troubled state of mind today. Intense surges of doubt and loneliness, often concurrent. I feel trapped in a certain silence, from which there is no reprieve but through the company of others. As if I’ve become utterly unmoored from any internal state of purpose or definition. I don’t even think about anyone in particular. All of the magic is gone. I just wish someone could come along and stymie me out from this vast emptiness. But there is no salvation in the world, and no one’s ever saved by anyone, except those who never needed to be saved in the first place. What good is a faith so cowardly?

I ran out of alcohol this morning. I didn’t realise until this afternoon just how much I was relying on it to get me through most – not even the worst – days. I’m on the verge of a dependency: if not physical, certainly psychological. What else can I really do, though? I can’t outthink these kinds of days. 

A bit of an uneven start to the month, but here we are, regardless. I’ve definitely slipped into a certain type of sadness, I’m certain of that much by now. I’ve been feeling a sense of great distance from other people this past week, which has grown more and more pronounced by the day. At the same time though I feel like I’m also losing the strength to care: I’ve been feeling very tired lately, not necessarily in a physical way, but as if my entire spirit has been seized by some slow torpor. It’s not so much pain as it is a bitter soreness. 

I’m too tired to think about my future, or about my work, or even about Jayne. I’ve resolved myself to the likelihood that all these things have slipped away from me indefinitely for the foreseeable future; which is to say, I want to just give up on all of them, although at least for the first two, I know that I can’t. 

And as for the latter, well… to be completely honest, I think I’m done for now. It’s just too much effort to keep on reaching out to her and checking when she’s available and even just feeling things for/about her when it seems like she can’t ever be bothered to even slightly reciprocate the effort in any of those regards. I get that she’s busy, but this is just starting to feel unfair. Truthfully, I don’t even know if I feel much of anything for her anymore. 

Maybe it’s just the sudden dip in temperature, and the arrival of autumn proper, that’s got me feeling like this. Hopefully in a week or two it’ll even out and I’ll start to feel a bit better, or at least more steady. I don’t know. I just wish there’d come a day, sooner rather than later, I hope, when things didn’t have to hurt so much all the time.

And now, September’s over…

It’s been a real strange month. So much has happened that it’s difficult to recall how I felt even a week ago. In reflection though – at least for the moment – I feel like I’m leaving this month as a better person than I came in as. Or at the very least, a more honest person. 

Now, it’s time to get back to work.