I’ve been really troubled as of late. More so than usual, at least. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. Constantly agitated, both emotionally and physically. Some days I just wake up and crumble into pieces. Despondent. I was struck today by the sudden desire to start writing again. Maybe I’ve just been spending too much time with Tawanda. I seem to be pathologically incapable of self-improvement.
Heavy rain. Spent the workday continuing to fix bugs and clean up old code. The game now seems to launch and run without any issues once again. I need to start looking at some pretty extensive optimisations soon though; performance on the workstation is shockingly poor. Part of it is definitely a limitation with the hardware itself, which was an intentional choice when I purchased it; but I was not prepared for it to be this poor. After some cursory observations with the profiler I’ve determined that a massive source of the slowdown is the amount of draw calls the game is making per frame, which is obviously problematic as it’s simultaneously a core function of the game, and I know very little about how to go about resolving it.
I spent the majority of the day cleaning my room and re-organising my desk. I fixed some crashes in the project file in the evening. The weather has been exceedingly pleasant these past few days. I’ve been feeling disconnected from my own feelings. These are troubling times. I think I need to start exercising again soon.
Finally settled back home. Attended a tea event at the church for Mother’s Day. I purchased a plant. I’m not sure what it is, but it looked pleasant and the decision to acquire one came to me suddenly and clearly while I was washing a plate. I think it needs to be placed outside.
I’ve finally managed to retrieve my old plot drafts. They are much more detailed than I remember. I’ll go over them this week and see what I can salvage. It’s looking pretty optimistic, for once.
Finally succumbed to the marketing and tried out Obsidian and, unfortunate to admit, it’s been pretty nice so far. Just having the ability to live-preview rendered Markdown files with proper indentation and ordered listing a significant upgrade to the Sublime Text experience. I don’t for a second buy any of this “second brain” bullshit I keep seeing promo’d everywhere (and which completely turned me off of it until now), but I can certainly see myself getting good value out of its ability to easily handle and display several nested folders’ worth of offline Markdown files, while retaining my ability to manage my own version control externally. I plan on trialling it for another week and if I don’t run into any issues, I think I will transfer the bulk of my documentation over to it.
Otherwise, the usual.
Got some writing done tonight. Revisited Estelle’s plot. I somehow seem to have lost my drafts for all the others. I have a suspicion they’re saved on my old laptop, to which I no longer have access for the time being… maybe it’s for the best, though. Needed some time away to gain perspective. There’s enough content here to work off of in terms of constructing a tangible slice. Very few new mechanics or interfaces involved. Something to start with…
Over the past several weeks I have become very acutely, increasingly convinced, and afraid, that hell is real and that every day I am on the verge of making a decision that will irreversibly precipitate me right into its annihilation. I’m just not cut out for this, I think. All this. I still struggle to justify it intellectually but something’s changed on the level of my soul, I think, that I cannot comprehend but whose shadow is palpable and undeniable. I feel like I am constantly on the verge of breaking. Less than zero. Nearly every interaction feels like an agitation, a pretext to judgement. It is no longer the atrocity within me that I fear others will sense but the inadequacy. Like my father said. Useless eater. Hell is real, I am certain of it. There are moments when I feel like I am burning from the inside. Like God has cast his eye upon me directly. But I am not being cleansed. There is no purification and what is burning away is just me.
Spent the day rearranging my monitors, and packing. Having trouble falling asleep; I don’t know why, but I’ve always found it difficult to sleep the night before a flight. At least on the way out. I just want to get this over with. I need to remember to change the water in the plant before I go.
Collated a bunch of weather data across a 60-day period for use for reference in Avery’s logs, and as raw input for the weather engine. I need to revisit the plot again some time soon. After some debate I’ve decided that I’ll be bringing my computer after all. Frankly I’ll count myself lucky if I even have the chance to open it a single time for more than five minutes, but just in case. Maybe I’ll be able to get some writing done.
I pushed my first commit in nearly two months earlier this evening. The day’s work was slow, but steady and untaxing. I feel terribly lonely. When I wake up, there’s no one there to greet. The daylight rises and falls with little notice. My nights are passed in silence. But for once, I’m getting things done. Maybe this is the way I’m meant to live, at the end of it. I fear I am not enough to fill this space on my own.
I’ve been trying a bit, day by day, to get back to work. Every day I try to sit down for at least twenty minutes, choose one set of assets or scripts, and go through the code, updating any relevant sections to standard with the new naming scheme. It’s slow, fatiguing work, especially since my ability to keep several things in focus has nearly completely eroded with disuse and confusion. I haven’t tested if the game runs a single time throughout the process, which I know I should be doing’ but I also know for sure that I don’t have the capacity to deal with the work or cognitive burden of troubleshooting at the moment. It’s helped me reacquaint myself with various systems I had designed years ago that I’d either forgotten in terms of function, or even altogether in a few cases. I’ve stopped going out as much. I feel a little bit less trapped in the designs of the past.
I’ve been feeling a stymied motivation to work on the game recently. I think it is in part due to my steady regression into a state of terrible despair, not all too different from the one in which the work was born. I guess this is how my life has gone: cycles of brief hope followed by long stretches of the same precipitous, violent loneliness that has defined The Way Things Are as long as I’ve been aware. Every time I come away from it thinking for a moment that maybe if I had tried a bit more, or slightly differently, or was slightly different, or more capable, or less of me, than maybe things could have been better, could get better. But I think that that’s just some shit I tell myself because I am too inert and stuck in my ways to change or end my life otherwise, and after all, hope is the baseline state I think, the last vestige of divinity present within us after all these years. I cannot convince myself though in the hours I have been living. I cannot convince myself I am anything but less than zero, or that I deserve anything more. Last night I had a nightmare that I had buried myself alive. No matter how much people try to tell me otherwise I just do not believe. I cannot. It is because of this, I think, that I am doomed.
It’s gotten a lot warmer and brighter lately, since I got back. More people outside. Spring is the loneliest stretch of the year. I’m terribly tired all the time, and I can feel myself growing increasingly angry and prone to spasms of vicious, primitive sadness. There’s this hole in my soul that just won’t go away. Once you start, you can’t stop. Days pass by. They just keep on going. They just keep on going.
Christ in the tomb. A free-floating sense of nauseous uncertainty. I am stuck in a loop of self-condemnation: “I feel worthless so I don’t try anything so I am worthless”. I don’t know how to get out of this. Slave to aetiology. Clarity has never helped: what good is it to be able to see the grooves and indentations on the bullet that is hurtling towards you, know its exact caliber and exit velocity and angle of trajectory, when you do not have the ability to move out of its way? It made impact long ago yet my nerves are only just now beginning to catch up, even as it tears a pathway in slow-motion through my life. I don’t know how to describe the sadness. How do I get better? It feels impossible to imagine a future for myself. How can I be fixed? I cannot change, and I seem unable to learn. There have been times in my life where I was so convinced that I was able to get better but every one of them ended in failure. I squandered my opportunities, each and every one. Because of what I am, and what I am not. I think I am doomed. I don’t know what to do or how to live with that.
Haven’t gone to service in over two months. I get the sense that I’m devolving somehow.
It was warm and humid and grey, and the bare branches swirled outside my window with the nascence of a summer breeze. I feel like I’m becoming sick with sadness. It poisons my thoughts with clouds of resentment and doubt and deadens my limbs with dreadful torpor. I need to get something done by the end of this weekend, or I fear there may be terrible repercussions upon my wellbeing.
Another week has passed with little to show for any of it. I’m barely cognisant most days. The burst of energy and motivation I had the other week feels completely alien now. I can barely remember what it felt like or what inspired it. I’m beginning to consider the possibility that I will never really return to a place where I can make games in an inspired or meaningful way.
I spent this morning trying to get some writing done, but it just wasn’t really coming to me for some reason. Managed to get maybe three paragraphs in before feeling completely empty. The nascence of coherence teeming just beneath the surface but unable to crystallise. It makes me quite sad.
Fundraising dinner this evening at the church. It was a nice time. First time I’ve been around a number of people in a while. I’ve been struggling a lot lately. Terribly sad, and more often than not, emptier than I thought a person could be. It’s really hard to write about anything because it’s really hard to think about anything. Despite everyone, I feel quite alone in the world.
I’ve just been playing AC Shadows the past couple of days, which is why I haven’t written much. It’s a beautiful game, vast and assured in its emptiness. It reminds me of these nightmares I had when I was a kid, where I’d be watching my father drive away every Saturday in his Civic, the weekly grocery trips, and I’d be sitting there in the family room that’s now my grandfather’s room playing with my Legos peacefully in the corner until after I while I’d realise that they left me behind and I’m the only one in my house, and then the only one in my neighbourhood, and then the only one in the whole wide world. And there’s nothing else to it, probably; any of this, I mean to say. My father sold the Civic to a guy on Craigslist, I think, one rainy day when I was a teenager, maybe. I feel pretty inert, and my sleep schedule has been rather poor too. The days pass quickly and with little commotion.
I’ve been struggling to find the motivation to get any work done this past week, although every day, for multiple hours, I’ve thought extensively about it. I feel very unfocused. I’ve been working on my resume every day, and thinking about jobs a lot. I feel a bit more optimistic this time around, both about my prospects, and the process in general.
I’ve been rethinking the structure of Plan a lot. I feel like the conceptual work has gotten out of my reach. I overscoped a bit too much as usual, got too ambitious. I’ve been thinking about ways to salvage it. I think one way is to start by regaining some focus on the core of it: the strength of the moment-to-moment writing which, at the end of the day, is what I reckon I’m both best at, and interested in. I’ve been looking at examples of text-heavy/visuals-light games for some guidance and inspiration. What I’m really hoping for is that I might find something in one of them that is able to suddenly strike within me the impetus to begin working on my own work. I can feel it fomenting inside of me. I just can’t seem to access it yet.
Felt better today, enough to finish my resume and submit some applications. I took all of yesterday and today off to clear my head. I feel calmer and more collected. I think I’ll be ready to get back to work tomorrow. I actually am looking forward to it.
Today, just like yesterday, and the day before that, and probably the day and days before that one too, is just another one of those days where I feel like I’m nothing more than the calm, creeping accrescence of all my life’s failures and humiliations. Useless.
I’ve definitely hit another slump. Haven’t worked all week, no plan or initiative to try to start again. I’ve been regularly staying up until dawn every night for no justifiable reason. I feel like things are really starting to slip out of my control. My thoughts have become completely disordered and ungovernable. I don’t even bother turning on my work computer anymore…
Haven’t worked in the past few days. I don’t know what’s been going on. Dark thoughts clouding my mind. Impatient and unfocused.
I’ve been feeling a terrible emptiness. Aggravated all throughout the day, angry. Dwelling on dark thoughts. I couldn’t sleep at all last night so I stayed up and forced myself to attend the 8am service. I was the only one in the pews. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I was feeling pretty good the past few days. I don’t know what’s changed. Lost focus, is what it is. Life is good for me when it is small, contained. I lost sight of the immediate comforts and pleasures, started looking outwards again. Inadequate. Can’t do anything right.
Didn’t really work today, mostly just organised things in my room (really, just my desk). After some initial difficulties and a hundred wasted sheets of unnecessarily high-quality paper (I did not purchase this, but instead found a pallet of several thousand sheets of it conveniently sitting in my garage which some now-derelict office had offloaded for pennies into my father’s hands several months ago), I managed to get the printer working perfectly, and printed out a bunch of campaigns, which I’ve prepped for binding. I need to purchase some more binding glue, and locate my awl, which is probably sitting somewhere in the bottom of a box in my closet entangled in excess webbing. The prints came out really nice though, and the paper, while very heavy, feels quite good in texture and will make for excellent material should I attempt fancier prints down the line.
Every day I try to play Work for at least five minutes. I mostly just walk around and look at the environment. It helps to maintain my attention on the project and stimulate my imagination, even if I’m not directly working on it. I have made little progress with Plan in the past few days though, I need to return to it soon…
Not a particularly productive day. Think the streak has ended. A calm, gloomy day, heavy winds, dreadfully overcast. I spent the bulk of it just continuing to rename assets and variables in Work. Although I know it’s important for both my future productivity and my current morale, at times I can’t help but feel like I’m just working for the sake of maintaining the appearance of working. I’d to start making an actual game soon instead of just setting up frameworks. I think once I finish writing this, I’ll try to get some more work done…
In other news, the printer finally arrived, and I was able to set it up with ease. Still haven’t tested it — still haven’t found anything to print — but I did spend a bulk of the afternoon editing a bunch of campaigns I’d written for Delta Green into printable format, which was a tedious but calming process, mostly just formatting text blocks and find-replacing errant text and inconsistencies.
Gotta clean my room soon…
Start of Lent. Took the day off, although not intentionally apropos to the season. Just sat around and played The Division half-heartedly for most of the day. Heavy rain started in the afternoon. I felt an acute sense of loss today.
Sorting and organisation continues. I started a document specifically for outlining in detail a new naming convention, and spent the rest of the day refining and implementing the new changes. I’ve developed a pretty good system for editing files and scripts across entire projects using a combination of RegEx and Bulk Renamer Utility, so once I finalise the scheme itself, I should be able to fairly quickly and efficiently apply it retroactively to Work as well, which I think will dramatically improve the legibility and consistency of the game’s mismatched asset and variable names, which to date stand as much as a testament to my own discipline (or lack thereof) and progress as a developer as they do to its lengthy development heretofore.
I also used Copilot today — accidentally at first, I must admit — and was surprised at how quickly and accurately it displayed actionable results. Granted, my queries were not particularly sophisticated, but considering the last time I attempted to interact with some kind of AI was back in middle school with some barely-functional experimental chatbot, it was really surprising. I can’t really immediately imagine at the moment some pressing need to figure out a way to integrate it into my workflow, but my positive experience with it today has inspired some optimism in me to consider it as a viable option again in the future should the opportunity arise.
I drank a Celsius for this first time this afternoon. “Fruit Burst”. While not entirely objectionable in taste, it left me feeling vaguely uneasy for some time physically, cresting the verge of an electric agitation that seemed to course through various parts of my body rattling the molecules about. It was a bit much; I probably drank it too quickly, having grown accustomed to drinking Red Bulls with the ease of a Rolling Rock. I’m not opposed to giving it another try though, at a later date.
Another productive day. Didn’t sleep much last night, but didn’t feel it much today either. Spent most of the day working on a new draft for the combat screen with updated visuals for the player and enemy entities. I’m fairly satisfied with it. It feels suitably cramped and dynamic at the same time.
In the evening, I decided to revisit the audio. I was rather shocked to discover just how wasteful and undisciplined my previous choices were with regard to the lengths and sizes of the audio files. I imported all of the audio files from Work into the foundation project (I’ve decided to just refer to it as Base from now on, in accordance with my other naming choices), stripped out the files that were too specific to Work, and then renamed all of them to fit a more consistent organisational schema.
When renaming the files, I discovered the aforementioned issue with the file sizes. After doing some research, I decided to just convert all of the audio into OGG format. I cut down the most egregious offenders with regard to track length (one track was 30min of repetitive rain sounds…) and compacted the rest. I haven’t tested it in-game yet, but all of the tracks seem to play properly in-game… I hope there won’t be any issues. I was able to cut the total size of the project by around 200mb, or around a 60% overall reduction, to just under 150mb. About half of the remaining bulk is graphic assets, which I think could use some cleaning as well. Could get the file size down even more by reducing the bitrate of the largest tracks, but at that point I think it just spills over into neurosis…
Felt better today overall, or at least not bad. I wager that having a good bulk of the work involve reading through documentation and trying to learn new techniques helped significantly to break up the accrescence of the sadness. For now, as long as I am able to focus on what’s right in front of me, the abscess is a little bit easier to ignore.
Took a pill in the morning after I awoke and worked calmly and continuously until now. It’s the most productive I’ve felt in years, without exaggeration. I feel like I could continue going for much longer. Dark before I knew it. I spent the entire day cleaning up, formatting, and documenting a bunch of code from Work, and setting up a project containing common resources and code that I’ll be able to use as a foundation for stuff moving forward. It’s good. Being able to just work in Gamemaker again for extended periods of time has helped my motivation a lot, and I feel like I’ve made a breakthrough, even if it’s just temporary. Should see if the doctor can prescribe me some.
I’ve been feeling pretty sad though in general. It’s getting worse, I think. I missed service again this morning. Just didn’t wake up in time, although really, that’s just an excuse. It’s been over a month now. Sad is not the right word. Lent looms close. I feel an intense sense of absence all the time. Phantom shivers. Deep within my bones and in the flickers between synapses. The inescapable feeling that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. That some part of me has vanished so quickly and suddenly the rest of my body hasn’t caught up yet. I’ve read accounts of shootings. You’re falling before you even realise something has ripped right through you. The body understands what the mind can’t, won’t. I’ve tripped and can’t get back up. Don’t want to get back up. It’s a new feeling, I think. From a place beyond myself. Apart from me.