Didn’t work as much as I’d have liked today. I was overcome by a dim cloud. Most of today’s work was custodial, going through all of the flagged code instances and making the necessary adjustments. I don’t know how much any of these changes actually matter – I don’t think any of them really do – but at least now I don’t have to look at any more warnings.
I’ve decided this morning that, unrelated to the previous, I will switch my code editor entirely to a proportional font for my next project. The compulsive need to ensure typographic alignment, even when doing so is outright destructive to legibility, has severely impaired my ability (or perhaps desire) to abide by reasonable standards of consistency throughout this project. I long for the future.
Work has been going really well. Not only has the work itself been getting done, but I feel a great sense of fulfillment getting it done, even on days like this, when the actual measurable progress feels so slight. It’s the strangest thing; as if suddenly, the long fog that’s so thoroughly eclipsed the past two years of my life cleared away with such abruptness that I find myself astonished to even recall it was ever there. I’m so terribly happy that I was there to share in its witness, but I think it’s over. No one’s coming back, I’m sure of it now, and I can no longer be moved to leave. The city’s emptied out, the nights are getting cooler, the summer will soon draw to a close. Things will never be like the way they were again. I have to find my place in all this again, and I think my place is right here. I’m plummeting through my memories. I know I shouldn’t have done it but the other day I found myself on the L and by the time it’d passed by 1st I’d already stepped out into the evening, careening, against my better desires, the trees far greener than I remembered and the light warmer, and by the bitter brine waters I sat down and from deep within my lungs I heaved forth what felt like the last of the winter, all winter, pooling across the parkway. It catches up to you, I guess. I don’t think people change anymore so much as they just seem to fall apart, unravel, first at the atomic level, and then in whole systems and tectonics. No one seems to take circumstance seriously until it’s the only thing they’ve got left to talk about. I felt it again tonight for the first time in a long time, you know, the real thing, lying there in my bed, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what the night breeze is like right now in Austin. It wasn’t fear, or heartache, or longing, or even sadness, really. Just plain loneliness. Ah, man.
Uninteresting but necessary work today. Cleaned up the tutorial prompts and some save events to improve the onboarding experience for new players. Work has been coming easier after this weekend. Maybe the sadness is not so bad after all. It feels more familiar to me. I think I’ve been too distracted these past two years. Maybe this is finally an opportunity to return to where I belong.
Tawanda’s left New York for good. I guess that’s that, then. I know things aren’t gonna change much but things will change a lot. He never came back to New Jersey, at the end of it. A profound sadness has come over me over the last few weeks. Too tired to stay awake, possessed by an insatiable hunger. There are days and nights when I miss Ana so terribly that the ache seems to seep into my bones. I’ve fallen behind the pace of my life.
First day back to work, and first entry in over a month. I’m not really sure what to say. I’ve been real tired lately, a full-body fatigue. They’ve got me working on a demo for the October Steam Next Fest. I don’t know, there was some kind of confusion on the timing of when this build would be due. They haven’t updated me on it yet. I don’t know. I don’t really care anymore. I have two weeks left to get it done on my own terms, I don’t care what happens on their end internally: I’m submitting it, come hell or high water. I need the public release at this point. Without it, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to recover enough morale to finish this thing. Hell.
No work today. Still feeling fucked up, but doing my best to work through it. I spent much of the morning in prayer. I’m not very good at it. Sometimes though it gets me from one moment to the next when nothing else really seems to be working. I spend the rest of the time sleeping, or trying to, anyways. I think I’m in trouble at work. Something about the invoices I submitted the other day. Probably about the rate of progress too.
The bitter irony of all this is that it all hits just as I was just about feeling like I could start doing things better. I’d finally started feeling a bit better about work, like I could get things done. Started feeling better about Ana, like I could finally let go of some of the more painful, resentful things, and just talk to her, plan things with her, think about her like a normal human being. I enjoyed it. I get it now, what Ada’s talking about. I enjoyed feeling like I could be happy. Fuck.
Life just seems to fold over me in waves these years. Just as I start to feel better, like I’ve got enough strength to get over the next berm, I just get knocked back down again, over and over, by the same goddamned problems every time. I feel completely powerless against any of it. I’m not yet suicidal, which I guess is good. But I feel like all my progress has just been wiped, again. And I feel so thoroughly impotent at contesting any of it. Nobody trusts me anymore, it feels like. Can’t convince anyone of anything. I’ve run everybody’s patience down. Nobody believes me anymore. And man, I don’t have too many more words. And man, I don’t have too much more will.
Feeling fucked up again. I’m trying my best to get through it but right now I can’t even get out of bed. God damn this wretched soul of mine.
Published the monthly update today. Writing it exhausted me beyond reason, and I was no longer able to work afterwards. I feel like a mild sadness has also settled into me somehow. It feels like some kind of disappointment, or disillusionment, although I don’t know why. It’s 2100 and I can’t think of any reason to stay awake any longer. I don’t think it was a bad day. It just didn’t feel like it was enough.
Another good workday. Pushed my first commit of the year, I’m pretty sure.
Set up the link point to the basement in the outpost, so the player can now move between the two in-game. There are a lot of issues with regards to the lighting system though, and the movement animations for Avery are completely broken when she’s in the basement. I don’t know how to solve it right now.
This is one of the biggest issues, I’ve come to learn, about working on things for so long. I’ve almost completely forgotten how I built so much of the early systems in the game. So much of it just seems so convoluted as to appear effectively foreign to me.
I need to focus on producing a whole bunch of assets tomorrow, as well as getting the update written. I’m going to go to sleep early and try to get it all out by the afternoon.
Felt better today. Woke up pretty late, but made good progress on the basement. It’s been fully imported into the game itself now and should be ready in terms of decorations by tomorrow. I’ve decided to postpone writing this month’s update until tomorrow, and releasing it on Saturday. I will have to create some visuals for it soon.
I was feeling quite well for the majority of the day until, with the light encouragement of a friend, I decided to make a new Hinge profile and see if anything’s changed. Nothing has; and in fact, I believe that my sense of antipathy and revulsion has only further grown in its intensity over the course of the past months. The obscenity of it all has become genuinely unbearable. I was originally planning on working for the rest of the day, but I have felt my mood palpably darken by the minute over the last two hours. I have been thinking about Larry Hall. I have become gripped by the fantasy of violently drowning myself in a shallow trickle of gutter effluvia.
The humidity passed overnight. The day was bright and cool. Didn’t get anything done today, either. I felt better though. I’ve gotta start working again. I haven’t accomplished anything I set out to do, either this week, or this month. Frankly, I haven’t accomplished anything the entirety of this year. I almost feel bad about submitting invoices these days.
Humid. Wasn’t able to accomplish a single thing I had set out to get done by the end of today.
The air was hazy all throughout the day, and the sun was blood orange. I wasn’t able to get anything done today. I’ve been feeling pretty listless and lazy lately. Getting started is the hardest part, and a lot of days I don’t feel like I can overcome that initial barrier for some reason. At least most days these days, I’m in a good mood…
Tomorrow I’m going to get the layout for the basement sketched out, and rewrite the sound design document for Sam.
Missed Trinity Sunday service. It’s a shame, I was looking forward to it. I didn’t get any work done today. Tomorrow morning I have to get up early to help them clear out the last of the mulch. Hopefully afterwards I’ll feel better and get some work done.
It’s cold again at nights. I spent the afternoon finishing up the procedures for the cooking system. I’m going to start working on the basement tomorrow, and hopefully get most of the layout and pathing blocked out for it.
June’s here, and with it, the summer proper. It was uncomfortably hot in my room today, which bodes ill for the coming months. I’ve been sleeping terribly lately. I spent all afternoon gathering and coming up with recipes for foraged ingredients. I’d like to get one animated in full by tomorrow.
Was supposed to get back to real work today, but I ended up just reading and sleeping throughout most of the day instead, since Tawanda had to take the train out early in the morning. I’m heading to sleep early tonight, and tomorrow, I will begin working on the cooking system. A good way to ease out an otherwise unfruitful month, and move forward into a hopefully more productive one.
Another day of Breakpoint work. I’ve made a resolution to spend the length of next week completely rebuilding the cooking system, including all the recipes and sprites. It was cool and humid today, and the sky was dark with stormy winds, but it did not rain. I ate a pizza from Costco.
Spent the weekend almost continuously working on Breakpoint stuff. The downside obviously is that I got no real work done, but the upside is that I feel a lot better. I’d even say I’m pretty happy with things right now. I’ll get back to work after this upcoming weekend.
Spent most of the day just reading, and sifting through BuildTables in Breakpoint. I haven’t quite gotten acquainted with any of it yet, but it’s pretty exciting work. It’s moments like these that remind me that I actually quite like working with games. I just wish I could feel the same way about my own again…
Not much practical work done these past two days, I’ve mostly just been reading Charles Taylor, and going through old documents from various points throughout the project looking for points of inspiration. I’m gonna start working on new sprites tomorrow though.
Woke up pretty late, but still feel pretty good. Started writing the Kickstarter update for the month, but got a bit stuck, and now I no longer feel like forcing myself to finish it for the sake of finishing it. It’ll definitely be published by tomorrow, though. Once I’m done with it, I’d also like to try to get something done in-game.
Been feeling better after this weekend, both in general and about work. Didn’t get anything done today due to some logistical complications, but I actually feel quite good, in a way that feels pretty straightforward, and unblemished by any conditional caveats or eventual exigencies. I can’t say whether I’m currently enjoying my life, per se; but I’ve certainly settled into an unfamiliar kind of contentment. I will not tempt it by questioning its staying power. I have had a pleasant day. For now, little else needs to exist beyond that.
Nearly two weeks have now elapsed since I resolved to “get back to work proper”, and yet I have done so little of it, and accomplished even less. I don’t feel useless so much as I just feel completely disconnected from, and disinterested in the work itself. I no longer believe I can just will my way through this anymore. I don’t know how I’m going to move forward.
Another warm, wasted day. Apparently there was a meeting scheduled this morning that I completely missed since I’d mistakenly set the date for it in my calendar for tomorrow. (Although truthfully, even this I had forgotten, and am able to recall now only because I noticed it while trying to conjure up some vaguely valid excuse for my absence.) The rest of the day passed by thinly and irregularly.
The weather was once again exceedingly pleasant.
I drifted hazily between motions in the guise of tasks. I sat outside for several hours, and watched a duck and its litany of tiny, fuzzy children wander down the stream. I did not get any work done, and I did not care. Once the sun set, I played Call of Duty for nearly six hours.
Wasn’t able to get anything done today, either. My head feels all scrambled. The weather’s been unusually pleasant. I’ve spent most of the past few days either outside, or cleaning. An indolence amasses in my bones. I’ll try to get a bit done tomorrow.
I’ve really been struggling to get things done, and the slowness itself has become an active irritant even further exacerbating my frustration to the point where I just get almost immediately sucked down into a spiral of self-defeating disappointment. I think I’ve become lazy. I don’t know how I’m going to escape this, as just the act of brute-forcing my way through tasks has itself become tremendously destructive in both the short and long term. I can no longer afford to take any more breaks, either. Everything just further contributes to the overwhelming feeling that I am useless.
Caught in another terrible torpor. This time, I’ve actually been working – notionally, anyways – but the rate of progress has been so slow as to be virtually negligible, at least over the past several days. A shade of bitter dissatisfaction colours all that I do and strive towards.